The Official 356Talk Forum

I doubt whether you guys are fully aware of the UK's particular situation with regard to the Covid pandemic.but the UK is currently under a 'lock-down' state of affairs where any journey other than to work or an emergency is deemed illegal. You must stay at home to stop the spread of the virus and on the whole we as a nation are doing pretty good. The vaccination program is forging ahead and everyone should have their injections done by the time summertime rolls around. Of course this means I can't go over to the workshop where my little car is being tended to and have to depend on receiving emails, pictures and reports on its progress. This is rather frustrating as I am very much a hands on type of guy and never happier than lying on my back in a set of grubby overalls, but I know the car is being worked on and being done well and hopefully will soon be back in my garage for final detailing.
So what's been happening and firstly the vast expance between the front seats and the firewall which had been cut out in order to facilitate the installation of the transmission and rear suspension needed to be filled so a panel was fabricated, painted and installed with screws and panel sealer so just if there may be requirement to access this area in the future it will be possible to remove it. But for the time being it's pretty much fixed so much so that that the back area got plastered with Dynomat panels to keep things nice and quiet. I did think this rear section behind the seats would end up just a big flat storage area but I have my little 2+2 seats and it is looking quite the part so much so that I shall have to think about some nice leather upholstery.
There are a few more minor detail type jobs to get done, painting and installing engine lid brackets and catch, similarly the engine cooling grill behind the licence plate and gear shift linkage and throttle cabling and guides. But with no snags or unexpected dilemmas occurring the engine and trans should be in the car by the end of next week.
The UK lock-down ends at the end of March so with a bit of luck I may be behind the wheel around about Easter

After the dire times associated with 2020 this new year is going to be really quite good for me, vehicle wise that is, because I should be getting my modified 356 back home and I can't wait to blast it up the road with it's 911 power. And also my new scoot should be making an appearance. This is my Cole Foster style Salinas boys street glide, not radical but very very cool. Just a sweet ride with custom soft tail frame, Evo motor, La Pera seat, custom tank, forged polished rims, drag bars, all hidden cables. My good buddy Mark who is doing the build will be calling me soon for a ride as the bike is being 'dry built' to ensure all is AOK then it will be pulled apart for paint, polish, chrome and final detailing. It's looking pretty good already.

OK, no more motorcycles but once you've got your knee down round a 90 degree bend you never thought you would make it sort of becomes a drug to be on two wheels.
356 modified news is that the rather involved rear disc brakes and the handbrake mechanisms and all back together and installed with only the handbrake cables which go to my floor mounted 911 handbrake to be connected. The custom length driveshafts have been machined, reassembled and fitted and it's all looking pretty tidy underneath now. These were the last major-ish jobs for completion so the engine and gearbox got re-installed hopefully for the last time and with only some minor wiring to be run it will be trial run time very soon. We are going to have to try out various spring rates for the springs on the Koni coil overs but I reckon 180lbs might be about right for the car.
PS just swapped the Cayenne for a Macan Turbo, 434 bhp, oh yes.

Interesting and good looking build Graham and the stance of the car on 180# springs looks good which actually surprises me. I will be interested to see what it handles like. How much are the springs compressed, I would imagine about 3 inches? I think I would go for heavier springs but the 180's may give it more compliance and that may be an advantage in the UK with the higher chance of driving in the wet. I used a 300# plus spring on my F Vee when all else were using 150#. I liked it stiffer and with less body roll and I did not seem to suffer much in the wet.

It’s looking good. You can adjust the car’s height at the spring seats on the shocks?

The car is a bit high at the mo but you can lower it by screwing the springs on the coil overs down. I think that should be up. Anyway I don't think I shall need much more than 200lbs because the Konis are supplementary to the torsion bars. A little story here; these Koni coil overs came of the first Mclaren supercar. I had a good friend who worked in my local car breakers (junk yard) and he, like me were both into building hot rods so he used to help himself to anything that might take his fancy which had a hi performance edge. One lunchtime a small truck rolled into the yard, they pulled back the side curtain and lo and behold there was this Mclaren which we learnt afterwards was the test and evaluation car. It was due to be crushed. So quick as a flash my pal David pulled off the coil overs and as much braided hose as he could before the poor beast was introduced into the jaws of automotive death and came out a cube. And I got the Konis, thank you very much.

Considering that the rear bars are considered to be too stiff on an A (too much roll stiffness) and you have added weight I’d guess that no coil overs, just your stock bars might be a reasonable answer. Then the only trouble is fooling with the torsion bar settings a couple of times until you get it right. But obviously you are not afraid of hard work.

I'm not out of the woods by a long chalk, I've still got return oil frothing problems and the right bank of Webers refuse to run good. We've deleted the front oil cooler to see if this helps - it didn't and the current endeavour is to try a different oil. I've got Motul 4100 to go in which was a recommendation to aleviate the frothing problem. I might have to fit a supplementary swirl tank but there ain't a lot of room for additional stuff. And extra stuff recently took place by way of a voltage regulator to work with my alternator. The engine is a '74 and the alternators back then needed voltage regs. Anyway we stuck this this neatly under the MSD so it's ok. We are going to have to pull the Webers apart and find out what the problem is. Other problems are the handbrake cables needing a stop bracket fabricated and welded to the gearbox crossmember and extending the clutch cable to reach the arm on the gearbox.
On a lighter note my new Macan Turbo is an absolute animal. You press the sport plus button, stomp on the brake, bring the revs up to 5 grand then let go and then HOLY CHRIST you freekin well take off. It's AWESUM and the thing weighs 2 tons, love it and I got a free mug!!

A free mug. I have the opposite of that, a $15,000 mug that I was given after an environmental inspection of a building I purchased. The mug was the only evidence that I had spent that money.

Bet your mug doesn't go zero to 60 in 4 seconds,

No, it just sits there. Your deal was much better.

Struggling along. It seems always that as you are approaching the end of a restoration or build there forever are niggling problems that dog you. One I have is this problem with aerating of the oil prior to its return to the tank. I recently was able to contact a chap who races 911's, it's a European class solely for early 2 litre cars. I posed this oil problem to him and he was definite in his reply. He identified the problem which was due to actual routing of the oil return to the tank. My pipe just goes straight into the tank, what it should do is exit directly toward a side of the tank in effect causing an obstruction to the flow path. In taking this theory a little further I shall be re installing the return pipe plus adding various gates and baffles internally to the tank to confound the flow path as it refills the oil tank. The other continuing problem is with regard to the Weber carbs which will not fuel the engine correctly. It's the right bank and we've tried lots of things but the car is now booked in to a race car shop where they have a rolling road and full Weber spares on hand. This wont be cheap but I really have no other alternative.
Apart from that just got to hook up the Autometer vacuum gauge and we're good to go!!

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Other than the carb trouble everything’s all hooked up and it can drive?

I've actually driven it back and forth in the workshop but the carbs were spitting back and shooting flames out of the ram pipes (I'm not running air filters) and I know I should have found the extra cash and bought a set of PMO's but there is nothing as cool as Webers so the 2K or so that I saved can be spent on getting them running right. And BTW the Motul oil made no difference at all to the aerating oil problem which I never thought it would because basically oil is oil.