TimNiceBut

It's been a little while since I updated the thread, mostly because other things kept getting in the way. The good news is that the mildew doesn't seem to have returned so far. After the successful interior clean, it was finally time to try and get it running again. It hasn't run for about 18 months and due to the various issues it has had and the PO's health issues, it's done a lot of standing around the years before. Without further ado, here's me fixing the spark plug wire mess and trying to get it started again:

I should probably try that - the shop is unheated (well, technically it has a big wood burner, but that doesn't look like it's been used for years) and it's slightly damp. The part I find a little weird is that the 911 seems to be the only car that seems to have any issue in that shop, but then again there are some clear traces of prior water ingress into the car.

Finally found some time to clean the mildew off the leather interiors. Plus, I spent too much money on Hazet tools .

After pretty much sitting on the 911, I've finally decided to get moving a little bit again. To try and at least motivate myself, I put together a quick YouTube video showing its current condition. My planned next steps are replacing the spark plug wires with some that are less ugly and then get it running again. It's sat for about 18 months at least as I had the ECU apart and life intervened, so we'll see how much of an ordeal that is going to be. Then it's on to rebush the pedal cluster, de-mildew the interior and get the driver's seat redone so I can take it out for at least a quick spin. I'm hoping to get this done in the next three months or so - a lot of it depends on how much more work my wife's old Range Rover requires.

Hey @LukasM, Not much progress I'm afraid - after playing with and getting rid of the S2000, some other projects have been taking up a lot of my time, including this thing: I'm planning to get stuck back in soon as I haven't run the C3.2 for 18 months or so and it needs an oil change badly. Plus, I need to see if it's a matter of new drain plug gaskets to stop the engine from leaking oil, or if it's something a tad more serious. Unfortunately it also looks like the car has had a bit more water intrusion that I'd like in the cabin, which led to some corrosion in odd places and some parts of the interior - especially the door handles - have a bit of a mold problem. The good news is that I did manage to sort out the front brakes, so we now have refurbed calipers and new disks and pads on there. One of the annoying issues that I still need to figure out how to sort out is how I can fix/replace the stud that is supposed to hold down the pedal surround. Mine was corroded into the nut pretty badly and promptly broke off when I tried to take the original, badly delaminated pedal board out.

The issue with the nut and bolt that holds the disk on is that the thread is mangled and the nut is freely spinning on the bolt. I can get sockets on both no problem, but other than entertaining the cats all day long by spinning the ratchets, I can't get it over what little thread remains at the tip of the bolt. It looks like I either have to grind off the nut or the head of the bolt to remove it. I'm probably going to grind off the bolt head as I suspect there is less danger of damaging the hub that way. I'm a bit clumsy after all. And I meant using a press to separate the hub and disk - the caliper was dragging pretty bad and the disk overheated (it was actually black) and so far, my attempts at separating the two by trying to loosen the hub by tapping it with a pretty hefty rubber mallet are going nowhere. They may just be stuck together due to some added corrosion but before I risk damaging the hub I'll have someone with a hydraulic press try to separate the two.

Thanks, I'll need to good luck. Just to clarify, the issue is that the thread in either the nut or to bolt is chewed up so the nut spins freely around the bolt. I tried to put some tension on the bolt by wedging a screwdriver under the head but I can't exert enough force to allow me to get the nut past the end of the bolt. Right now it looks like grinding off the bolt head is probably the best way forward although I'm all ear for better ideas!

They're definitely single use now! I have to figure out a good way to either drill the bolt out - it came loose enough so it spins, which makes it a bit tricky to drill. Especially as I don't have a drill press. I did give it some taps with a rubber mallet but it remains unimpressed and firmly stuck together.

Well, another step back - I got the driver's side front brake rotor off easily and tried to separate the rotor and the hub. Four out of five bolts that hold the two together came out after some persuation with the ugga-dugga bolt. This one, however decided to mess up either the thread on the bolt or the nut. So right now I have to figure a good method of getting the nut off without damaging the hub and then get someone to press the hub out of the rotor as they appear to be rather intimately stuck together. Once I took a closer look at all of the other bolts that came out OK, I noticed that pretty much all of them were bent and a bunch of them also had stripped thread. Not quite sure what happened there, but I have to order replacement nuts and bolts first anyway.

Not much has happened recently while I was trying to get the work on my S2000 done (which also begins to feel a bit too restoration-like). Over the last couple of days I finally managed to carefully get the driver's side door card off. I'm pretty sure it's held on from the factory by a mixed assortment of 1.5" long self tappers and some allen bolts that aren't all tightened down. I'd say this one's done for and someone who wasn't me got their money's worth out of the door card. Interestingly enough the vapor barrier was in place and intact. I think I need to check if the drain holes in the door are clear on not. Guess it's time for new door cards and probably a new handle as well, given that handle is nearly as mouldy as the bottom of the door car. Time to send the plate back in and brace myself for a longer project, I think.

This is a 1989 model year car, so I'll go with the assumption that those are factory. One less part of the wiring that I may need to debug after all.

I'll have a look at the archives - it doesn't look like it should be too hard to remove the sound deadening as a fair amount of it seems to have come off already without any effort. I am planning to pullout the pedal box to figure out what the mystery deposits on it are and given that I'm now much further into the car already than I planned to be, may as well rebush the pedals. "Wiring forensics" is a good one . I'm pretty good with electrics in general so that should be OK, but between the mystery box that I believe is part of the alarm system, another unmarked mystery box that was taped to the floor behind the front seats and the way most people do car electrics here, I'm looking forward to this task quite that much. The extra fuses are interesting - the one that visible on the left of the phone has a mate on the other side of the car, and both look like they're in the factory loom to the blower motors on each side. They actually do look factory to me as there is a distinct absence of pre-insulated crimp connectors that usually signal the presence of aftermarket wiring of varying quality.

Agreed, although this project's timeline is very likely going to exceed the stay-at-home period. Well, one would hope it did. Fortunately most of the online parts slingers are still open for business.

More garage time today. That was the good news. Oh, and a friend of mine over here pointed out that the centre console I mentioned in prefious posts is likely OEM as all the SCs and Carrera 3.2s he owned had that console, complete with the self tappers. Well, I'm still not sure if it should go back in as it obscures the heater controls. But anyway, back to today's lazy hours in the garage. Today was/should have been boring stuff on the 911. The interior needed a clean, badly. The plan was to pull out the floorboard and the various covers in the front passenger footwell and go to town with the shop vac. Not much to worry about - the floorboards need replacing but I've already got an ABS replacements, just need to drill the two mounting holes for the additional electrics that were bolted to its underside of the passenger side floorboard. The passenger OEM floorboard in there also looked a bit more mouldy and dirty on the back, which is beginning to worry me a bit. I'm finding too many indicators of water incursion and potential standing water into the interior for my liking. I still need to pull out the centre console so I can remove the carpet and clean things up a bit more, but overall, things started looking up at that point. I also found some spare change, but not enough for a coffee, yet. Well, things were looking up until I started having a go at the passenger side. First, I noticed that the sound deadening was loose. A bit of prodding showed that water had managed to get underneath it. Yay. The eagle eye readers may also notice that the floorboard has a bit of a painted look to it. As do the bolts for the loud pedal. We'll get to that in a bit. But first, time for some bodywork! Either something got jammed under the car at some point, or some eejit managed to jack up the car right below where the ECU is supposed to sit. The floor was actually pushed up quite a bit, and we can't have that. So I used some "proper" tools - aka a BFH and a piece of wood - to tap down the area as much as I could to level it out. Before: After: The shiny part is a pretty big crease that's still left and it'll need some proper bodywork tools to work out. But the floor is mostly back to where it should be and the ECU is now sitting correctly as well. I'll have to inspect this area from underneath the car to see what the damage to the undercoat is and if there is any visible rust. Back to taking the driver's side floorboard out. Theoretically it should be pretty simple, a matter of undoing the bottom nut and the gas pedal, then wiggling the carpet over the pedals, followed by the floor board. Well, for starters somebody had painted over the bottom of the floorboard and also the fasteners on the gas pedal. I suspect to make the floorboard look better and the gas pedal bolts look less rusty if someone took out the carpet during something like a pre-purchase inspection. To be clear, this is not fresh paint and I'm pretty sure it wasn't done around the time when I bought the car, but I suspect someone did that some time before the PO bought the car. It's also barely visible unless you know what to look for and/or try to lift the top carpet. Note to self, PB Blaster doesn't work well if the thread itself is painted over. No way to apply heat either, so the inevitable happened and the flipping bolt that holds the floorboard down sheared off. Great, colour me impressed. The floorboard - well, there is "done for" and then there is this: It literally delaminated in my hand so I didn't even have to unbolt the clutch stop to take it out. Yowza. Unfortunately it looks a bit iffy underneath the floorboard, too. Notice the corrosion and the "blue goop" in the pedal mounting frame? I suspect I'll have to pull the pedals out and investigate further, hopefully without breaking any more parts. Unfortunately none of this helps quell my suspicion that this car has had standing water in it at some point in time, likely on the driver's side. There isn't quite as much evidence on the passenger side, although the passenger side floorboard had some dirt/mud on the inside. That said, it looks like all of it had been cleaned up somewhat at some point, but it's left corrosion in places where I think it's a bit unusual. The other part is that it looks like the passenger seat at some point had a CD changer or similar mounted underneath it. The cable is still there, but corroded. I wouldn't be surprised if that CD changer fell victim to whatever water ended up in the car. Oh, and it wouldn't be one of my 911s if I didn't find a badly installed electrical box of mystery with a non-blinken light under the dash. So where does that leave me right now? Well, the car isn't drivable as is, the lack of seats kinda gives that away. I have to get it inspected before the end of the month - although there is probably going to be a bit of a grace period with stay-at-home orders and all that jazz - and while I think I could throw it back together, I'd rather do the work properly and only once. Which probably means taking the car off the road for a while and sending the plate back in. I obviously have to deal with the corrosion and the damaged sound deadening. A lot of it comes up easy but the rest may need some persuasion using either dry ice or a heat gun. I'm glad that Porsche galvanised those cars, at least I'm not looking at the garage floor from the inside of the car! The carpets are pretty much done for, so I'm looking at replacing them. That was on the maybe list already as the PO had a dog and I'm allergic to dogs and dog hair specifically. I have to figure out how to deal with the broken off mounting bolt for the floor board as the stub that's remaining is too short to be useful. I also need to figure out what the self-tapping screw is that is visible right above the broken off stud. The clutch slave cylinder needs looking at as the boot is torn, but it doesn't look like it's leaking.

Thanks! The garage space - which is really just workshop space, the house has a built-in garage as well - was what sold me on the property. The conversation with our estate agent went something like this: EA: "There's a house that's about to come on the market, but it's more modern than you wanted" (we were looking for 1930s or earlier) Me: "Naah, not that interested" EA: "It's got a big shop" Me: "Right, can we look at it tomorrow morning before I fly back across the country?" Unfortunately the workshop itself needs a fair amount of work, the electrical system is "interesting", the roof still leaks after a couple of attempts to fix it but at least it's not creating a swimming pool in the middle of the space anymore, but it's a workshop and it has space for 3+ vehicles as there is an open stall behind the wall that the Carrera sits next to as well.