55 Coupe project

[Steve Harrison]

Here I am grinding out that seal so the quarter window glass would fit back into the frame. What a mess...but it worked.
What you're seeing is the seal clamped into a long jaw woodworkers vice with a green felt cushion. The green felt came off an old pool table top and it's quite handy to cover the woodworking table to protect it and make a nice assembly surface.

[Steve Harrison]

Horns in. Yea,...the tags are a little scrubby, but they're originals. So be it.

[Steve Harrison]

Cutting out squares in the engine insulation panel so the regulator can mount. Pays to have a sharp chisel here.
P.S.,..there's a wooden board under there to protect the felt and table, haha.

[Steve Harrison]

Original quarter window glass. Never knew there was a date code on these,..till I took them apart to rechrome the frames. See something new every day.

[Steve Harrison]

Believe it or not this whole crazy mess fits inside the headlight bucket. You can't see them when installed, but there are relays for each headlight high beam, low beam, and fog light. A cheap and easy way to save your switches from all that amperage, and make the lights brigher to boot.

[Steve Harrison]

Original? I have no idea, but unlikely it is. But I've never seen a bronze (brass?) battery terminal ever. Strange, so I kept it, haha.

[Steve Harrison]

Here are some odd pre A details.

Dash mounting bolts are shimmed out using washers,...bundled together with tape. Of course, it's not guaranteed, but I don't think this dash was ever out of the car before. Anyone else seen this?

[Steve Harrison]

Wire mounted behind the dash to a bracket on the trunk firewall. Obviously a ground,...but what's the purpose of the "paint" stripe? It's not paint, it's more like a corrosion tell tale trace of something. Any ideas?

[Steve Harrison]

Dash on the way to completion. The fuse box is still hanging free. What you see there is blue painters tape attached to each wire with a note as to where the wire goes to or comes from. It's the only way I could keep it straight when I doped out the wiring from the chart. One of the confusing things that I had to get past in the beginning is that the chart and the fuse box are 'inverted' in their views. Left is right, right is left. Once I got that figured right in the beginning, everything fell more into place, haha. I can't stress enough how instrumental an ohm meter and a long (15ft) piece of wire with aligator clips on both ends is to the process. Time consuming, yes, but in the end, there were few surprises.

[Steve Harrison]

Dash basically done. Getting the dash together, putting each part in, was like finally getting a date with that girl you always knew was just out of your reach back in school....
Oh how satisfying to put each part in, and savored each moment. Sometimes I had to take a step back and look. It's not about me at all,..it's about this car getting itself together after soo many years in unassembled distopian exile.

The horn button is not pushed in all the way, nor is the wheel actually bolted in at this point. I just wanted to see what It was gonna look like in the end more or less. Didn't repaint the wheel, or the radio face. They had just the right amount of wear, not so much as to warrant a respray, just enough to tell their tales.

[Joris Koning]

Looking great Steve!

[James Davies]

Looking fantastic Steve!

Wire mounted behind the dash to a bracket on the trunk firewall. Obviously a ground,...but what's the purpose of the "paint" stripe? It's not paint, it's more like a corrosion tell tale trace of something. Any ideas?

It looks like they've scraped away the primer here to get a good electrical contact. I see this on the wiper assembly boomerang as well, which came to Porsche from SWF with a grey primer covering it. And of course where they scraped, you get some nice surface rust. =]

[James Davies]

Horns in. Yea,...the tags are a little scrubby, but they're originals. So be it.

Some 3M Hand Polish might clean those up a bit. The tags are etched, so pretty durable. But yeah, good choice to keep the originals. Only original once. Will you dab some black paint on the horn's perimeter screw heads?

[Aaron W. Holstrom]

Awesome build up Steve! Your project inspires me to work on mine!

[Spencer Harris]

Steve, I do recall seeing the tape wrapped washers on the dash mount bolt holes when I pulled my '55 dash half-dozen years ago. I didn't take photos as I was hoping to someday forget the whole 356 dash install ordeal - and now I've got two more to do. I'll have a look at the '53 when I'm down at the metal shop next week. Great progress on your CC - looking real sweet!