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With the bumpers all fitted up, we're back on the rotisserie and with any luck moving towards getting some paint on the car either this week or early next week.
The to-do list keeps getting longer though, since a dry fit of the bucket seats made it clear that even without the sunroof I am too tall for the stock seat brackets.
We'll be cutting those out and re-welding them closer to the floor to gain another 1.25" of headroom.
I *think* the DME will still fit under the seat, but if not I'll move it to the Cup location.
Meanwhile, I've been cleaning up and repainting the airbox and intercooler.
The airbox is a custom RUF part made in fiberglass and its had more than its fair share of scrapes and scratches accumulated over the years.
So even though the airbox is essentially invisible once the intercooler is in place, *I* would know if it didn't look good, so I got to work.
Over the life of the car holes were drilled in the airbox to mount the A/C lines (I'm rerouting them) and various parts had been JB welded to repair cracks in the fiberglass.
Functional, but ugly!
I ground down the worst of the JB Weld and applied some new epoxy to smooth things out a bit. Not perfect, but a whole lot better looking (especially since you can't see it)
It doesn't look half bad sanded down, degreased, and wearing a couple new coats of of satin black high-temp enamel.
The intercooler got the same treatment after I used a tiny spudger to meticulously re-align all the little fins that had been bent out of shape over time.
I'm also dealing with an interesting problem with the bumper seal.
Both the one that came from RUF and the one I ordered from the dealer came with the same issue: where the seal turns the corner at each end (right by the wheel) the rubber seems to have stuck in the mold and torn during removal.
This ends up looking pretty ugly. For comparison, a good seal has a nice crisp corner, as shown on the car below.
I've been in touch with the dealer and it seems like our next step is to order a seal from a different supply house. If it turns out that one has the issue as well (which seems likely given that one came from Germany and one from the US) then we may have a bad batch issue that needs to be escalated to Porsche AG. Apparently if one complains enough, there's a way to get a "good" seal pulled from the production line? We'll see.
Looks nice. Although I usually use radiator paint for the fins which looks the same but supposedly better at transferring heat,
The topic of rubber seals and Porsche is becoming an issue. It used to be you had to buy the Porsche seals or they were garbage. Now it seems so are the Porsche seals. Same garbage but at Ptax pricing.
I ordered a new rear window seal I was installing yesterday and the fit and finish was horrible. The corners were turned in which gave me a huge problem and still have one upper right sucking in a little. This is probably my 10th time installing a rear glass and the first time I had to work so hard at it. But what really bothers me is the seam. I have never seen anything come from Porsche looking like this and it began to pull apart as I installed it. It is going on the **** Box so I don't care so long as it doesn't leak but I am seeing more and more of this with classic parts.
BTW I tried to answer your question on 993 hubs but I was hurting yesterday AM.
I would paint the Ruf logo and the top metal piece on IC---"Ruf green", OMG can't imagine how nice that would look.
Don't worry - there will be plenty of RUF Green on the car!
Originally Posted by cobalt
The topic of rubber seals and Porsche is becoming an issue. It used to be you had to buy the Porsche seals or they were garbage. Now it seems so are the Porsche seals. Same garbage but at Ptax pricing.
I ordered a new rear window seal I was installing yesterday and the fit and finish was horrible. The corners were turned in which gave me a huge problem and still have one upper right sucking in a little. This is probably my 10th time installing a rear glass and the first time I had to work so hard at it. But what really bothers me is the seam. I have never seen anything come from Porsche looking like this and it began to pull apart as I installed it.
Wow, that seal is awful. I haven't pulled out all my seals yet (they're 993 seals) but I'm going to be an unhappy customer if they look anything like that!
Thanks for your reply on the upright/hub thread. I felt like I was drinking from a firehose! I may just need go to Rob's and take a few different ones apart to wrap my head around it.
Sometimes being tall is a struggle.
Even with the sunroof deleted there was no way that I was going to fit in the car with the new bucket seats (thank goodness I checked) so we had to take drastic action.
First, we cut out all the spot welds and removed all of the stock seat brackets.
Then, we went even further, re-shaping the floor supports to remove the angle near the center tunnel and give more room for the sliders.
3/16" thick reinforcement plates were welded to the floor, the tunnel, the sill, and the crossmembers so the end result is significantly stronger than the original design. Rather than retain those sliding pieces, we took advantage of the large-ish holes in the rails and welded captive nuts directly into the reinforcing plates.
Mocking up the seats -- I have never had so much headroom in a 964. I could actually move the seat back 3-4 inches from a comfortable driving position (no rear passengers here!). It's fantastic.
We also took this opportunity to update the center tunnel shifter bushing to the later version, which will come in handy for the RUF short shift kit.
Next step is cleaning up all of the welds, applying new primer over all the metal we exposed, and then seam sealing the entire car.
Last edited by spartansix; 03-22-2024 at 06:20 PM.
You feel like a bit of a pervert looking at the car from this angle...
Scuffing up all the primer to apply seam sealer and undercoating/color to the underside and interior of the car.
Exterior painting will be done in a separate step.
I'm having some issues with the hardware I just got back from plating.
First off, there are a dozen pieces where the coating is literally flaking off in my hands, like it was gold leaf or something.
Some other parts are not nearly as shiny as I would like, but that is a minor issue compared to the big one.
I'm most concerned that the larger nuts no longer thread onto their bolts!
The M6 and M8 bolts and nuts seem to go together okay, but the M12 and M14 bolts and nuts for the suspension won't thread.
This makes no sense to me since I would have thought that there would be more tolerance on larger hardware?
Anyway, trying to force them just galls up the threads, and even with an impact I can't make much progress (and just end up stripping off the coating).
I'm going to contact the plating company on Monday, but I wondered if anyone had experienced issues like this before.
Parts back from plating Yellow cadmium just flaking off Not shiny? This is one of the M14x1.5 bolts that holds on the spring plates after trying to force its nut on with an impact gun.
I have done serious cad/zin/chrome plating at least 3-4 times per year over the past 10 years. Attached you will find a photo of (small) batch just received just 3-weeks ago, on my beloved BMW project. I have had variations in the "yellow" between different batches, they can be just a little bit different from each other but never enough to bother me.
The plating in your photos not acceptable to me and the threads should not have been damaged. If I were you and had damaged threads, then buy new replacements and send them to get plated to match if necessary.
I have to ship my parts to a friend in the industry who then sends them an industrial plater in the mid-west.
Thanks for your confirmation that this is not normal.
I ran a couple of the larger M12 bolts through a M12x1.5 die and that cleaned up the threads so that the nuts went on but stripped off most of the coating.
It feels like the coating was just applied unevenly so that it was too thick on some parts?
I would definitely prefer to not replace the large bolts - many are weird sizes that aren't readily available from places like Belmetric or McMaster and are $25 - $30 each from Porsche.
One more thought, your last picture appears to be a conical locknut. Those are inherently brutal on the threads due to their “locking” nature. I can see them removing the coating which may have been a “built up” on the threads. A few years ago I was instructed that these locknuts can be re-used, but they are prevailing type and must hold torque or else toss them. He wanted me to not reuse them, but later learned that my application was not safety critical.
One more thought, your last picture appears to be a conical locknut. Those are inherently brutal on the threads due to their “locking” nature. I can see them removing the coating which may have been a “built up” on the threads. A few years ago I was instructed that these locknuts can be re-used, but they are prevailing type and must hold torque or else toss them. He wanted me to not reuse them, but later learned that my application was not safety critical.
I thought about that too.
I ordered all new locking nuts for the big stuff (M12 and M14) from Belmetric this afternoon, along with replacement bolts of the appropriate size when they were available. What's another $100 at this point....
I'm having some issues with the hardware I just got back from plating.
First off, there are a dozen pieces where the coating is literally flaking off in my hands, like it was gold leaf or something.
Some other parts are not nearly as shiny as I would like, but that is a minor issue compared to the big one.
I'm most concerned that the larger nuts no longer thread onto their bolts!
The M6 and M8 bolts and nuts seem to go together okay, but the M12 and M14 bolts and nuts for the suspension won't thread.
This makes no sense to me since I would have thought that there would be more tolerance on larger hardware?
Anyway, trying to force them just galls up the threads, and even with an impact I can't make much progress (and just end up stripping off the coating).
I'm going to contact the plating company on Monday, but I wondered if anyone had experienced issues like this before.
Parts back from plating Yellow cadmium just flaking off Not shiny? This is one of the M14x1.5 bolts that holds on the spring plates after trying to force its nut on with an impact gun.
Is this from Alcaro? I am shocked if so. They have done very good work for me in the past. Did you run a die over the threads before sending them out I always do before sending to verify the threads are clean. Did you tumble the hardware and remove any coatings. It almost looks like there was some coating that wasn't removed.
I will be bringing parts to them in a few weeks and will discuss it with them if so. I don't like recommending someone to find they did inferior work. Although this is the first complaint I have heard from anyone.
Just completed my engine and everything was perfect from them. No plating issues at all. In fact I had to use two nuts as jamb nuts to remove some studs and I was shocked how they didn't even glitch after putting them through some stress and my vice jaws. Yellow cad shouldn't make any dimensional changes to the hardware. As Igooz said those conical lock nuts are hard on threads and I believe are only available today through Porsche Motorsports.
Yes. I thought I had prepared the hardware properly but perhaps I was not thorough enough.
I soaked everything in a concentrated degreaser, ran them in the ultrasonic full of evaporust, and ran them over a wire wheel to take off any paint and clean up threads.
I did not run every piece of hardware through a die, though perhaps I should have.
Maybe I should have polished things like the pulley wheels after running them through the tumbler if I wanted the shiny finish?
It's my first time plating so I am willing to accept some responsibility for the results, but I'm not thrilled with the outcome.
03-19-2024, 09:47 AM
