Back on to the dash, using the old leather as a rough guide I cut out a new piece to be trimmed to fit. This leather seems a little thicker than the original but is all I have so it will have to do. The extra thickness did cause me some grief later on when fitting the gauges but it was too late by then, just have to deal with it and carry on.

The aerosol can contact glue is hopeless in my opinion so I use an old paint gun with commercial contact glue, mainly what I use for doing foam headliners but also great for this. Spray the back of the leather and brush the glue on the metal dash, let it flash a little and stick it on. Leather doesn't really like to stretch very well which is probably why they used a thinner leather here, especially on the underside of the gauge area.
Came out great, nothing too much wrong with the old leather but I wanted everything fresh and new so this was well worth doing.
trimmed the holes and edges next ready to accept the gauges.


Back to the gauges for now, I had ordered LED's and holders from Aliexpress and proceeded to fit these to the clock which was the first gauge I tackled. That was all fine and dandy, no real issues. Gave it a clean and installed it, very tight fit due to the extra leather thickness but got it there. Rheostat for the wiper speed next, all good.
As I worked my way through the rest of the gauges swapping out bulbs I realized that some gauges have the contact ring for the bulb on the outside of the board and some are on the inside of the board so you actually need dual prong bulb holders which mine were not.....No way to make them work unfortunately.
Quick google online, fortunately a local Jaycar outlet had the correct ones in white. ok, Best I go get some.
This is where the day started to go pear shaped, back with LED's I didn't want to have colour differences so the clock needed to come back out for those to be swapped out.
It was sooo tight and sooo difficult to remove and in doing that my hand slipped and broke the knob off the wiper rheostat. Great!!
No replacement around I also took that apart to see if it could be repaired. (off on the left in the next pic)

New lens made for the oil pressure gauge, rheostat apart and attempted to repair that. The solution in the end was drilling a small hole in each end of the plastic shaft and insert a piece of mig welding wire with epoxy. seems to have done the job for now, hopefully it lasts.
Two gauges I made new lenses for, all new LED's and a good clean they can all go back in a freshly trimmed dash where they belong.

Yet again change tack to work on something else, got the A/C pipes in along with a new drier and all new o'rings of course. Cleaned the old corroded aluminium ac pipes as best I could with some soap and steel wool, don't know why really as you'll never see them again but seemed like the right thing to do.
With those in place the fuel door assembly is next, this never fitted well since I got the car and after disassembling it to clean it I realized that the unit is infinitely adjustable to position the door in the fender precisely. Great for OCD people.
Everything cleaned assembly is pretty straight forward. Installing the fuel door I remembered at this point that when I took it apart originally the stud for the latch broke off, forgot to repair it prior to paint.
Looking at the plastic latch its pretty thick through the mounting stud area so I put it in the mill and milled the slot a little deeper so that a nut can grab hold of the remaining stud on the fuel door. Solved.


The old original fuel bib was pretty scungy so I figured I'd make a new one from some scrap leather, traced it out using the old one as a pattern and made two of these to be glued back to back to give it some structure.
I don't have a heat press for the logo stamp but a propane torch to heat the stamp and then clamping it in the vice seems to work, not ideal but got to work with what you have.

are you going to use anything to proof the leather against spilt fuel?

Hmm, good point. Not thought of that. Any ideas?

petrol is likely to wash out any oils you might put on it, some sort of silicone barrier?

They do sell chemical resistant work boots but how they protect them is probably a trade secret but I suppose it might be possible to find out the answer.

Could always just not spill petrol on it 
The bib is more so that you don't whack the fender with the Bowser handle.

Quote from: 80 Vert on October 30, 2022, 08:39:30 PM
Could always just not spill petrol on it 
The bib is more so that you don't whack the fender with the Bowser handle.

yeah, but there's always that moment . . .

yup, it will happen...

Nice work on the dash. Porsche have the best instrument arrangements IMHO.

Classic ones certainly do Jon, I do like that layout as well.
The rear shocks were in great condition mechanically but the plating on them was pretty poor, the fronts cleaned up really well to a point I was ok with just re fitting them. Just couldn't fit them as is and it seemed stupid to buy new ones just to have them looking nice.
Looked on line at possibly rebuilding them and having the bodies re plated but then thought they are pressurized so why not just plate them as is? Gas pressure will stop and chemicals getting in and I already know that rubber in unaffected by the chemicals so what could go horribly wrong?
Well, nothing as it turns out, came out like new. Set of new Bilstein decals to finish off and back on the car.

Next up, the suitcase. Not an entirely pleasant thing to fit. Very awkward and tight fit.
I'd rebuilt this whole thing on the bench with a new evaporator as I never want to touch this thing ever again, slow and steady was the plan. Towels on the paint taking my time getting it back in there.
As it turns out there were a couple retaining screws on the inside I'd put back in their locations when I removed it and clean forgot about these so I ended up having to remove the whole thing again to be able to get to them.
Second time round it all sat where it was supposed to. My top vent rubber bellows locating tabs are all broken off so that needs to be ordered, I just hope I can get that in there without having to remove this thing again.

Asked a friend to measure his rear badge to make sure this goes back in the correct spot, new badge of course as you do.
Measured and triple checked everything before plonking the badge down. Has it's identity back again now.

badges!! that means the end is in sight! what will I do on a Sunday if there's no more Porsche posts?

Lol end is in sight. You have at least another year of my rambling on left.

You might have mentioned earlier, but did you consider going to a PDM and ditching the relays and fuses?

Not me, no. Keeping most of it nice and original apart from the go fast part of it. You might be thinking about the MoTec I'm putting in?

Yes, I remember you mentioning the Motec. The wiring looks great, but just thought if you're modernising the electronics a PDM could be something to consider. Original is good though.

What is a PDM?

Power distribution module, bit like a modern Golf's BCM.

Drive shafts, all needed to come apart and be cleaned. Not a job I wanted to do but needs must and as it turned out that week I'd done new wheel bearings on a customers 930 Turbo and all CV boots on a MK1 Golf so to get to Saturday and do 8 CV joints and boots on my own wasn't very pleasant spending most of the week with grease on my hands and tools. Really dislike that horrible black cv joint grease.
All the joints looked ok, grease a bit liquid so best to change it. The boots were all still intact but noticeably harder and time for new.
The new boot kits are cheap as, Lobro brand same as the original CV joint fitted by Porsche. New grease, clamps and newly plated hardware to finish off a cleaned axle, one done three more to go. sigh...Nearly a whole day of axle rebuilding.

Bit of time left at the end to install one side, need to start thinking about getting the car off this cart as I'm really adding a lot of weight now. The cart was only ever for getting it to the painter and back but has been super handy for assembling the underside.

Installed the hood seal during the week, not had great success with ordinary contact glue on these types of seals so I really wanted some 3M weatherstrip adhesive but being in New Zealand where nothing is available or its prohibitably expensive it looked like I'd have to order it from overseas but then found a seller importing gaskets and seals for old US Fords and also stocked the 3M glue.
Ordered that and with a new seal from Porsche I'd be guaranteed of a perfect fit, glue sections at a time to make sure the seal sirs how it should. Another job done.

I'd decided it would be smart to order a new fuel pump some time ago even though the original was working fine still, a brand new modified engine and a 30yo fuel pump didn't seem smart hence the new Bosch pump. Wasn't even expensive surprisingly, new hoses crimped on to my OE hard lines and plated hardware the pump goes in. I'll have to drop it down again in order to install the fuel tank when the time comes.

New fuel pump is a good idea. Replacing mine on the Urquattro had fixed all of my running issues.

Loving this build, such attention to detail and it?s great to see it looking factory fresh as it goes back together.