Porsche 924 update 2025-26!

[inconsistant]

July 2025

Spent the summer occasionally pootling about and keeping a keen eye on its vital signs.

A friend has car lift and he kindly let me put it up on that to check out the underside.  There’s a few small jobs to do but generally not bad.

^^^ The faded bonnet and headlight panel is clearly visible here. My polishing didn't make a difference for long.

 

There's a slight weep from the joint of the left driveshaft into the transaxle rubber

 

Centre exhaust brackets need to be fixed, a couple are broken. The exhaust is a bit less connected to the underside of the car than is ideal. I’ll book it in and maybe see about getting one of the centre silencers removed too.

 

The sills could do with being repainted black, the paint is quite chipped in places and they're looking a bit shabby.

 

Maybe wire brush & paint suspension arms?

[inconsistant]

August 2025

I went with my son to the Alton Classic Car Sunday meet at the Departure Lounge Cafe. Been meaning to go for years. It was a good show, and the fellow car owners were a really friendly bunch. Had a nice chat with a bloke who owned an Austin 1300 estate and an owner of a lovely honest Volvo P1800 who insisted my son sat in it. A friendly show, smaller than expected but still worth it. Really good burgers. Was going to make this the first post HGF motorway run along the M25 to the A3 but the A3 was closed so went along A roads and through town centres and back roads. It took ages, lots of stop start traffic and some fast dual carriageways. Ran perfectly. Reminded  why I love driving this car.

 

The windscreen wipers were playing up on the way home, as has happened very intermittently since I bought it. The spare wiper relay and wiper arms/switch unit in the parts box that came with it suggests it was something the previous owner was struggling with. 

Every so often the wipers randomly do an intermittent setting sweep, pause, sweep, etc. Sometimes turning them on to low/ fast speed then off sorts it for a few months, but this time they were being stubborn and not resetting .I will need to investigate this further. I don't think it's an uncommon fault as the internal switch assemblies begin to age and get worn out.

Additionally the drivers wiper arm went all limp and pathetic, and started to do random things, at one point disappearing off the screen to my right,  so I had to stop and take the fuse out. Once home I was slightly dreading finding a wrecked cog or some mechanical issue but the arm had just come loose on the spindle, so a re-position and tighten had it working perfectly again. 

Screenwash wasn't working either which meant the random wipers had to try to get across a dry screen and back. It was the same as before, washer pump motor noise but no water so I gave the filter on end of the hose a clean which helped, but I also needed to unblock the bonnet nozzles with a pin. I got drivers side to work but not the passenger side. I think I will need a bike pump on the hose to blow it through and clear the blockage. A job for another day.

 

 

[inconsistant]

Also August 2025

Something new at Brands Hatch... 'Mismatch at the Hatch', fairly local and sounded interesting. Hopefully an eclectic range of old cars and a day od interesting racing. And that's exactly what it was.  We were running a bit late so I braved the M25 and had a nice cruise round to Brands. Saw some quality chod, met some fine 'shitters, saw some really good racing. Managed to park next to both a red Mazda RX7 and a red TR7 for some pop up headlight photos. I was in red car pop up headlight heaven!

 

One of my headlights wasn't working, so because I wasn't sure how old they were I popped a new pair of Nightbreaker bulbs in.  

 

[inconsistant]

October 2025

The Porsche 924 was launched in November 1975, the same year as the TR7 (in the UK), Hyundai Pony,  Jaguar XJ-S, VW Polo,  Golf GTi, Princess and Chrysler Alpine. What a year for cars! The Porsche 924 owners club were keen to make a big thing of the 50th anniversary at the NEC classic car show in November with an example of each type of 924... a standard 2 litre, an example of the special edition which is usually (wrongly) known as the 'Martini' (the white one with the stripes), a 924 Turbo, a 924 Carrera GT and the later 2.5 litre 924S. They had a standard 924 lined up but it wasn't 100% certain so mine was put on standby to be the understudy, on the basis I got the dent in the passenger door sorted in time.

Although mine didn't end up at the show this was just the sort of deadline I needed to get it sorted and started visiting some local bodyshops for quotes. I was hoping £ a few hundred quids to knock the dent out and fill and spray over the scratch, as all the damage was confined to the door skin. 

Turns out it was a bit more involved than that as the bodyshops wanted to blend into the front wing as a minimum which meant two panels being resprayed, which was fair enough. 

So I went with a local place that had done some work on a friends 944 that was recommended to me. He gave me a price for the bare minimum, and another for sorting the door, blending into the wing, respraying the bonnet (which I was thinking of doing anyway but maybe not until next year) on the basis that it's better to do as much as possible in one go to avoid a mishmash of slightly different reds. 

So to cut a long story short, I ended up getting quite a bit done, the door fixed and resprayed, the wing, bonnet and the headlight covers, badge panel (which was faded and had a couple of small dents in it), and the front bumper which was suffering from bits of a previous respray flaking off to reveal white undercoat in places)

To keep the cost down, and avoid damaging unobtainable bits of trim, clips and fittings I removed the passenger door card, wing mirror, side rubbing strips, headlight covers and front bumper including indicators and side lights. 

Fortunately I enquired about the cost of replacement side rubbing strips before tearing them off, and when I discovered the were about £40 each and I needed 3 pieces totalling £122, I decided to very carefully remove them, clean them up and refit them.

 

[inconsistant]

More October 2025

It went in, and a few days later I got the call to say it was ready for collection. I don’t know why but I was absolutely shitting myself. I was so worried that it would look rubbish, or be a poor respray, or that I’d wasted my money. My previous white 924 had a really shite respray, so I know what a bad paint job can do to a car. I needn’t have worried because it looked absolutely flipping stunning, even with all the bits and bobs missing. They’d done a top job of the paint and had given it a really good thorough clean too. He’s even resprayed the door handle in matt black because he said it let the car down!

 

[inconsistant]

The door locking knob had become wedged inside the door, so took a bit of cunning to try to extract that and get it poking out of its hole again.

 

I then refitted the door mirror and fitted the side indicator repeater to the wing

 

I noticed a fair bit of overspray on the hard black plastic and on the rubber seals around the headlights so I popped them out and used Screwfix's finest paint stripper which worked a treat on both types of plastic.

 

I refitted all the bits and bobs back into the front bumper, including overriders, headlight washers, and side lights  and refitted the bumper with some brand new bolts I bought years ago for the white one but never used,  before then fitting the indicators. .

 

I squirted some WD40 on the foamy adhesive tape that came off with the rubbing strips and let it soak in to try to make removal a bit easier.

 

And that's as far as I got before tucking it up into the garage for the final  wettest couple of months of the year.

[inconsistant]

The 924 Owners Club NEC Classic Car Show stand. I somehow didn't get a photo of the 924S, it's the red one in the background. This first one is a very early 1975/76 924. Amazing how little they changed in the 10 years they were produced. Lots of detail and under the skin changes but to the untrained eye pretty much identical Most obvious changes are the fuel filler flap and the black spoiler around the glass hatch. They even came with these same alloys... that's just a bit lazy really, no wonder they didn't sell many once the 944 was launched, it looked much more 1980s than the 924.

[AltheJazzman]

I was going to ask you what your paint polishing technique is, but then when I saw it didn't last, and you'd given up and had it repainted anyway, I decided there was not much point in learning from you!

Parking next to the RX-7 and TR-7 was fantastic serendipity. Did you talk to those owners?

Vehicles I enjoyed seeing in this update: my car, your car, Chevette, 406, Z600, 1800ES, my car, your car, my van, 205 Cabrio, Corsa B LS, Laverda Jota, my car, your car.

[N Dentressangle]

Yep, love the RX and TR shots. Really interesting to see how similar all three really are.

I would replace those front wishbones. You'd get new bushes into the bargain, and they're not that dear. They're only pressed steel and rust like that will have weakened them. Mine aren't that far along the road but they're on my 'replace' list at some point.

The new paint looks fab. Underneath I think our cars are pretty similar, but yours is waaay shinier on top 😎

[GeorgeB]

6 hours ago, inconsistant said:

May 2025

Went for my first adventurous run out in it after the HGF. Went to the breakfast meet at the Black Swan,  Oakham.

Oakham?

[stuboy]

fabulous car and updates

[inconsistant]

48 minutes ago, GeorgeB said:

Oakham?

Oh ok,  Ockham!

[inconsistant]

January 2026

Porsche badge back on over a new gasket. Foam adhesive tape removed from the side rubbing strips.

And a cold wet windy January trip to the Forest Row classic breakfast meet

And we're up to date. Next stop Flower Farm!

[Alusilber]

What was your technique for removing the rubbing strips? I haven't done it on mine but I've head it's easy to kink the metal strip  taking them off, and then it's difficult to unkink it...