Restoring #151489 - building a faux cam carrera

[Justin Rio]

Looking great Bill! Nice pictures of your oil cooler install. I like seeing in detail how the factory units were put in. Also helpful is the inner bushing detail. I should probably have a look into mine. I would have most certainly overlooked it if not for post. So thank you for bringing it up. I'm very envious to see you reassembling your chassis. This is where I had hoped to be at this point. oh well yours is coming along beautifully just the same. Keep it going! Justin.

Got your message on what Bill Parrone is offering in the way of sound deadener. Thanks.

[Bill Sargent]

Hi Justin - don't be too envious. At some point I will be taking stuff back off to do the rusty longnitudinals, which means rockers and sills off too. At that point I also need to patch the thin places in the rear of the pan. And I have the outer body paint to do too. While I have the car on the rollover frame I am doing all the bottom clean up and restoration that I do not want to do later. Your shell is going to be beyond perfect - mine will have a way to go.

My plan is to get all the Carrera parts installed and drive the car to get things sorted. If I need to weld some more to install a part I do not have to worry about nice paint. New sound deadening, new interior etc will not go back in until the bottom metal and outer body paint are done. Only the speedster seats so I can drive.

Today was my birthday and my wife surprised me with an I-pad, so I am trying it out now. Pretty cool. I also tackled a job I had been putting off - installing the oil line brackets that support the hard oil lines that go across the front of the battery box (pictures tomorrow). Getting the MIG welder up in between the front clip and battery box was a challenge. But before I could do that I found that on one side the front of the battery box was bent out and it needed to be straightened to properly install the oil line bracket. No room for a hammer, so I used a 4 foot piece of pipe that I could put one end on the dent, hold the other with one hand and hammer on the pipe to work the dent out. Got it to the point where the dents were inside of the battery box and I could hold a dolly on the outside of the front battery box wall and use a body hammer from the inside. Took a couple of hours and then I could weld the brackets on.

Tomorrow the left oil cooler mount brackets and ducting will get installed. Should go quicker now that I know how it goes in. Once that is done all the oil lines and coolers will get installed for real. With that done all the bottom work will be done and the car can be rolled back right side up and the suspension and tranny installed.

[David Gensler]

Bill, Nice work. Your project is rapidly becoming one of my favorites on here. And man do you work fast!
Take care,
DG

[Bill Sargent]

Hi David - it only looks like I work fast. What you are seeing is some minor welding and paint (at least compared to the scale of Justin's project) and the start to assembly of parts that have been 18 months or more in being restored and/or procured. But I do have a self imposed deadline of the end of October to try and get the car back on wheels (even if without motor) so I can move it around in my garage to fit all 4 cars in before we get 6 months of snow....

Over the weekend I fitted the hard oil lines that go across the front of the battery box and promised photos. I had the car up on its side, so access was not too bad, other than the tight area between the battery box front and the front clip.

I used a magnetic weld back up to hold the oil line bracket in place for welding.

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Both brackets installed. They are actually vertical - camera distorted things some. These two front brackets use different clips to hold the oil lines than those in the wheel wells. Instead of an "M" shape is more of a "C" pointed down so that only the bolt thru the clamp fitting is between the oil lines, allowing them to be closer together. This is needed for them to mate properly with the hard lines coming from the right front wheel well.

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Last night I spent some more time fitting the ducting pieces around the oil coolers, but with them off the car. I have a couple of more holes to drill in the aluminium ducting parts. I then need to reassemble each cooler with ducting on the car to determine where to weld a couple of m6 studs on the steel mount that bolts to the battery box side wall. These studs hold the ducting to the steel mount and have to be hand fitted. Very fiddly work! And the end product, although faithful to the original, still looks a little cobbled together, unlike Justin's beautiful cooler ducting.

Cooler off car with alloy ducting and steel mount bracket sitting on top

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Clear view of the steel mount bracket that bolts to the battery box side wall.

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Both coolers and ducting ready to be taken apart and remounted on the car to locate studs to be welded to the steel mount brackets.

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I also lined up use of Gary Tone's rivet nut installation tool for pick up today. The oil filter in the engine compartment mounts to a bracket that is fitted to 4 weld nuts on the original cars.

Oil filter in an original carrera - with later spin on filter adaptor

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Shot of the engine lid latch weld nuts on the left and the oil filter mount weld nuts on the right as seen on Justin's inner rear clip from the back side (i.e. between the tail skin and inner skin. The nut plate for the filter looks suspiciously like the mount for the fuel regulator.....

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The weld nuts are way up between the rear clip and the inner engine compartment skin, and I do not want to follow Justin's example of installing a new rear inner engine compartment. So I will use M6 rivet nuts that install thru a drilled hole similar to a pop rivet.

Thanks for taking the time to follow and read this.

[Justin Rio]

Nice Bill! I don't know, my ducting is cobbled together too. You know I thought that the oil filter thread plate looked identicle to a pre-A door hinge thread plate. However the spacing of the holes does not match. Anyway nice work. Looking forward to seeing the hardlines go in.

Best Regards, justin

[Bill Sargent]

Took another couple of small bites of the elephant this weekend. The front oil cooler mount brackets needed some final fabrication before being painted.

Oil cooler mount bracket with small studs welded on sides (covered with blue tape) to secure the ducting. Also had to weld small tabs on the sides that hold the ducting in place near the nose skin

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Small tab about 3" long. Higher part at the end secures the ducting near the nose skin. I also stamped each part of the ducting and mounts with the last 3 digits of the vin number and an R or L to help me figure out which side the part goes on

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After all the fabrication was done all parts went into the blast cabinet prior to paint.

Freshly blasted parts. Decided to prime and paint as it was quick and powder coating is somewhat expensive up here.

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All the cooler mounting and ducting is now painted and ready for final installation. Probably 30+ hours in all the fitting, fabrication and paint.

I then assembled the front brake backing plates. The power coater laid it on thick so I had to clean out all the blot holes, center hole and holes where the wheel cylinders mount. Dremel tool and small angle die grinder with roloc discs did it OK and fairly quickly. For the rear backing plate I removed all the power coating from the surfaces where the bearing carrier flanges mate so I could have a uniform thickness to calculate the spacers needed. I then shot a light coat of rattle can satin black on the bare metal surfaces - after drying it was almost identical to the power coating color/sheen.

When assembling the front backing plates I encountered a small delay. The M6 bolts holding the wheel cylinder for normal brakes are 12mm long. The spacer under the wheel cylinder for the GT brakes is 13mm thick, so the factory bolt would have been 25mm long. The GT brake hardware I purchased from a vendor on the 356 classifieds list had supplied 22mm long bolts. I did not think these engaged the wheel cylinder enough, so it was off to the store to get 25mm bolts.

Front GT Brake backing plae and 60mm brake shoes. NOTE - springs are installed wrong per later advice from Vic and Bill. Both ends of each spring should be in the holes nearest the backing plate. fixed now.

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Fronts almost ready to install. Still have to press in the bull nose CSP wheel studs

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Very satisfying to see things like this come together.

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Next up will be to assemble the rear brake backing plates.

Thanks for reading!

[Vic Skirmants]

Bill,
Your brake shoe return springs should all attach to the inner web.

[Bill Sargent]

Thanks Vic, Bill Brown also caught my error. I will fix the spring placement tonight and also make a start on assembly of the rear brake backing plates.

[Bill Sargent]

Did some small tasks so far this week. All the oil cooler mounting parts and ducting got painted over the weekend following completion of the fabrication. Bolted all the ducting, mounts and coolers together to make sure things fit. Will do one final fit on the car before moving on.

Everything seems to fit pretty well. There are a couple of holes in the ducting that need to be filed a little larger but nothing major.

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Where the end of the cooler fits in the black mounting bracket it originally had rubber padding, so I went to the local rubber supply store and got various scraps. During fabrication I used pieces of cardboard to simulate the thickness of the rubber. Fitted the final rubber padding this evening.

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Over the weekend I assembled the front brake backing plates and received great advice from Vic Skirmants and Bill Brown on where to (correctly) place the springs. This error has been corrected. Earlier this week I assembled the rear brake backing plates. Other than the vented backing plates, they are stock and the factory manual photos led me nicely.

Both rear brake assemblies are ready to go. All that remains is to install the new bearings in the drums as well as the new wheel studs.

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Several months ago I purchased wheel studs for the new front GT drums. Got the 55mm long ones with a 8mm bull nose from CSP. I also wanted to run the longer bull nose wheel studs on the rear with the carrera wheel spacers, but I was unable to find a supplier that made studs long enough with the bull nose. My friend Gary with the garage machine shop came to the rescue again. I purchased 72 mm studs and then Gary taught me how to use his lathe to machine an 8mm bull nose on them. Did that this evening in about an hour - right tools make things easy.

Front stud on right came with bull nose. 55mm length lets 3 or 4 threads show + the bullnose. 72mm rear stud with bullnose machined on the left. Carrera spacer and nut still leave 3+ threads showing. rounded the end of the stud while still on the lathe with a small roloc grinding disc and finished with a file. Ends will get painted black. Held the stud in the lathe with the carrera wheel spacer.

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Next up is final fit of the oil coolers on the car and then fit and cut to length for the hard oil lines. I could wait on this, but it is much easier to do with the car up on its side so I can lay the lines in place vs needing help to hold them in place. Once that is done the suspension will start to go back in.

Thanks for reading this!

[Bill Sargent]

While I still have the car with the left side up I decided to tackle a task I have been half dreading and trying to figure out how to tackle for quite a while. Several months ago I welded in the mounts for the dry sump oil tank based on many photos from real carreras. There was not too much leeway for where they could go and I could tell that the filler neck for the tank was not aimed where it needed to be. I finally decided that unsoldering and repositioning the tank neck was the best way to go.

Worked carefully with a propane torch and got the tank neck out without melting any of the seams

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About 2 cm of the tank neck protruded down into the tank, so there was plenty to play with. It took about 20 trial fittings and the best fit required the neck to be set about 1cm further down into the tank and angled more toward the flat side of the tank that sits against the engine compartment side wall. This all would have been impossible without the car up on its side.

When I cut the hole in the engine compartment side wall I cut it small knowing that I would need to enlarge it when I did the final fit of the tank. Measured about 5 times, cut once....

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Final location for the tank neck - it is centered, even if the camera angle makes it look off center. Also checked with the filler neck and rubber sleeve attached to make sure the cap did not hit the engine lid - it cleared. Now for the hard part - soldering the neck back in. Note that I had to move and re tack weld the tube that carries the engine lit latch wire to clear the tank vent.

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Cleaned all parts well and then coated the surfaces to be joined with flux. Used a propane torch for the parts of the seam that were easy to access. Used a small butane jewlers torch for the area between the neck and the seam where the back of the tank is attached.

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Took a while, but it went better than I had expected and came out looking good

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Once the tank neck was back in, I fitted the rubber connector sleeve and filler neck for a final check of clearances to see if I needed to trim the hole in the engine compartment side wall and to check the engine lid clearance again. All was good.

Fit of the filler neck is just the way I wanted.

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Filler neck with cap sits in the right place. Still need to fab the clamp that goes around the filler neck and bolts to the engine compartment side wall. Justin provided the dimensions after finding his.

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Once the tank was fitted I still needed to make a spacer to go between the mounting tab at the top of the tank and the engine compartment side wall. Lots of measuring and a little bending of the tab. Welded a short tube to the mount tob on the tank and then with the tank in place, marked where to drill the hole.

Tank in its final position. Feels good to have this out of the way.

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All that is left now for the oil tank is to paint it. My helper seems pleased with the job.

My 23 month old daughter likes to look at the car parts! Must keep a sharp eye on her though.

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Thanks for reading this.

PS: I should have started out this post with a safety note. The oil tank I was working on had never been used. For anyone contemplating soldering, welding or other similar work on a tank that has been used, it MUST be throughly cleaned and dried. Hydrocarbon smell = not clean enough.

[Bill Sargent]

No posts for a couple of weeks - went to Renn Sport Reunion and the Race Car Classic. I did not think anything could top the Monterey Historics in 1998, but this was way better. Over load by noon every day at the races looking at race cars and watching the races, and then at the Race Car Classic, WOW - 12 abarths, 11 904s, lost count of the spyders. Regular carreras looked almost mundane. Saw a lot of friends from around the world, including John Hearn from the UK who I had not seen for over 20 years. Even said hi to Jerry Sienfeld. Took a lot of photos of real carreras to help with my project. Found out that most of what I am doing is faithful to the original.

Back home for a week now and got back on the project this weekend and did the final bend, cut and fit of all the hard oil lines. About 18 months ago I purchased a "kit" for the hard and soft oil lines from Warren Eads at Spyder sports. All the lines were pre bent, which meant close but lots of work required. Last summer I got the oil line mount brackets installed in the right side wheel wells.

Shot of the hard oil lines and fittings as supplied by Spyder Sports. I went with the original 15 mm hard lines and engine type oil coolers.

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I am using a custom made oil filter with reusable element from Jim Ansite and a thermostat from a 69-72 911S (same as 914-6 GT).

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I decided to start at the front and work my way back. A few weeks ago I installed the hard oil line brackets on the front of the battery box, so I started there and also installed the cooler mount bracket since some of the hard lines run under it.

Hard oil lines across the front of the battery box

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Lots of small bends and adjustments to get the hard oil lines in the fender well to line up exactly with the two that run across the front, especially where the upper one runs under the mount for the oil cooler. Not much room and things need to be exact for the fittings to seal properly.

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Making that first tubing cut took a long time, with many measurements. Once I got the fittings at the front aligned and connected, I installed the bulkhead fittings in the lower part of the closing panel. Gerry McCarthey supplied me with paper templates to locate the holes. Was easier to get the pipes fitted into the bulkhead fittings, but still required some minor bends. Car is up on its side, making this way easier.

Hard oil lines running to the bulkhead fittings. Kit did not come with the large "washers" that go under the bulkhead fittings on either side, but I Corey Johnson had them at the lit meet last year.

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Next was installation of the hard lines under the sill. Less work than the ones in the front fender, but still needed several small bends to get things lined up, especially at the rear where they needed to meet the hard lines in the rear fender area.

Lines have to cross a mount bracket on top of the jack spur and then exit thru holes in the rear closing panel.

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Steve Terrin passed along a tip for installing these lines. Where they go thru the rear closing panel, cut the bottom out of the hole and fabricate a small plate that can be bolted in place with a weld nut to cover below the lines. That way you can remove the lines later. If there are just holes in the rear closing panel, the line will be trapped once the fitting is tightened and the ferrel is seated on the line. Also had to relocate the rocker support. It originally went from the bottom of the rocker to the sill, but was in the way of the oil lines. Carreras had it from the bottom of the rocker to the longnitudinal as shown here.

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Rear fender oil lines were not as bad as the fronts. More room for the connection to the lines under the sill. I already had the holes into the engine compartment cut from when the oil line brackets were installed.

Oil lines installed in the rear fender well. They go thru 1 3/8" holes into the engine compartment.

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Later today I will get the pop nuts installed for the oil filter bracket and make sure that all fits properly.

Thanks for reading this!

[Justin Rio]

Looks just like the real deal Bill! You are doing such a great job; what a faithful recreation! Keep it coming! Justin

[Bill Sargent]

Did a little more work during the week on fabricating the clamp for the oil tank filler neck that holds it to the side wall of the engine compartment. After Justin found his he was kind enough to supply me with the dimensions.

Used 18 gauge sheet cut to the required 14 mm width with a saber saw. used the filler neck to make the large bend. Still need to drill the holes, weld on the weld nut and then fit things up to make the final bend and get things right.

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Justin's original filler neck clamp used as the pattern for mine.

The bracket for the oil filter is also in the first photo. I held off on installing the pop nuts as I think I may have enough room to mount the weld nuts to a small plate, drill holes in the rear engine compartment wall for the mount bolts plus some more small ones to weld thru and then hold the nut plate up behind the wall and weld it on. Once the small plug welds are ground and the area painted it should look pretty stock. Still some thinking to do on this one.

The shot below shows just how tight the plumbing for the oil lines is around the right front cooler mount.

One of the lines runs under the cooler mount while the other runs between it, the fender brace and the bumper mount bracket. I pity Fritz and Hans at the factory if the cars were not up on their sides.

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Work came to a halt for more important matters today. My newest mechanic, Mia Sargent, came into the world at 9:16 am this morning. Mother and baby are doing well.

Mia at about 10 minutes old. Very alert. Good qualities for a future Porsche mechanic.

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I have just finished explaining the intracacies of carrera oil systems to Mia.....which put her to sleep.

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No snow where I live in Anchorage yet, but it is a matter of hours or days at most as the snow is creeping down the mountian and it was in the low 20s last night.

Thanks for reading this!

[Ibrahim Kuzu]

Dear Bill,
Congratulation.....Great news....
Now,That is a real treasure..Best health to every one ....
Ibrahim Kuzu
#5145

[Bill Sargent]

Not much work today. Took the newest addition to the Sargent family to the doctor for her 2 day checkup. She slept thru it - amazing what 1.5 oz of formula will do. I did sneak down to the garage for some further oil filter fit up. The original thermostat used two 90 degree elbows , one to mate with the lines from the coolers and the other for the line from the scavange section of the oil pump on the motor. My early 911S thermostat really will not work with the elbow going to the coolers, however the large banjo fitting that comes off the scavange side of the motor on a real 4 cam will not be used on my car and fits well in the thermostat and gets things lined up where they need to go.

Oil filter and thermostat assembly that mounts on the rear engine compartment wall to the right of the latch. 4 cam engine banjo fitting on bottom of thermostat in place of elbow.

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I have also had several questions and requests for photos of my lap belt anchor installation. I will post them in a new thread.

Snowed in Anchorage yesterday and today. That's all she wrote for 356 driving til early May , but does allow time to build the faux cam motor!

Thanks for reading this!