Porsche Centre Victoria with our sister company, Coachwerks, has taken on the 2019 Porsche Restoration Competition. Our team has performed a complete restoration of all mechanical systems as well as the metalwork and paint to as-new conditions on a 1967 911 Targa S.
Initial Plans
The first step to a project of this size is to come up with a game plan. We conducted an overall survey on the vehicle to see the rust damage, major missing components, repairs needed. There are multiple aspects to a big restoration project like this: the body shop side are dealing with rust repair, individual mechanics with engine and transmission rebuilding, upholsters with the inside of the vehicles. There is definitely a lot of teamwork and coordination involved in this.
Disassembly
In the initial stages of disassembling a vehicle, it is a matter of cataloguing, identifying missing parts, parts that need to be replaced, and most importantly establishing a plan of what we need to do in the future.
After the car is disassembled in preparation of restoration, the body will go to our body division. There, the body will be stripped to be exposed down to the bare metal to see the actual condition underneath the paint. From there, we do a survey to see what needs to be repaired. Very often there is rust repair, previous collision repair, and other structural repair needed. The key is to preserve as much as we can of the original metal work, to keep it as close to original as possible. After the structural repair, the body starts to get prepared for paint. This includes hammering out the dents, making sure it is as straight as possible, everything lines up. At that point, painters will do necessary preparations and apply a factory like original finish, and the car will come out looking like new.
For component assembly, we are re-assembling the sub components of parts of the car. Something could be as big as the engine or transmission and some things could be as small as the parking brake of sift mechanism.. For this we have to do things we have to make sure it looks perfect, like a new car, we also have to make sure it works correctly. That involves replacing bearings, seals, various fasteners, and putting it back together as close as factory did in the first place.
Mechanical Restoration
After component assembly, it is a matter of putting the car back together. We put the engine, the transmission back in, with a new wiring harness and all the individual components and as we put them in we test to see how they interact with the other components and we make adjustments. There is a lot of planning and coordination to make sure things go in at the right time.