Rust in Carrera 3.2

[Chris_911]

Hi Tebbs

 

Good luck!

 

Whilst I wouldn't trust myself with bodywork I'm only down the road from you in Cheltenham and would be happy to lend a hand/moral support.

[jevvy]

Good luck Tebbs, you can do it!

 

I've got this to face on the white one although I think I'll just be cutting the rear wings off and putting fiberglass ones on once its patched up so hopefully a little less stressful than your mission.

 

Keep the photos coming.

[anthonyw]

You've done the worst part Tebbs. I was worried cutting mine out to start with, and did small bits at a time trying to minimise the amount of repairs, but in hindsight should have just took off larger areas that you can get repair sections for.

 

I think it all makes more sense when you see the new panels off the car, as like you say there are lots of folds and layers etc.

 

Keep up the good work mate, and it will all come togther nicely.

[9hellheaven]

Hope It all works out for you mate. It looks grim but It's achievable as you have seen by the pictures. Some nice folk on here, and that offer from Mr Perkles shows great spirit. I salute you Mr Perkles.

[Lesworth]

Tebbs - for cleaing use some Marine Clean, allow to soak and then rinse off with a hose connected to the hot tap, perhaps with help from a softish brush.

[MrPerkles]

Hope It all works out for you mate. It looks grim but It's achievable as you have seen by the pictures. Some nice folk on here, and that offer from Mr Perkles shows great spirit. I salute you Mr Perkles.

cool can I have your CS for a weekend please

[9hellheaven]

cool can I have your CS for a weekend please

 

Your welcome to drive It anytime as long as I am In the passenger seat, and you leave your angle grinder at home.

[Tebbs]

Cheers again guys, I'm feeling a lot more confident now. It's funny how a few days absence and encouragement makes seemingly huge mountains shrink.

Chris in Cheltenham - Cheers for the offer of moral support, the car is currently not at my Stonehouse home but rather is near Brum in Frankley, once it's all finished we should have a drive out in a mini convoy though!

[Tebbs]

Time for an update:

 

Much further along now, car is at Rob's in Pershore and he looks to be doing a bloody lovely job, more of that much later.

 

You may have seen a post about the terrible work done by Nick Pope at Tomorrows classics in Rudgeway, I got half my cash back. In the end all the work they did was stuff, never mind! At least it was cheap stuff.

 

It's hard to know where to restart with this thread, but I think I will document the suspension work first.

 

So...

I went to cost-co and got me a big jack. It JUST fits in the front of the 911.. It weighs about as much as I did when I was 16 too. It was 70 quid and is my best purchase ever! Fast lift, very stable, low saddle height <80mm and peak height of nearly 600. It can drop the motor out in one hit too.

 

Bought some of this rost off ice stuff and sprayed everthing on the suspension well. Had already given it some plus gas the week before. It doesn't go far, luckily halfords have something which as far as I can work out is about the same, they call it shock and unlock, and with a halfords trade card it is cheaper by half.

 

I decided to get all the bolts loosened before getting the car right up in the air on all four corners, there's a LOT of load needed! Getting some of these bolts undone was way too much for my 500lbFt Air impact wrench. So out with the 6ft bar off my new jack, and with an almighty CCCCRRRRRRRRACK they all undid. I cleaned the threads up as best I could with a wire brush, but the impact wrench is great for getting the nuts off the corroded threads, they don't spin off easy so the hammer style shock works magic.

 

Here you can see how high you need the axle stands to be on the 2 post lift points to drop the engine if you only jack it at the back end. Obviously if you jack it at the front too it'll have to be a lot higher because of that Archimedes chap.

 

My car was just about stock height, the front lip is nearly touching the ground.

 

Rear view. Block of wood on jack to protect engine.

 

Engine out! I haven't covered all the undoing, it's all been done before. In the future I will replace the block of wood with something bigger, I have a trolley now which you will see later, it was a touch unstable and I caught the engine and box on my foot at one point to stop it rocking onto the floor. It is bloody heavy.

 

Engine hole left - Note the yellow shocks. These are BOGE gas charged shocks, they are shot. I think the later Carrera always came with BOGE sports shocks if it had the sports suspension option, they were replaced by Porsche on my car at 50k or so, they fitted these so I guess these were the same as original.

 

Suspension bits started to be removed: Aluminium corrosion is quite bad really, not much of an advantage over steel in many ways.

 

Front end disassembly was.. Interesting.

Jack up. Put on stands. Wheels off. Disks off. Strut top nut undone. Tie rods undone and knocked out of taper.

Undo taper bolt holding strut to ball joint as it's a lot easier on car. Knock taper bolt through. Try and remove strut. Fail. Try and undo ball joint massive nut on car with socket on air impact wrench . Fail. Next breaker bar, socket and jack to stop the socket slipping out. Fail. Try and undo it with heat, and a big hammer and chisel. Fail. Try and undo it with heat and an air chisel. FAIL!

Take off steering rack guard and anti roll bar mounts. Undo all bolts holding fuel pump and steering rack. Put jack under aluminium cross member and undo all remaining bolts which you have loosened earlier. Drop entire assembly with struts to the floor in one hit. Easy.. Now to get the tough bit.

Heat strut right up with good heat where it meets the ball joint. None of this propane crap, get yourself some MAPP Pro and a decent torch with a good tight flame. Then the strut should almost fall off the taper. Much better to get this off when still attached to the A-Arm as it gives you something to pull against. If you do this last you might not manage to get it off.

Now you have to get the ball joint nut off. This was a nightmare for me. It wouldn't budge with any amount of heat. I tried dremelling the nut and failed. In the end I got my big grinder, and a smaller worn down cutting disk and cut through the whole ball joint and nut until it had very little left of the thread. Then a lot of abuse with heat, a hammer, and my trusty air chisel knocked it round. If your car has never had a ball joint change, make sure you have the tools or a friendly garage!

 

After that's done the rest is easy. It all just comes apart with a bit of persuasion and heat. I did manage somehow to bend one of the a-arm to aluminium cross member steel cups - below. But this was soon fixed with a bit of heat, a scaffolding pole and a hammer.

 

Obviously all the rubber bushes were shot to pieces. On the whole it was easiest to burn them off. They tended to get pliable enough to then slide off when really hot.

The rear spring plate ones were not so easy. These I attacked with heat and my air chisel.

 

Oh yeah, checked the spring plate angle of inclination on each side using one of these before removing: Use sill as datum and add/remove if the body is sat up or down hill.

 

 

 

Gap

 

How do you stop post merging and what is the maximum number of images?

[Tebbs]

These are all the bolts from the rear suspension. There is rather a lot of them, and I was going to get them all replated.

 

However, I know about hydrogen embrittlement (unlike google spell check it would seem) and I didn't want the heads popping off my suspension bolts due to the pickling rust removal treatment. No-one in my immediate vicinity did small jobs and took care of this, so I just had to make do with the big bits where it wont be a problem being plated, and left the bolts and nuts out of it. A shame, but not the end of the world. So the box of fixings was not done.

 

Front suspension bolts and bits

 

Decided to get a lot of bits powder coated. All these suspension bits and almost all my engine tin wear

 

As I'm sure a lot of you have found, this front piece of tin is very susceptible to rust. I remade it as best I could but without all of the features. It will work fine, but is not factory.

 

My car has had a bit of a mis-fire. I hope it was down to this, the bracket was together, but had developed a crack. I know this as when I removed it and it failed totally I could see an old fracture in the alloy. I think it was down to the steel tube within the aluminium going rusty, expanding and eventually cracking it. Both sensors will be replaced with pattern sensors from a BMW at half Porsche price, and just a slightly longer cable. Thanks IB Forum

 

All off to the powder coater.

 

Alternator removed to have the fan and housing blasted and lacquered. Nightmare getting fan and housing off.

 

It was all well and truly seized on. Tried all sorts, heat, rost-off, abuse. In the end I pulled it off using my black and decker work mate and ingenuity but it was so long ago I have forgotten how. I know I buggered up all the long bolts doing it. This is a shame as I couldn't get them. I have had to drill it out to the next size up, but it all went back together better than before, and the holes in the housing were big enough already, almost like they were meant to be held on with M6's not M5's.

 

Whilst getting the fan off I tried to use the alternator shaft to push it off. I did the old trick of putting the nut back on so that I wouldn't damage the threads. However the pulley nut is a slim line nut, so it actually made it worse. I had to buy a die from China to fix this. In the UK the cheapest one was 70 quid. China - 12.40 and a 3 week wait. If anyone needs it just shout and I'll post you the die so long as you send it back I think it was an M17x1.5 which is a very odd size.

 

So anyway, back to suspension. My work was similar to my photos, sporadic and bored easily, so I did different types of jobs on different days to stop getting bored. Here you can see removal of front shocks from the struts. I tried using the fan pulley tool (C-spanner) from the Porsche tool kit but it had nothing to grip and the shape wasn't quite right. Had to buy some Stillsons, but then I've always wanted some Worked a treat!

 

Top mounts were covered in that black crap. Took some effort to clean off, no solvent would touch it a was all hard and brittle. Mostly cracked off OK, but some paint damage. Never mind, will all be covered with epoxy mastic anyway.

 

The rubber in the top mounts was easy to get out. Burn the small side and keep trimming away the goo that comes off with a blunt knife, then after a while they pop through off their own accord.

[Tebbs]

Oh dear. Big water bottle and petrol expansion/overfill catcher removed. Rusty stuff.

 

An example of Tomorrows Classics work. They made this jacking point up. It's too thin. It's collapsed, and it's rusting after 3 months. You can also see the work they did to the bottom of my quarter panel rusting and poorly adhered.

 

So.. Then I realised it was all going to be a big long term off the road job: Onwards - Some areas at the back end had me a little bothered as it felt like the sealant wasn't all adhered to the metal. Ominous. Peeled off the sealant - et voila! Glad I caught this now!

 

So, all brushed, sanded, sand blasted and treated, then epoxy mastic'd before bolting the rear suspension back on. I appear to have failed to take any photos of the rear suspension bolt up, but it's all very self explanatory really.

 

It was a similar story at the suspension mounts at the front:

This also got a load of seam sealer applied before fitting the front suspension on.

 

Front struts were cleaned up and painted with epoxy mastic too, just cos I could. Here you see the c-spanner which wouldn't work for me. These have new Bilstein standard sports shocks in them. I am sick of over stiff damping in cars as my mx-5 had jap spec bilsteins which meant a lot of b-roads were wasted as my wheels were often not in contact with bumpy roads. Bit of oil fitted to strut, help heat transfer and damp any movement. Shouldn't do anything, but also won't hurt anything!

 

Fitting up front suspension - copper grease on everything.

 

Little hole in steel bush mount goes to little hole in alu crossmember. Big hole to big hole. Simples.

 

Use loads of superpro grease. You have more than enough! All slides on lovely.

 

Big mallet was hardly needed to persuade this little lot together. It all seems lovely.

 

Put anti roll bar on now. Easy off car. Nightmare on car.

 

It helps to have a Dad to support this lot on the jack as you attempt to bolt it all up. I had a little sister which works not quite as well but we got there. No pictures as I know what you lot are like with 21 year old girls. Not to be trusted!

 

All in place - You can see the seam sealer too.

 

It looks like I took photos when the rear suspension was finished, how unhelpful of me. As you can see the torsion bar cover area was treated to some epoxy mastic too. All torsion bars were well greased before fitting and torsion tubes were liberally dinitrol 3125'd.

[Tebbs]

At this point I started to get people in to quote for rust remedy and respray. Very expensive, decided I would have to strip down further. Starting with wiring and all that jazz.

 

Then saw that this didn't look too hot:

 

So off comes the wing. Don't forget the bolts by the scuttle! There's a lot of sealent to wade through to get the bolts for the wings off, then you have to carefully break the sealent holding the wing on so that you don't wrench the wing when you remove it.

Here you can see my front bumper mount is buggered. Damn water bottle and petrol expansion tank strike again.

 

Pretty good up here

 

Just surface stuff here. It is a generally sound car I think.

 

Spot scabby, later turns out to have gone a way up inside. Rob sorted it and did a great job on rebuilding the jacking point. More pics much later on that.

 

This side is spot on!

 

Light surface stuff. Glad I caught this now though, you can see what the oil pipe mud trap has done.

 

Wing wheel arch 'repair' by Tommorows Classics in November last year. 200 miles ago. Nasty.

 

Quarter panel 'repair' No 'ckin' good. Single skin, 'painted' with waxoyl, rusting already.

 

With these few faults, and generally thin metal elsewhere it was two new wing time. Ouch.

 

Cool naked picture

 

and a naughty one from the rear. That's water not oil.

[Tebbs]

Rear lights have seen better days, had to grind the bolts off with my die grinder. These will get drilled out, the covers will be powder coated and the aluminum cleaned up and given a coat of special metal primer and paint to stop the future corrosion.

 

Blasted aluminium! The bumpers are generally OK, but anywhere that had fixings or was covered in rubber, like the bellows is no good. These have since been media blasted and etch primed. Will be filled by the paint shop and given a good primer and top coat. Then I'll make sure all fixings and rubbers have dinitrol on them to try and stop this happening again. Gotta do something!

 

Yuck. Nasty. I know, I know, make it lighter. But I hadn't the inclination or money, so these were all media blasted and wet painted.

 

Stripped down my reasonably new flapper boxes and had all the bits powder coated. Will see how long they last.

 

Odd angle, but this is the rear arch with the engine lid release which is going a bit rusty. Stripped, treated, then epoxy mastic.

 

Was amazed at this - It looked fine, but peel back a bit of the rubber coating!!!! Anyway, all solid. Muchos grit blasting, sanding, treating later...

 

I also totally stripped my fuel and oil tanks. The fuel tank was new a couple of years ago, but they just zinc sprayed it and put a tiny bit of waxoyl on bits of it. No bloody good. Lots of wire brushing later, epoxy mastic on both,

 

Now all the front inner wings are treated and painted. Eventually will get a spot of guards red with a brush. Rob says it works better that way.

 

I have used a whole LOAD of the 2 part 3m sprayable seam sealer in bags. It sticks like mad, and stays flexible. Stayed on my hands for 2 weeks!

This looks great now, I did the oil tank too, figure it gets hit by plenty of stones.

 

All inner wings which were stripped get 3m'd. It is epic stuff.

 

Rob is going to be repairing the bumper mount.

 

Obviously, as is so often the case this oil tank aperture was a touch crusty. Not any more. Stripped, treated, Epoxy Mastic'd and 3m'd

 

Likewise the charcoal canister position. No more charcoal canister for me!

 

Rear bumper mounts, light apertures etc all epoxy mastic'd then 3M'd. Lovely stuff.

Edited July 25, 2010 by Tebbs

[coxy]

Nice work Tebbs, It'l be worth it.

[Tebbs]

...and the same on the other side.

 

From the factory they didn't protect the underside of the light piece. I have. I have also better protected at the front wing area. In the factory they bolted the wings up then sprayed the sealer up there. I've done it before bolting the wings on.

 

Bits and bobs back from my media blasters in acid etch primer.

 

3M sprayable seam sealer on some panels.

 

and some more. I love this shot for some reason.

 

Starting to strip interior down. Photos for wires.

 

Wing mirrors gotta come off for a good paint job

 

Window winder mech out. This is totally unnecessary, on the other side I got the glass and frame out fine without removing the mech,

 

Wiper motor needs to come out, so so does the air box - I need to replace the motor anyway, so no harm done.

 

Wiper motor, and washer nozzles off.

There is an extra pipe which I don't recognise or understand. Will be fun putting it all back together I feel...

 

Rear wiper motor off too, then the tail. Not going to paint the tail, not prepared to risk the damage to the rubber removing it, and it doesn't look faded. It also has the advantage of being small painted areas at dissimilar angles to the surrounding paint so minor shade difference will not be noted.

 

Sunroof has to come out. - Unzip the rear headlining, then you can turn the sunroof manually. It's all in Bentley, but if you get stuck then give me a shout and I'll show some more photos.

 

I removed the old car phone boxes except for the handset itself, as frankly, it is pimp. Also took tracker out which meant some re-splicing of the loom. Phone and tracker and old alarm wiring which hadn't been pulled out was a full carrier bag full and weighed nearly 10 kilos.

[johndglynn]

It is pimp!! Excellent.

 

Had a good look at your handiwork the other day mate: lovely job.

[Tebbs]

So, on to the engine. Valve clearances are a pain aren't they! Even out of the car! I had to remake the non-genuine bent metal valve clearance checker and trim down the feeler gauges, but got it eventually. Not looking forward to doing it in the car next year. Couldn't find my long feeler gauges to try the backside method.

 

In an attempt to cure anything which might have caused my misfire I also decided to change all the inlet manifold gaskets. Had only ordered 6 though as didn't realise there was a spacer aswell. D'oh!

 

What a shameful mess! I'm not normally any thing like as untidy as this, but got bored and decided to start rebuilding the brakes. Don't worry, they were put back together on a clean table.

 

No pictures of the brake rebuild I'm sorry, I forgot, but John has covered it well before back in 2006 so have a search.

I cocked up one calliper when rebuilding it. Snapped a nipple then didn't drill it out bang on straight as the nipples don't actually go in square so took out all the threads on one side.

Thankfully I didn't touch the seat at the bottom. Drilled out the thread for a helicoil but accepted I had no chance of keeping it square to the nipple seat. I work in heavy duty fuel injection, and on some products we use a ball bearing on a conical seat for high pressure sealing, sounded like a plan, so am using a ball bearing with a cut down nipple to apply force to the ball bearing to seal. Have pressure tested it post calliper rebuild and it is sound. I have since found that some cars actually use a ball bearing for this very application anyway, so I am at least not being a pioneer.

 

The shell is now with Rob Campbell in Pershore. He is one of John's friends who primarily works in historic motorsport. His skill is exceptional, I am hugely impressed so far. Hopefully some of these photos will show why. I am glad I am not doing it myself, his skill level is just so much higher than mine that I couldn't achieve what he is doing without filler.

 

Started work on front bumper mount. Drilled off bumper mount then chopping out section at a time of inner wing, and matching all contours of panel very well.

 

Outside of panel just about finished ready for welding on new bumper mount

 

Inside just needs linishing to finish. Will look very nearly factory!

 

First rear quarter and b-post - The side I had started on. Rob has chopped across the rear quarter at an angle with a perfect straight line. This gives the necessary access to totally clean up the area and do a proper job. It also gives you a good compound curve. He says this means you can weld it back on without changing the shape and get a perfect fit. All that is required is tig welding it up and linishing it back!

 

When the quarter has been welded back on you can see that even on the inside it looks almost factory before the sealant has been applied.

 

Here is the external view, before final linishing. Special isn't it!

 

Starting work on the other side. This side was repaired in November by the aforementioned company in Rudgeway. Or rather they didn't notice this rust once they had chopped the external panel off and left it. OUch.

 

Other bits ready for going 3 doors down to be painted. Rob has a friendly BMW approved paint shop just down from him, they seem good, have some exotic kit in there every time I've been in and I'm sure if Rob recommends them, and has just had his old Merc S-Class painted by them they must be ok.

 

..and that's all for now folks!

 

Thanks for the props Coxy and John, I just really want to get it back now! Fear I won't get it really on the road till September some time, and then the salt comes

Edited July 25, 2010 by Tebbs

[Dr Rock]

I love this shot for some reason.

That's 'coz it's got the Beetle in it

 

Doing a good job there - *lots* of work but it'll be worth it when it's all done. Just in time for winter...

[Matthew]

Awesome Work.. Give yourself a big slap on the back. Wish i was brave enough to get stuck in.

[MrPerkles]

hats off to you Tebbs thats a daunting task and soul destroying at times,well done

[anthonyw]

Awesome work tebbs.

 

Really cracking on with it now. Your front inner arches were nice and clean, mine were far worse, but my B pillars faired slightly better. Odd how this all turns out eh?

 

Will be great when its all done, so keep at it!!

 

Anthony.

[Tebbs]

Just following the path beaten down by you guys!

[Tebbs]

Your front inner arches were nice and clean, mine were far worse, but my B pillars faired slightly better. Odd how this all turns out eh?

 

It is odd isn't it.

 

I wonder if it might have something to do with the season or even the day that the car was built or the wings were bolted up/rear quarters were welded on or something random like that. There is pretty minimal factory protection on some bits so I don't think it would take a lot of moisture to start it all off rusting.

[Tebbs]

This will probably be the last set of pictures before it's all in colour as I have a couple of short holidays and it should by now be all in primer

 

Rob has just about finished the metal work, just has to do one of the jacking points and weld the new bumper mount on once it's all on level ground and he can make sure it all goes on level.

 

The paint shop wanted to get started so are cracking on with getting the rest of the car in primer before Rob finishes a couple of bits underneath. He tells me the two new wings bolted up fine with no fettling required so they are now in primer. Once the car is in primer Rob's gonna zinc the wings underneath, bolt them onto the car then finish any tidying up that needs doing under the car before giving all the new bits and cleaned up bits a good coat of Wurth sprayable flexible stuff like my 3m sprayable seam sealer. Then it's back to the paint shop for top coat!

 

Here you can see they are giving the repaired section a super thin layer of filler to finish the blend of the linished panel When it's all sanded back it's barely there.

 

Door bolted back on after priming I think:

[anthonyw]

Make sure you keep the updates coming.

 

Looks like a proper job this time, bet you can't wait to get it back all painted up.

 

Bolting it all back is actually quite a nice process once all the rust is gone!

 

Anthony