Just amazing!

The new rims fits so much better, totally approved!!

Really amazing...

 

I had a longer post written but I lost it by accident, so here's take 2.

One thing that bothered me about the car was its pretty new white license plate. It just didn't match.


As of July 1, 2009, Californians can put the original color of plates back on the car if they have an unregistered front and rear set, and pay a small fee. My friend just happened to have a set, and he gave them to me for my car.



I found a more suitable license plate frame on Ebay for $35. It looked too busy for the back so I put it on the front.


I used my cheap art kit's paints to carefully retouch the plate. I wanted it to look old still, but the numbers and black were a little rusty and it was a mess.


Perhaps most amazing was that I was able to scratch back the year stickers until I found the original pink 1968 sticker. It's weird, the other stickers broke away easily but the 68 was fine. I carefully cleaned it up and even though it'll be recovered once my month/year stickers are here.

Finally, I put a $5 chrome frame on the rear plate:


The brakes were starting to make lots of noise, and one side had been pulling for weeks. I bought replacement calipers with pads for $50. Removing old calipers:


The rears seemed fine. Fronts were well ready.


I like how you can change the pads in seconds if you want to. But since I was replacing the calipers, too it's a bit bigger job.

This is not how a brake pad is supposed to look:


The new calipers were much nicer and cleaner. The rotor had a little wear, but they were pretty good still and we saw no need to replace.


Then we bled the fronts, and threw the wheels back on.

We left the shop and agreed to meet about 15 miles south at a restaurant for lunch. Since my 912 has one seat still, I drove solo. I was scared of the freeway, since I had only taken the car on it once and that was over a month ago. It had been sitting since then with a few new parts. But I figured it'd be okay. I merged onto the freeway at 70 and about 2 miles later the car started losing speed, it seemed really down on power. I noticed it was getting worse, so I pulled over.

A highway patrol officer was out back before I was out of the car. Amazing. He was really young and asked if everything was okay, to which I replied and told him my friend was coming. He didn't want to stick around so he told me to sit in the seat with the lapbelt on until my friend arrived.

A couple minutes later after baking in 80+ without a moving car or AC, I popped the back. I couldn't find anything immediately wrong. The fuel looked a little low in the filter, but it was clean. Still, the low fuel seemed to be an indication that somewhere from the gas tank to the fuel pump, we had a problem. Maybe the fuel pump itself, but it's hard to say this soon.

The car wouldn't idle very well, but I was able to bring it back to the shop without trouble. I think some loose crap from the tank has dislodged finally and I should probably replace both filters from just a few months ago, as sediment made its way from the tank. I guess I should really clean that up next.

 

looks awesome! what a fun little car. i love how the floors cleaned up, impressive

 

Detailed! Poor quality iphone pics to follow:




It's a night and day difference, looks like a different car.

No pictures of the hood because its paint is unworkable. I'll have our local guys match/respray it and show some pics of the completed car.

The paint now makes the car look like a 10/10 car (maybe 8/10 if you notice some slightly warped doors and hood) from about 15 feet away. Any closer and you'll spot 40 years of dings and dents, touch-up paint etc. I need to re-touch some of those spots and color sand. Being a frugal person, I love the fact that the car looks "good enough" now with almost no money spent.

The process was:
Clay bar the whole car (constantly wet the paint/clay while working it), probably spent about 5-6 hours on clay
Wool pad on whole paint job using Turtle Wax buffing compound and some Harbor Freight buffer
Medium foam (yellow) pad to remove residue and a little extra polishing action
Microfiber to dry it off
Soft (grey) foam with some cleaner/wax to do a final cleanup and wipe down with microfiber.

I'll try to get some higher res photos once the hood is done. Compare that to before!





You get the idea.

 

Nice progress! I actually like the steelies more than the Fuchs but I'd run them with the hubcaps but that's just me. Love the last pic because it really shows the original shortwheel base design so well. Only thing taking away from it is those ugly front and back turn signal/reflector things.