Popular Post Flash Posted November 15, 2014 Popular Post Share Posted November 15, 2014 Discuss here : //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/45898-flash-porsche-boe/ Okay, so this particular build took place a good decade ago and half a world away, but hopefully it will be of interest to some of you. So I'll start off with a bit of background: At the time I'd owned a metallic blue 1982 911 SC coupe for a couple of years. In addition to being my daily driver the car was also used for track days, autocross events and club sprints. One day whilst participating in an autocross event, I encouraged Mrs Flash to give it a go. Never having done any form of motor sport prior to this she nervously climbed behind the wheel. I stood anxiously watching from the side lines as she proceeded to thrash my pride and joy like a woman possessed. The smile on her face when she climbed out of the car made me realise that I was in serious trouble. Little did we know that this single moment would change the focus of our lives for the next 3 years. With the two of us punishing my SC every opportunity we could get, we soon realised that we were going to need to invest in another car that we could dedicate to competition use. For a single season we shared an under powered Porsche 924 that we poured bucket loads of time and cash into to try to make it go. Then one day a chance conversation with a fellow competitor resulted in an opportunity to purchase another ’82 SC coupe, this time in grand prix white. A deal was struck and we found ourselves the proud owner of another 911. It was already fitted with Bilstein gas shocks, but was running standard road height, so we pulled out the rear shocks and front inserts, had them re-gassed to Clubsport specifications, reset the torsion bars for extra low and had the car corner weighted. The white paintwork looked a bit plain so we added a set of Carrera script graphics along the side. These pictures were taken at our first track day with the new car. 16 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flash Posted November 15, 2014 Author Share Posted November 15, 2014 We were now well and truly hooked and spent the next six months attending every event we could find. We had both signed up for the national racing series hosted by the Porsche Club as well as a regional autocross series being hosted by a local Sports Car Club. In order for both of us to race in each series we entered the car in two different categories. We were literally racing every weekend and attending mid week open sessions that a number of the larger race tracks hosted. Some weekends we were traveling up to 1,500km to participate in an event. Every spare bit of cash that we had was going on tyres, fuel, hotel bills and entry fees. Even our business took a back seat to this new obsession. During this time we made a few more improvements to the car. We were now running R rated semi slicks, a set of RUF oversize front and rear sway bars, custom made exhaust headers and a free flow exhaust. On this particular morning we left home at around 3:00am to travel 700km to a track that was hosting a mid week track day. At shortly after 4:00pm that afternoon Mrs Flash was out on the track in the second to last session of the day. She had been setting a blistering pace all day and had improved her lap times by almost 3 seconds a lap. Then this happened: 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flash Posted November 15, 2014 Author Share Posted November 15, 2014 She entered the 90 degree right hand sweep before the main straight clipping the apex perfectly, but sadly she was carrying too much speed and the car drifted across the tarmac onto the kitty litter. A quick jerk on the steering wheel brought the car back onto the good stuff, the tyres bit in and promptly catapulted the car straight into the concrete pit wall front end first at about 100k's per hour. The car kissed the wall with the front right corner, spun a full 180 degrees and kissed the wall again with the rear just for good measure. At the time I was standing behind the pit wall with a stop watch so this all unfolded right in front of me. Mrs Flash was knocked out by the impact which had been so fierce it had pushed the windscreen out of its frame and broken the engine and gearbox off its mounts. The Marshalls red flagged the session and the medics proceeded to extricate Mrs Flash from the wreck. By this time she had come around and her first question to me was "What was my last lap time ?" I looked down at the stop watch which was still ticking away. As a precautionary measure they put Mrs Flash on a backboard and we headed off by ambulance to the on track clinic so that they could check her over. After giving her the once over they fitted her with a temporary neck brace and sent us on our way. Whilst all of this was going on the Marshalls and a group of our racing buddies had managed to lift the remains of the Porsche onto a friend's trailer and those first pictures of the wreck are what you see above. So in summary, we are 700kms away from home with a mortally wounded car that we had driven up to the track. We have no way to get home and I have client meetings scheduled for the next day. Fun, fun, fun ... There was no way that we were going to get the wreck off my mates trailer so a decision was taken that he would tow the wreck to his place whilst I followed behind in his race car. Luckily he was a local, so stayed relatively close by. These pictures were taken at my mate's place that night.... much of the same. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flash Posted November 16, 2014 Author Share Posted November 16, 2014 Next morning another racing mate who owned a second hand car business lent us a Mitsi Pajero short wheel base off his showroom floor and we hit the road home with the wreck still on the trailer. 8 hours later we were back at base camp. Having to catch up on work we left things as is until the weekend. When we first started out with our Porsche 924 racer we picked up sponsorship from a local panel beater called John who did quite a bit of paint and panel work on the 924, so naturally we called on John to give us his opinion on whether the SC could be saved. My biggest concern was the obvious signs of structural damage. the picture below that was taken in our driveway clearly shows the bends in the left hand side back fender caused by the whole back of the car being pushed across. That being the second point of contact with the wall you can only imagine how bent the front was. The windscreen pillars were so badly twisted that the windscreen wouldn't fit back into the opening. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flash Posted November 16, 2014 Author Share Posted November 16, 2014 More pictures of the carnage taken in our driveway before we offloaded the wreck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flash Posted November 16, 2014 Author Share Posted November 16, 2014 John agreed to come out to our place on the Saturday to assess the damage and after crawling under the car whilst it was still on the trailer, he optimistically announced that he was pretty certain that he could repair the body. To save on costs it was agreed that Mrs Flash and I would strip the car down to a bare shell before getting it transported to John's shop for further assessment. Things would have to wait a few days though as we were both due to participate in a local Autocross event on the Sunday, this time using my blue SC. Over the next 10 days every spare moment that we had was spent on stripping the car down until it was ready to go to John's. We followed the transporter through and helped John's team manhandle the shell onto his Celette chassis bench. Once it was secured to the bench I pulled out what was left of the front and rear suspension and John's team set to work. In an attempt to retain as much body integrity as possible John had taken a decision to cold pull the chassis in small daily increments. The shell spent almost two weeks on the bench before John pronounced it straight. As had been previously agreed with John I had arranged to have the shell transported to another panel beater who owned an electronic chassis alignment system called a Car-O-Liner to verify that everything was within factory tolerance. So once again I installed the suspension and we loaded the rolling shell onto a transporter. The good news was that it was all within factory specs and the shell returned to John's place so that the cosmetic repairs could begin. This is a pic of the shell back at John's place. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flash Posted November 16, 2014 Author Share Posted November 16, 2014 So shortly after the accident Mrs Flash and I had agreed that if we were going to rebuild the car we may as well go all out and create the ultimate club racing car. So the focus would be on getting the car as light as possible with some trick suspension bits and pieces. The plan was to replace the front and rear bumpers with light weight fiberglass replacements. A light weight fiberglass bonnet would replace the damaged original and we would strip as much excess weight out of the car whilst still keeping it relatively road friendly. John agreed to give us access to his workshop over weekends so that we could fit the aftermarket panels before laying on the new paint. The first job was to remove the thick sound deadening from the interior floor and underside of the body pan. Mrs Flash got to work with a heat gun and scraper whilst I fabricated the light weight bumper mounts to mount the new panels. Over the next few weekends we removed 22 kilos of rubberising and other sound deadening material and replaced it with a thin coat of water based textured under seal. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flash Posted November 16, 2014 Author Share Posted November 16, 2014 Unfortunately we don't have any pictures of the rest of the work done at John's place, so I'll jump forward to the work that continued once we had the painted shell back home. With the freshly painted shell up on stands I made quick work of fitting the new lightweight bonnet. Hope you like the new colour. It took us ages to make the final choice, but we both agreed that since the car needed completely repainted we may as well change to something more racy looking than the original white. Notice the tear drop light weight mirrors. These are fiberglass 964RS replicas without the heavy electric motors that the original SC mirrors had. Porsche's come from the factory with a colour matched underside and fender wells and there is nothing nicer than working under a clean looking race car, so we decided to keep that look. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flash Posted November 16, 2014 Author Share Posted November 16, 2014 With the bonnet all sorted the next step was to fit the lightweight front bumper. But before that check out the left hand fender. This is the original unit that John had managed to repair. The right hand front fender was second hand replacement unit. We thought about going for fiberglass front fenders, but the cost was excessive. The indicator lights are genuine Porsche 964 units. We deleted the bumper mounted spot lamps in favour of a set of RS brake cooling ducts. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flash Posted November 17, 2014 Author Share Posted November 17, 2014 We had also been gathering a few new suspension related bits and pieces and refurbishing other parts before final reassembly. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flash Posted November 17, 2014 Author Share Posted November 17, 2014 And then came the assembly work. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flash Posted November 17, 2014 Author Share Posted November 17, 2014 Half of the original fender mounted oil cooler was still embedded in the pit wall, so we ordered a high capacity aftermarket replacement, unit, fabricated up some brackets and mounted that puppy in place. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flash Posted November 17, 2014 Author Share Posted November 17, 2014 With the suspension coming together nicely my focus moved to the motor and gearbox which were looking decidedly tatty. I stripped off all of the ancillaries and gave the whole thing a tidy up. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flash Posted November 17, 2014 Author Share Posted November 17, 2014 The original interior was a lovely combination of light and dark brown. The plan was to change eveything to black. We would be deleting the back seat for a lightweight black contoured carpet similar to what the original RS came out with. The heavy front door panels with storage pockets would make way for lightweight RS replic panels with original RS door pulls. We had also sourced a set of period correct Recaro sport seats with the extra side bolsters that were a factory option at the time. The dash, rear side panels and back parcel shelf cover were redyed and a lightweight fabric roof lining was installed. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flash Posted November 17, 2014 Author Share Posted November 17, 2014 I also did a quick tidy up of the engine bay before re installing the engine and gearbox. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flash Posted November 17, 2014 Author Share Posted November 17, 2014 With the assembly almost complete and the car back on its wheels, it was time to fire it up and get it out of the shed. The side skirts still needed to go on at this stage. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flash Posted November 17, 2014 Author Share Posted November 17, 2014 And the final reveal. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Flash Posted November 17, 2014 Author Popular Post Share Posted November 17, 2014 An finally a few grainy pictures of the Yellow Peril back in action. 15 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.