Garage Woolery

While enjoying a long Thanksgiving weekend here at Garage Woolery, we decided to restore the ~30 year old paintjob on the 1966 Porsche 912.  The paint was very worn and oxidized when we found this car earlier this year, so we learned how to freshen it up….

The first thing we did was wet sand the car using 2000 grit sandpaper, both with an air powered rotary tool and by hand.  This is necessary to remove all the oxidation and worn paint, and bring the fresh paint hiding underneath to the surface.  At this stage, the paint looks worse than before, but this is because we’ve essentially sanded it down past the oxidation layers.  We’ll have to bring the shine back now.

The car after being completely sanded with 200 grit sandpaper

After this point, we cut the paint down further and smooth the surface with some Meguir’s medium grit polishing compound and a rotary air buffer.  This cuts down some of the deep scratches, orange peel in the paint,  and evens out the surface.  After this step, the paint feels extremely smooth, but hasn’t yet regained it’s full luster.  This is then followed up with another round of a much finer Meguire’s polishing compound, which will then polish out any remaining scratches in the paint.

Once all the sanding, buffing/cutting, and polishing has been completed, we thoroughly clean the surface of the newly exposed and polished paint.  Then we applied a coat of sealer, then a couple coats of wax….and step back to enjoy the new, restored finish on the 30 year old paint job!

Prior to paint restoration, we didn’t see any reflections in the paint. Looks great now!

We discovered that our “grey” Porsche was actually a gunmetal color, with hints of bronze when hit with the right light!

We even removed the emblems, polished them up, and reinstalled them after the paint resto…and they look really nice and elegant now.

As you may know, we recently acquired a garage find, classic Porsche 912.  We’ve been doing some research and putting some elbow grease into the car in order to get it back on the road. We replaced or rebuilt lots of components throughout the car, including the fuel system, carbs, bearings, suspension bits, oil lines, etc. to get the car mechanically sound again.  We also reinstalled the original mirrors, fixed and reinstalled the original steering wheel, fixed a broken passenger door latch, removed the broken aftermarket radio antenna, and  restored/rechromed the steel wheels.  We also took the opportunity to change the wheel widths from 4.5″ to 5.5″ width by replacing the wheels outer barrels as well as upsizing to 185/65/15 tires on the car (the previous tires were 165/SR/15 tires).  All these efforts paid off, and the 912 is back on the road!

In other news, Garage Woolery has acquired a new lift!  The newly installed two-post lift did wonders in allowing for quick access to the 912′s suspension.  We’re taking full advantage of this lift now.  It’ll allow for more work to be done on all of our cars in shorter time.

After about a couple months of work, here’s some pictures of the Porsche, in considerably better, more presentable shape!

The Porsche 912 before:

And after:

We’re really happy with the results so far!

During our initial weeks of ownership, we discovered that this 912 is a very early production 1966 car.  Although it was sold as a 1966 model, it was actually built in 1965 to the earlier model year’s specifications.  It has a 3-gauge dashboard, Porsche 356 seats,  and other traits found on the first production year 900 models which makes this 912 a very desireable car to Porsche collectors and afficianados!

After we got the car running, we’ve found that the 912 drives very nicely.  It really likes to be tossed about in twisty canyon roads, and comfortably cruises on the highway.  Next, we’ll be looking into making some more restoration improvements to the suspension system, as well as seeing what we can do to bring some more shine to the oxidized paint. We also have a lot of other small restoration projects and tweaks in mind to make this car really shine.   In the meantime, though, we’ll be driving and enjoying the beautiful Southern California summer weather in this classic Porsche, and using the euphamism “patina” a lot to those who strike up conversations about the car.  See you on the road!