WCSTA -25- 10164Three pieces

[Trevor Gates]

A few more pictures. I got the TIG weld bead sanded down with 80 grit, now I’m using various hammers and dollies to smooth out the metal. I also got the door threshold spot welded in, just like the factory did it. I still have to attach the small panel under the door hinge.

[Trevor Gates]

Looking good Trevor!

Thank your Joris!

[Trevor Gates]

I had a couple of questions offline regarding the Pre A rockers and it’s been mentioned somewhere on this forum that the Simonsen Pre A rockers are known to not have the correct curvature as an original Pre A rocker. This is true. To check it I made a template from Craig’s 55 Speedy rockers and also checked my template against a couple of other Pre A’s. So now armed with a known good template of the curvature, I needed a way to fix them. To fix the curvature problem was a pretty easy fix. I simply put them in my English wheel and bent them more. If someone didn’t have an English wheel (understandable) they could be clamped to a half round pipe and bent that way.

The below pics show the template held up against the passenger side rocker I added more curvature to and also a couple of pics with the unmodified and then modified rocker for comparison sakes.

[Wil Mittelbach]

An admirable painstaking, detailed and lengthy task. Congratulations on your progress and workmanship.

[Vic Skirmants]

An admirable painstaking, detailed and lengthy task. Congratulations on your progress and workmanship.

+1

[Trevor Gates]

Thank your Wil and Vic. I appreciate you taking the time to say so.

Here’s the last panel going in (on this side) underneath the lower door hinge. I had to get a little creative; turned my spot welder upside down and used my custom tongs/arms to get into the tight spot.

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[Mike Horton]

Kudos, Treavor!

[Trevor Gates]

Thanks Mike.

Today I moved around the cars at my shop and could finally get a half way decent picture of the finished passenger side and door fit.

[Trevor Gates]

I can’t believe it, but it happened! I found, or more accurately, the original numbers matching third piece to my 57 Coupe found me. It’s been 64 years since my 356 and this 3rd piece were born/mated together at the Porsche factory. A HUGE thank you to Holger at Soeger Classic Parts in Germany for contacting me and offering me the chance to buy this.

I use to have in my signature “ Engine # P66909... are you out there ”. The answer was yes!

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[Mike Horton]

Congrats, Trevor... there was that needle in the haystack!