1988 Porsche 944 Track Toy

So I did some soul searching and I'm just going to put the car back together. And get it ready for a future race at VIR this year.

I wired up the fans with spade connectors, so they now plug into the stock wires, and I did some troubleshooting on the circuits. The ground wires go to ground. The hot wires check out fine all the way back to the relay, and that relay costs $130 or so. I opened it up and confirmed that the solenoids all operate (they aren't visibly stuck, anyway), so we'll see what happens when I put it all back together. Maybe both fans will work?

But then, a 944 racer friend asked if I was planning on replacing my glass hatch with lexan. I said, someday, maybe.

He offered me an unused, uninstalled piece of lexan from racingshields.com. It's the 3/16, clear, supercoat kind. AND he threw in a somewhat damaged 968 hatch frame/wing with broken glass to put it in. But the hatch frame is straight, which is pretty much what really matters.

So I figure I'll fix up the 968 hatch and wing, install the lexan into it, and I'll be able to swap hatches and bring the lexan inside each winter to avoid a lot of weathering. Plus I'm easily distracted.

Here's what the 968 hatch & wing looks like. The one I have has the following problems:

• Missing #10 rubber seal ($40)
• Missing #9 rubber seal on one side ($71)
• Partial #9 rubber seal on the other side. ($71) I'm not sure, but the seal I got with the hatch only goes to about the tip of the arrow at #9. It doesn't curve back at the trailing edge. So it might need to be replaced. It's got quite a bit of duct tape goo on it so I might just spring for the fresh seal.
• One #7 fiberglass trim piece is broken in half ($283 - I will fix)
• Both #7 fiberglass trim pieces have dried duct tape goo on their forward edges. Shame on whoever drove their 968 around that way.
• The wing's forward connection point (near the #10 in the picture below) is ripped out. ($755 - I will fix)
• The wing has seen a lot of rocks, wipe marks/scratches from clueless car washers, and has a couple pretty deep dings.

So I started by removing broken glass. Which is just a pain in the patoot, and there's no getting around that. It mostly involved cutting, sharpening the utility knife on a stone because it dulled so quickly and it was faster and cheaper than new blades, and then, more cutting. In this picture you can see how many strokes of the knife it takes to make it through the urethane.

In the following picture you can see that on the leading edge of the hatch, there's an extra piece that the glass tucks under (it's #6 in the parts picture above). I learned that this is actually just press-fit onto the frame and can be carefully pried off with a big screwdriver to reveal the glass so it can be removed as easily* as the rest of the frame.

*with just as much difficulty

Here you can see how the fiberglass (it says "Fibron") on it has broken in two on the spoiler trim piece. I cleaned it up and jammed it back together as close as I could to its original length and position.

Then I braced it and removed some paint to make room for new fiberglass.

And I mixed some resin with some loose fibers to make that gooey paste here.

I was happy with how this was going.

That made the piece strong enough to handle on its own already. I took down a layer of material on the face side and cut a piece of mesh to strengthen it.

This one looked promising too, but it got bubbles in there despite the popsicle sticks, and I had to start over on it. I realized I was going to have to just do flat faces with this mesh because it really wants to pull away from convex bends.

While I waited for that to cure, I took some polish to the wing. It's going to need paint or a wrap at the very least to take care of the starry skies.

I just googled "Fibron" and got a Rennlist post that describes my stuff here. And of course, someone says I'm not supposed to use Bondo resin. I'm probably not supposed to use three year old Bondo, but that's what I've got, so that's what I'm using. 

Continuing on with the wing repair... here's what it looks like on the busted end.

And those should look like the other end, I guess:

Actually, looking at these pictures, I think I might strengthen this end with a bit of my mesh as well. It's probably been stressed out.

I made a backer with a CD case, and clamped it to the end so I could build up a new tab with mesh.

So that's actually four plies of mesh so far, plus some fiber in this mix. I'll let that cure, sand it down a little and lay down some more because it's not yet thick enough.

I think this one's looking pretty promising too.

Rennlist is correct about the resin. The polyester you used will separate from the Fibron pretty quickly with heat cycles and vibration. Good enough epoxy resin is sometimes on the shelf in my local Home Depot. Seriously, peel your repairs off and start over. You will be amazed how easily they come off, leaving the Fibron just as you sanded it.

In reply to TurnerX19 :

I don't like this post as much.  But thank you for it just the same.

I now understand that epoxy has better adhesive properties, and I was hoping my cleaning and roughing up of the surfaces helped overcome the polyester's somewhat lower adhesion in that regard. It has held up remarkably well on my urethane fascia repair, even after scraping it pretty hard on the trailer ramp. Funny that I was also warned, after installation, that it wouldn't do all that well for flexible pieces either.

But then I really gave it a tug and I saw what looked like an air bubble inside. Without too much effort, I had this:

Yep. Just like you said.

Now be a friend and come over to my shop and tell me what to do next.

I kid. I am a kidder.

I've ordered some TotalBoat 5:1 Epoxy Resin and hardener. A quart of it was the smallest size.

http://www.totalboat.com/product/totalboat-epoxy-kits/

I also ordered all the seals. It's nice that I can save shipping by picking up a couple miles from my house:

https://www.getporscheparts.com/

Question: What kind of urethane / window sealant should I use to bed in the lexan? If it works half as well as that stuff I labored to remove, I'd be happy.

In reply to CrookedRacer :

3M Windoweld is the go to for installing your hatch "glass". Mask it off completely as the vehicle in the urethane has some crazing effect on polycarbonate, and you cannot scrape off the inevitable smudge or drip the way you can with glass. You will use most of a caulking gun cartridge on that one. The squeeze tubes are too small and difficult to squeeze too. Available where ever auto body supplies are sold. 

Your TotalBoat epoxy will work well on your other pieces, but make sure you re-sand the bonding zones to remove all traces of the polyester resin The issue is a chemical incompatability where polyester will not bond to cured epoxy. Oddly epoxy will bond to polyester that has cured for more than 90 days. So you have a bunch of left over TotalBoat for other projects now. 

Not much else I can do until the epoxy arrives next week.

In the mean time, I hoisted the front end of the car in the air and scooted the rebuilt engine closer to its home.

I wish I could say I was getting better at this, but it was a fussy operation, with the engine hoist’s legs in the way of the engine dolly. I don’t particularly want to get any better at this, either!

Every time I hope it’s the last time.

Another question about my repairs... only about three of these little plates with studs remain attached to the side trim pieces. I have all the plates and special slotted nuts, fortunately.

They’re mostly pulled off though:

What would be the correct adhesive and surface prep for these stud plates that attach to the Fibron pieces?

In reply to CrookedRacer :

Clean thoroughly with alcohol, and sand with 240. Then your TotalBoat has another use! I would do an over the top single layer glass cloth retainer if there is enough clearance for it. Alternates are 3M "Panelbond" or Loctite Hysol EP120 HP.

In reply to TurnerX19 :

I was thinking about just using the epoxy! But the idea of adding a cloth over-layer is brilliant! There were places where the factory goop was squeezed out as thickly, so that might work out! Thanks!

Today the engine made its way home.

Now it’s just wrenching and more wrenching.

I really have to stop ending all my sentences with exclamation points!

In reply to CrookedRacer :

Not really brilliant at all. Nor is it original to me. Lots of English glass fibre crapwagons are built that way, and I have been working on them for 1/2 a century. I do not own one anymore though.

Ok, I've been taking my time and trying to do this right.

I left the slender piece as it was since it really seemed solid and would have been difficult to take apart.  But as I built up the wing attachment point, I used some of the epoxy to build it back up to painting height. It's going to be fine.

So, wing attachment point, take 2:

I built it up on both sides but mostly the side opposite the card backing above.

I drilled a hole and formed the other side to look something like the other one:

I think it'll do. Then I put everything in the middle of the floor to try to do some test fitting and I realized I had NONE of the hardware bits to put this thing together. Somewhere in a Mid-Atlantic household, or shop, or landfill, there's probably a plastic bag of nuts and washers and screws that would probably do just the trick. But sadly that bag didn't complete its journey to my garage.

So I've put in an order for a $50 bag of nuts and washers and screws from Porsche. Looking at the PET catalog, they're pretty specific lengths of screws, materials, and special types of nuts that probably have flanges and other fancy features. The whole shebang isn't something I could readily source at Home Depot.

I need to verify that everything's going to fit before I try to install this lexan. I've only got one shot at it and I don't want to mess it up.

In the mean time, I'm using some other hardware that only works now because the hatch isn't installed. It will need the specific flat-head metric machine screws to allow it to close once I put it on the car. But for now, it bolts up nicely!

Next I guess I should figure out how to fill that space normally taken by the center brake light. I suppose I could source one used or even new, but they're probably crazy pricey.

If anyone is looking for a neat 3D printing project to work on, print one out and send it my way! :-)

You have glass cloth and lots of total boat. Why not fold up a little sheet metal mold,wax it well and tape it across the void where the lamp was. Then fill in the space and finish it off like the lamp was never there.

In reply to TurnerX19 :

"I put that E36 M3 on everything"

Great idea. I am gonna do just that! Bonus is that it can be done at any time down the road - that piece is easily removed with just four screws.

In reply to TurnerX19 :

And you got these berkleying claws and these fangs, man! And you're looking at your claws and you're looking at your fangs. And you're thinking to yourself, you don't know what to do, man. "I don't know how to kill the bunny." With *this* you don't know how to kill the bunny, do you know what I mean?

...ANY time down the road could mean the very next day!

My jig. Made from whatever was around.

These little rubber tabs that came off some extra tiles make great clips because no ordinary clamp would hang on to the wedge-shaped piece like these did.

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Basically I just jammed a couple slices of cloth in there. I'll do more, front and back, but this will do to make the general shape of it.

So that looks pretty good. I'll put some cloth on the face here and hopefully it'll be fairly straight.

At the same time, in the same batch of epoxy, I attached the special studs to the side trim pieces. I'm pretty sure they're fairly well lined up with the holes in the hatch frame longitudinally. But edge-to-edge, I took a wild guess. The further forward the studs went, the closer they were to the edge. So I guessed for the most part.

The ones on the very ends I covered with a bit of cloth over the bases. But I didn't have time to do all of them. This stuff was starting to kick. So those were the only two I did. All the others have a bit of epoxy across the top though, just for a little more mechanical stability. We'll see.

Also in that batch I did something I've been planning for a while. Years ago I cut down my dashboard to a smaller size to make a floating dash that still calls back to the classic late 944 dashboard shape. You've seen that in past pictures on this thread.

Last year I bought some cheap fake suede from the local fabric store. I have no idea what brand, but it's cheap cheap cheap. It feels cheap. It looks cheap. All around, I worked with what I had.

I took pictures of me sewing the fabric. I took pictures of me stretching said fabric onto the dash. When I started to glue it down, I wasn't happy with the way it was going. And my phone reset and I lost all those pictures.

Well, one of the features was always going to be the 944 Special Edition medallion that came with this "Celebration Edition" 1988 944. It was still in the car when I got it, haphazardly glued to the dashboard above the glove box (normally it lives inside the glove compartment). I always intended to mount that in the extra blank space to the right of the instrument panel opening.

Today, I got the dash, the medallion, scissors, and more 3M Fabric Adhesive and focused on finishing the job, despite the wrinkles and unfavorable results from last year's lost cause.

First, I needed a way to blind-mount the medallion securely.

A piece of aluminum and a couple riv-nuts!

Here you can see I countersunk the rivnuts so they'd be flush, and I thought ahead and taped off the holes so the threads wouldn't be filled with epoxy! I then epoxied them together.

Smarter than the average bear, Boo Boo!

I had cut out some relief in the dash, but perhaps not enough. I wanted more of a cushion button look, sort of sunk in to upholstery. If I had used any batting at all, I might have gotten that effect. The location of the seams is another issue I wasn't all that pleased with. But, after doing all the tucking and trimming and gluing, I think it came out presentable. Certainly for a race car. I'll try to get it all together in the car this weekend.

That'll do, I guess. It's done, anyway.

I got you to get your claws out! It is fun being an enabler. I have been getting others in trouble and enjoying watching the results for my whole life