so I've been working on this for 2 weeks now and although I'm sure I'll get some guff for doing this from the Porsche gods... I'm enjoying it and having fun with my boy. so to the haters... please remember, it's just a car and life is short creating memories with my son that will never be forgotten.. and I get a cool unique Porsche out of it

so attached is the car as it looked when I bought it this last summer before we cut it up lol also is the picture of the fenders I purchased off ebay for another project. My son is holding up the fender to see how it would looked. I did post this pic once before and it was labeled as ugly as an "uncircumcised *****" lolololol

So after thinking about it for a bit and selling my boxster a few weeks ago I thought ... why not !!! I've always wanted one of the those eye popping exotic cars I see on youtube and this Porsche is going to be it... or it will get sold for pennies on the dollor because I'm to embarrassed to drive it around my buddies with nice cars on our cruises in the summer cuz it sticks out like a sore thumb lol we will see.

Color is going to be synergy green, I bought the GT3 rear bumper, bought a GT3 style wing I'm going to custom modify to work with the areo wing on there. I also deleted the sun roof(weld in roof panel) and plan on doing a roof scoop.. yes a hated roof scoop. just save the judgment till the end I will post more pics and post following this post as I'm not sure how many pics I can load per post. I will also describe each pic in the post so others who go down this road understand what all I'm doing and why.

I have not decided on the front bumper yet but it will not be the stock one. I might do something with the front hood as well... and fenders lol this is a work in progress.

I am a little further along than the pics will show as I don't have them all on my phone but will update as work is completed.

1999 Carrera with manual 6speed, complete fabspeed exhaust, fabspeed cold air intake, my genius tune and a complete Memphis stereo system with subs... loudest and best sounding system I have ever heard in a car and I used to do systems as a younger guy. it was done before I purchased the car and who ever did it spent some SERIOUS money on the stereo system.. I mean wow guys the car sounds amazing.

Brian

PS. I'm putting this thread in the three Porsche forums I'm a member in ... I love constructive criticism or fun car talk.

 

So these pics are of the cutting of the fenders... yes I did shed a tear or two as I made the cut lol

it went smoothly and I was able to cut exactly to my lines and was very happy with the alignment of the fenders wells to the body afterwards.

 

So now onto the welding. I started out with just a quick tac weld every inch or so as I wanted to make sure it was secure to the body but I didn't want to cause any warping. once it was tacked on I then went back and would weld about 3 inches at a time and let it cool down before welding again. I also made a return at the bottom of both fenders so they were not just flapping around toward the bottom of the fender and welded those on as well.

 

so just some quick bondo pics next and then some pics of the side skirts I'm making following this post.

 

Making some side skirts to blend into the fenders.

I originally bought the GT3 side skirts off Ebay... wow they were quite flimsy and I did not like the look. I planned on moding them to make them work with what I was doing but decided it would be better to just make my own.

so these are just the forms in the pics right now. I will be making my molds from these which I can then pop a part to attached to the car. Very easy process, just takes a little patience.

 

So if you have ever bought a Duraflex part you probably already know how thin and weak they can be. That's not a slam on Duraflex. I have used a lot of there stuff and I like using them. But for those who don't know... they can crack and break and alignment can be frustrating at times.

The two pics attached show what I did to make them fit a little better. when I initially put the rear bumper on it was way to wide where it would attach by the rear fender. so much so that it cracked and slit apart at the rear passenger side corner about 3 inches long.

What I did was measure the width of the car where they mount and drew some lines on the ground. forced the sides to those lines with the straps you see in the pics and then put some fiber/poly on the inside of the bumper to help with strength and to hopefully conform it a little more to make it a bit more narrow.... it worked and once I get everything fitted and finished before paint I plan on doing it again and pretty much coating the entire inside of the bumper with two layers of 1.5 chopped to help it. this will help with the sun warping it as well in the summer.. ask me how I know that lol

Good stuff, you just need to be willing to add your touch to it and make it work.
and that's it till I take more pics. thanks for reading guys.

 

Thanks for sharing your project with us! Im curious on how did you seal the inner metal fenders now that the outer layer is wider than the oem quarter panel (the part you cut)?

 

I have not yet but will be doing that. I cut the underside to the radius where it turns downward toward the outer skin. so I will just have to cut some straight sheet metal and bend it f/aft and weld it in.

so this weekend I tackled the sunroof. the gap that needed to be filled was roughly 0.200 so I had some sheet metal in my stash that I cut down to 0.175ish at 0.064 thick and fitted it into the gap. spot welded it and through out this week i'll slowly get it all welded in.



like an idiot I didn't cover my front windshield to protect it from the weld splatter... ya need a new front windshield now lol oh well I was debating replacing that anyway.

 

not sure how detailed I should get with this build. some don't like the small posts some like every detail documented. for me I'm the latter but i'll try to stay in the middle last night I sanded on the drivers side skirt and got it about 80% to where the passenger side is. had to put a little more mud on it, so waiting for that to dry to finish.

the passenger side I worked on the bonding surface to the car. not sure how to word this or explain it but i'll try. this is where the part/skirt will have a void outward but be 1 to1 to the car where I will stick it and then cover up the void with bonder/glass.

This way I will have a seamless skirt. I'm not a fan of seeing the seams like I do on youtube for a lot of them so I'm crossing my finger that it bunds well enough and doesn't crack the paint or anything with flex of the car. I'm going to look into some 3m type glues to see if I can get a better adhesive than just bondo/glass to the metal.

If anyone knows of a good product, feel free to throw it out there

Picks attached are of the bonding surface I'm referring to.

thanks

 

Just a little FYI from someone with a metal fab background. First off remove the paint at least a 3" from your cut for two reasons. First is breathing in heated up paint coatings can hurt you. Second how can you judge HAZ or heat put into panel if you can see metal? DO NOT WELD any metal when you don't know what is on it!! Do not use any brake cleaners on the metal. Welding fumes are dangerous take them seriously and at lest throw on a cheap mask.

One of the big mistakes people make is not having a big enough gap between the patch and the 1/4. As a guide it should be the thickness of the metal being welded otherwise your welds are sitting on top of the panels. Turn the power up and slow the speed down. Best way to adjust a welder is to take a spare piece and just pull the trigger and do it by ear. You will hear it change as you go past the perfect adjustment. Most novices are so worried about warp they don't use enough heat. Your welds should be on the edge of burning through. With a mig welder you are warping the panels end of story. What you have to be worried about is when you grind the weld back. If that weld is sitting on top and you grind it back it can look perfect but a coupe hits with a hammer and you will see cracks.

Try not to grind the metal before welding use a disc instead. A lot of people use a grinder not realizing they thin the metal they are welding making it harder to weld.Next time you need to fill a gap or hole get a small piece of copper tube and flatten it out. You can then hold it behind the hole or gap and weld it up easier. As far as heat use a blow gun after you pull a weld it cools the panel quickly. The problem with mig welding is the weld itself is harder then the metal and cant be flattened. If doing a flat panel get a cheap dolly and grind out a groove in it so the weld fits in it and you can hammer the panel flat. Be careful with that roof if that buckles on you your screwed unless you have some good metal finishing skills next time try some adhesive instead.

Use a fiberglass body filler for your first coat as there are always pin holes in your welds and moisture will get behind there and you will start to see ghost marks in your paint and can actually rust and fail. It is also a good idea to coat the backside to also seal the panel. You can also shoot epoxy first and filler on top.

Just had some free time and saw the pics I'm laughing because the first thing I though is he's going to get pops all over those side windows. Weld splatter and even grinder can cause damages. Didn't mean to invade your build just wanted to pass along some info.

Cool looking project!!

 

great info, thank you for that. always appreciate people sharing there knowledge

 

so I had my paint mixed up last night. its a cross between "antifreeze green" and "envy green" I like it and super excited to see how it looks on the car when I should have some color pics by the end of the week.

finally finished up the forming of the driver side skirt and wheel flare for rr bumper. starting on molds for those asap.

also started on dents that need some fluff.

last but not least.... the scoop!! lol I plopped some mud on there last night and just did a ruff form to see if I'm going to like it.... I do but it has a long way to go. please chime in on opinions on this roof scoop.

 

So just a quick update. Last night I pulled off my first mold.. came out quite nice I wont have much clean up to do for it and will hopefully be making my first part within in a week. tonight or tomorrow i'll be pulling my second mold which is the driver side of the mold I pulled last night. one side of the skirt mold is almost ready to be pulled probably another week on that. the skirts are taking longer than I thought and turning out to be harder than I wanted lol laying the fiber glass on the underside is not easy, kills my arm, fiberglass sometimes wants to fall and its just a pain in the dupa.

so the pics below have the mold mess, just want to say a quick comment on this for anyone who might be trying this stuff. using the drywall mud as my forming component when popping the mold makes this part easy. all I had to do was squirt water periodically around the mold and let it run down underneath over the span of about 20 minutes and viola... it falls right off. The drywall mud, once it gets wet just turns to mush. Run it under some water and clean off the mold and its done. way easier than trying to pop the wax layer that is usually done. I do put wax under there as well but mainly as a way to just be another barrier to separate the mold from the car.

The paint pics!!!!! omg guys... this paint looks amazing !!! the pics do NO justice to how it looks. the pearl in this paint looks so nice. I've painted metallic over the years and this is my first time painting with a pearl and wow.. just wow it looks so good. the pics below are before I wet sanded and clear coated so it did darken up just a bit and show the pearl better after. i'll get some better pics of the paint another time.

more updates in about two weeks.. hopefully

 

love that green

 

Thanks, I'm very happy with the color.

I was to busy at work to post pics (they expect me to earn my wages ... crazy) yesterday so here I am today. I had a good weekend and was able to get a bit done on the car.

first pics are the side skirt for pass side. squirted it with water and let it seep down behind the mold and.. presto, popped right off :rockon: very cool as I was very worried if they were going to come off with out any issues. now I'm cleaning up the mold and should be making my first set of parts by the end of the week. so as of now both rear bumper flare molds are made and off the car and the passenger side skirt mold. laying up the drivers side this week.

second pics are of the calipers. they look good enough to eat lol love em!!! I took them to my brothers house where all my big tools are since this new house is to small for that stuff and sand blasted the calipers. primed them, 3 layers of paint, Brembo stickers applied and then 3 layers of clear coat on them. if you zoon in on the close up pic you can see they pearl in it.

last pics are of the roof scoop. I've started sanding on it and forming it. I think I want it to be a little shorter off the top. any thoughts on it?

Thanks
Brian