Hi all,
This post will be mostly picture heavy as Mark covered it all in detail so he's made it easy for me.
Having sourced all the radiators (water and air con) throughout the year it was time to get them fitted.
It was mentioned to me that my air con wouldn't gas up because the rads were in such bad shape. I'd also noticed that when in traffic my car would get quite warm even though the fans were working fine, so thought I'd do the lot while in there. Also while everything was off it was time to do a little rust control, noting was bad, just surface rust from stone chipping off the wheels.
First off was getting it lifted at the front so you don't lose all the water from the engine, then stripping the front end, wheels, side repeaters, bumper, head lights, front arch liners etc.
Then front air ducts to get to the rads, then remove the air con rads from the water rads.
There was a lot of leaves, grass and dirt behind them that you couldn't see, also most of the air ways were blocked with dirt so no wonder it struggled when in traffic.
The front horn looking a little sorry for itself.
My car had already had new rads in 2008 when Mark Dunsfold rebuilt it, so most of the Porsche hose clips were already changed for Jubilee clips.
Then it was to remove both front rad packs for strip down. This revealed the whole front end so it could be cleaned out properly.
You can see the surface rust on the front tub seams, and other areas, this is one of the reasons I decided to do this, it's not bad at all but left for too long and could get very bad.
So now everything is stripped out and access is easy, time for Mark to get busy with his wire wheels.
Because I would be fitting new suspension we just cleaned up around the top mounts as best we could then would finish the job properly once I'd got the Kw's out the way.
After all the wire brushing was done, we applied Hammerite Rust Treatment to it to get rid of the rust, this takes a few applications for it to do its job properly, then wash it all off for painting. Mark used the Hammerite Rust primer on his, I went in a different direction and went for silver POR15. I'd heard this was really good and didn't need an undercoat so would save a bit time.
I'd sent all brackets, pipes and protection plates away for powder coat.
Ordered a load of overpriced goodies from Porsche, Hoses, clips, cable wraps etc.
Cleaned up all the plastic shrouds and coated them with wet and black tyre shine.
Cleaned up and repainted the horns.
All the wire brushing was now done and washed down so all ready for paint.
It was now time to mask all the parts that we didn't want paint to drip on as the POR15 seems very watery. Mark took extra care to cover his soon to be adopted KW's !!
So we applied the POR15 (horrible stuff if I'm honest). The arches did come up nice as they should with new paint, but I feel that doing it marks way would have been better, undercoat then silver paint. But hey, it's only in the arches and they will never be to any sort of body work quality and they were now future proofed. As before, we just painted around the top mounts until I could get access when suspension was out the way.
While the paint was drying we retreated into marks house to build up the rad packs for the following week.
Through the week Mark applied a second coat of POR15 so it had a good protection, Thanks for that by the way.
I've got to say, the finished article looked excellent, it's not till you compare the before and after pics that you see the difference it's made.
So now it's time to build it back up, rad packs on.
Pipework with new body clips all round and protection plates fitted
Centre Rad fitted, just for show but looks a hell of a lot better than just seeing the dirty front tub.
Air con pipework connected back up using genuine seals.
Back on its wheels now and just bumper, head lights and a few other bits to fit to get it back to it's best, but first was to pull it outside and start it up to check for leaks and to prime it through. I'd heard these were hard to do. The water is fed to the off side rad first then to the near side, so all I done was to remove the small overflow pipe at the top of the near side rad. You can feel the air coming out as the water fills the system, so once water started coming out the overflow nipple I just reconnected the pipe and left it running to get up to temperature so the thermostat would open.
The horns back on.
We saved as much of the antifreeze as we could, not to use it again, but so that we knew how much had come out and how much I'd need to get back in. This was about 4.5 litres and I'd previously bought a 5 litre pre mixed from Euro Car Parts. I got the whole 5 litres in and it put it perfectly on the maximum line, so to me that meant that I'd got all the air out. Happy days.
No leaks, so time to put it back in the garage and put the plastic air shrouds back on.
Then just the other little pieces like side repeaters, arch liners, head lights etc.
So that's that, a job well done. For once something went right with no issues at all. I'm guessing that it's because I wasn't relying on anyone else's workmanship to get the job done.
I'd sent my rear callipers away for refurbishment, powder coat, seals etc. I decided to purchase a new set of braided brake lines as you might see from some of the pics that mine are rusty coloured under the plastic sleeve and look terrible. As I'd had the rear callipers off anyway I replaced the rear lines first and will do the fronts sometime before the summer, once I find a bit more time.
I'd forgotten about the brackets on the back of the rear callipers when I sent everything off for powder coat so I had to just paint these myself. Not the best, but a hell of a lot better than the rusty mess they were.
So, that is pretty much it........
Car back on its wheels and all back together, only the rear calliper decals to fit to finish that project off, I'd forgot to bring them with me so I fitted these when I got the car back to my house.
Next stop, Ohlins !!!!!
Thanks for reading guys, not much left to do now.
Take it easy
Craig