Hey all - I've been lurking in the forum for a bit now and I finally registered to share something with you all.

I'm starting to document the restore of an unfortunate Sandy Flood car. I realize the stigma and recommendations against such an effort, especially a salt water car, but to be honest it wasn't my choice. So I can't take the blame, nor the credit if my dad's ideas work out. None the less, it will be a fun project. I figured some of you guys would like to watch the progress. I'll be doing a large portion of the work myself, so if you have any ideas or criticisms, feel free to let me know! I am new to the 997s, but have done my fare share of wrenching on air cooled Porsches and ///M Cars.

Posts should be updated at least every couple days. Cheers!

http://www.gt3cpr.blogspot.com/

 

Good luck on your restore. Should be a fun project.

 

Cool, and nice to see the extra goodies on it too!

Are you planning on putting it back to street spec, full interior, etc? Or maybe doing race prep or something in-between?

 

Nice blog, will try to follow as much as possible.

 

How much do you paid for it?

 

Find a second hand wiring loom, it will give you loads of issues with high resistances over time. Same goes for any part looms or control unit wiring that made it to the salt water.

Water in the oil is a big issue- find someone who has or buy a borescope (can be had for ~$150) pull the plugs and check the bores/cylinders for corrosion...

 

Cool project, thanks for sharing...

 

Wow that's an awesome project and it looks like you got lucky and it wasn't as bad as could have been. Nice discoveries with the Moton Clubsports and the GMG Exhaust too! If you don't mind, can you tell us what you paid at auction for the car? At the end it seems like you're going to have saved a ton of money and have the pride and recognition for having saved this GT3RS. Not everybody has the talents to take in such a project, so it's nice to see you'll be rewarded for your efforts.

 

Wow, subscribed!

Also that's a nice shop you got there. Those other P cars are beautiful.

 

Thanks! We were pleasantly surprised as well. For now, we're going to return it to street spec/full interior. I haven't checked out what spring rates are on the car, but its life will consist of mostly street duty with the occasional track days when we can.
Sorry, the man with the money doesn't want this disclosed. I will say that we wouldn't really have a problem parting it out to get our money back though.
Do you have any first hand experience with this? We have a Porsche Tech coming out to test our harness and code some things tomorrow night to give us more first hand insight. He's apparently working on a flood damaged boxter at this shop right now. Most everything worked when we gave it a jump. All the controls in the dash, windows, lights etc had no problems. Regardless we had pretty good success cleaning the wiring up with chems.

The exhaust valves didn't look great. While there wasn't any rust, there was some salt residue-like substance. It really didn't look or feel like corrosion. The cylinders looked pretty typical through our borescope. Carboned, but not rusty. Rolling the motor over(plugs out/exhaust off) by hand didn't give any troubling sounds of rusted cylinder walls. Plugs looked surprisingly good. Very very little rust. They had Moisture/vapor like rust, but not what you would think of if there was any significant water in cylinders. From here it looks like we need to get the electronics sorted out, and then we can check compression.
Thanks everyone for the kind words and encouragement. I made a small update to the blog today for anyone interested.

To the people who sent me PMs; I'm too new to respond on this forum so either send me an email address or phone number and I'll try to get back to you as soon as possible!

 

Yes in my early years as a master tech I dealt with water/flood damaged cars. While cleaning and lubing connections etc restored the cars to a running condition without fail 6-18 months later electrical gremlins would appear; fault codes for high resistances being the main.

The loom has lots of splices of various forms hidden which were the main cause.

Systems like the airbags WILL give you problems, the part looms like those under the seat and to the control box should be replaced with out fail.

The white deposit will be salt. I'd fill the cylinders with a light weight oil and then turn over by hand (with the plugs out) to coat the cylinder bores... it will make a mess!

Jay

 

s62, thanks for taking us all on this journey with you. I can understand the reluctance in sharing the cost of the car with us, at least for now. Maybe once it's all done, he'll allow you to tell us, so others can decide whether or not a project like this may be within reach for them. I have a question for you, have you guys thought of Extrude Honing some parts on the engine like the heads and valve journals etc., places that may need to be cleaned up fairly well to get rid of any possible contaminants? I know Extrude Honing has been used with minor success in other engines for other means, but a light use of EH might be perfect for this type of project to make sure the important places are nice and clean. Just thinking out loud lol Good luck with the harness, looks like you guys went through a pretty great length in order to save it. I can't believe a new one cost 7K, that's a lot of wire! lol

 

Personally if this was a track car I'd be ok with this because any issues are easier to resolve (no trim) and some electrical items can be eliminated (airbag etc). Corrosion of body not an issue nor is resale due to history.

For road I might have considered a fresh water foot well deep flood damaged car but not salt for the reasons mention previously.

BUT... good on you for getting stuck in! Best of luck.

I will follow out of interest and help if I can.

Are you using a professional electrical contact cleaner/lub on all connectors? Similar to:

http://www.janeiceproducts.com/store...nsion-P-163182

Jay

 

Thanks Jay, I'll bring that up for consideration. I'm assuming that he's going to want to try our luck for the time being, which could very likely result in me having to take the car down in the future, but I really do appreciate the input.

I didn't mention it in the blog, but I used fogging oil to coat the cylinders after checking everything out.

After the project is done, I'll try my best to get some kind of figures to go off of. It's funny you say that because someone just recommended that I look into EH... If we get some less than favorable compression numbers and have to take the motor down further, i will definitely consider EH! Thanks!

For cleaning the connectors we used the homemade concoction pictured in our blog. We used some CRC electric contact cleaner as well but the magic potion worked brilliantly.

 

salt water is nasty. I would make sure there are no seized bolts in the suspension. Take them out, clean and re install.