Slipstream - October 2004

Early 911 Restoration: No. 2
by Charles Freeman
Welcome back. Here I am again to tell you how my
’73.5 911 T Targa restoration is going. I am deep
into what I will find out is the easy part. I removed
all of the carpet and interior padding. I am not sure if the
carpet was ever replaced but it sure smelled bad. It had
somewhat of a cross between mildew and wet dog. Since I
wasn’t using the carpet again I just ripped it out, then
removed the retaining trim later. I was now in for a rude
awakening. All of the little trim screws on the doorsill had
some surface rust. Should be easy to remove, right? Most of
the screws either snapped off or stripped out when I tried to
unscrew them. Here is the first purchase of tools, a lot of drill
bits. I had to drill each of them out. Under the carpet was a
sort of padding I think made out of horsehair impregnated
with an asphalt-like substance. What a mess! Some of the
underpadding was in good condition so I put it into the attic.
Turns out to be a great home for field mice.
... I then broke 3 sets of E-Z out
screw removers ...
E-Z out screw removers trying to extract the remaining
threads. More tools to the rescue.
Since the inside was pretty much done I wanted to
tackle the exterior. As I looked at the cracked black paint on
the hood and fenders I just couldn’t resist finding out what
was underneath. I investigated several techniques to remove
the paint. Chemical dipping the entire car would require
removal of every attached component from the car (I mean
everything)! Then I would have to get a trailer to haul it to
the facility (I don’t even have a truck). The next option is
sandblasting. This requires somewhat less amount of
teardown but I would still have to tow it to the facility. The
final option was chemical stripping in my garage and hand
sanding. I opted for this route as the price was right.
I then worked on removing the seats. Time and rust
had taken their toll on the seats and all of the bolts. In my
initial inspection of the car I found a rust hole in the
floorpan under the drivers seat. It turns out there was a
matching hole going through the seat vinyl and frame right
above the hole in the floorpan. I am guessing that the Targa
top was leaking in this location which led to these holes.
The frame of the driver’s seat was pretty rusted, so I just
tore the seat apart. Literally, I had to break the seat into
pieces as I couldn’t get to the bolts holding it in place. I had
to cut the seat frame with a jig saw then grab with a
vise-grip and jerk the seat apart. The passenger side was just
as bad. This took me at least 10 hours worth of work, just
to remove two seats. I threw both of them in the trash. Now
I wish I had saved the headrests as I might have been able
to sell them, oh well. Trying to remove the tracks for the
seats was another problem. The bolts were rusted and the
allen wrench stripped the heads out. I was using a cheap set
of allen wrenches from a wholesale company. Most every
time I use them they just round over. I have since purchased
a good set of Craftsman and they have held fine, but cost
twice as much. Anyway, I drilled out each of the bolts and
tried to extract them with an E-Z out. I then broke 3 sets of
Photo by Charles Freeman
I purchased a gallon of aircraft stripper from a
local paint company for $30. I proceeded to apply the toxic
goo to the hood (while wearing a respirator and heavy rubber
gloves). After a few minutes I could see the paint bubbling
up on the surface. It was a fairly simple matter of
scraping the paint off with a spatula. This left large blobs of
paint and stripper on the floor of my garage. The process
works very well but the 911 does not have flat panels so
using a flat spatula left paint on the curved sections. Thus I
had to follow this up with a lot of sanding. More tools and
materials to the rescue (sandpaper and abrasive disks).
Next time; more teardown fun!
Photo by charles Freeman
Removing paint is a time-intensive process...
Photo by charles Freeman
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