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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.

So after a few years of constant interruptions by life, aquisitions, expansions, etc…we were finally able to get back to the Pitcrew Roadster’s custom fastback project.  Over the past month we were able to finish up all of the structural changes that would finally allow us to install the custom auto glass, and mounted the glass this past weekend.

Now that the glass is installed, we can do the finishing work that will make the fit and finish on this top perfect.  Then it’s off to paint!

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!

Meet the newest member of the Garage Woolery family of cars!  This is a 1966 Porsche 912 which used to belong to a member of the Pauter family.  The Pauter’s are very well known petrolheads, owners of the famous Pauter Machine Company in San Diego, CA which makes high performance engine parts.  This Porsche was a daily driver for the family up until about ten years ago when it was parked and covered in one of their garages in fine running condition.  It stayed there until a few weeks ago it was offered to Garage Woolery at a price we couldn’t refuse, a great deal for an early short wheelbase, long hood Porsche 912!

This car is almost completely original, rust free, with all the original & unequiped parts (steering wheel, wipers, mirror, etc) included in the sale.  The interior is in excellent shape, too!  It isn’t in its original Aga Blue color, though, as it has been repainted some time ago prior to storage.  We’ll be going through the car ensuring everything is refreshed and up to par before we try starting the engine…we don’t expect any surprises there.

The engine bay looks pretty good for a car stored for ten years…We weren’t able to spot any rust on the car…

Check out the interior, it’s in EXCELLENT nearly like new shape!

We’ll keep you updated with the status of this car as we go through it, get it running, and start the restoration process to bring it back to stock condition.

Red Atom Body Panels

We’ve had a set of unpainted Atom body panels hanging on the wall for a few years now, and finally got around to painting them.  After bouncing a lot of ideas around (some of them very crazy)  we decided that the best move would be to just keep it simple and go with a single color.  So we decided to paint the panels red, in this case Ferrari Rosso Corsa.  Going with red panels allows them to match with some other smaller bits on the car which are already red, such as the battery cut-off switch and coilover perches.

It seems that Garage Woolery’s next door neighbor is a genuine “little old lady with a classic car” who had noticed the Garage Woolery enthusiasm for cars.  It also just so happens that she had a survivor 1950 Ford Fordor that she no longer wanted…

…so she sold it to us in a for a crazy low price that we could NOT refuse–she practically gave it to us!

Here are some pics of the car, immediately after pushing it down the drive from the next door neighbor’s garage and into the yard.  She says that it was running recently, and all it needs is a new battery to run…

This car is straight and in great condition.  We didn’t spot any dings, dents, or rust anywhere, and even the brightwork and original glass is in good shape!

Notice the vintage plates…

And the interior looks to be in decent shape

And in the engine bay…a vintage flathead V8!

We’ll be putting a little work into getting this Ford back up to snuff as a driver, then you can expect to see it hitting the local classic and hotrod shows soon.

This weekend found a lot of friends of Garage Woolery visiting for our Summer Tech Day.  Many of them pitched in to help with the Charger project, helping us to remove the entire front end off the car:   engine, transmission, K frame, and front suspension were all removed in one day.

The method we used for this removal may seem a bit unorthodox, but is the correct way to remove the involved systems.  Unlike the classic method of using an engine hoist to lift the engine out of the engine bay, we basically did the reverse procedure used by the factory to install the suspension and drivetrain.  At the factory, the engine, transmission, and suspension were installed by lowering the body onto the K-frame/engine/transmission/front suspension as a unit.  Aside from ancillary connections (hoses, electronics, etc). the entire drivetrain is held in by just 5 major bolts!   After disconnecting all the ancillary bits, we were able to simply lower the engine to the floor  using a couple of hydraulic jacks.  Then we lifted the front end of the car to make room for the whole assembly to slide out from under the car!

Once we had the assembly out from under the car, we installed special caster wheels that mount to the frame rail using the same bolt holes previously used to support the k-frame assembly.  Then the car was lowered onto the casters, allowing the body to be pushed around the garage at will without needing jack stands.

Next step:  We’ll be sending the Charger body to Blackbird Fabworx to have a custom suspension upgrade installed, as well as some serious chassis stiffening, seam welding, and a custom cage install!

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