'63 356B T-6 Rebuild

[John Pierce]

I've been working on restoring....derusting.....a lot of the small parts.



Wiper arms after sitting outside for 55 years.



Pretty nasty.



Media blast and prime/paint for the arms and Evaporust for the springs makes a big difference. I might go back and media blast then reprime and sand between several coats to fill in the pits a bit better. While Stoddard sells wiper arms they are not correct for the T6's.

JP

[John Pierce]

It's amazing how many small parts there are just in the trunk. The B T-6 cars were built with a new Fresh Air system, which included a Fresh Air box and side vents, to bring air into the cabin. A controller was placed on the dash.



Parts.



The early vent boxes had an angled water drain, while the later ones had an elbow. My car was build in August of 1962 so it's an early design. A lot of my car is interesting as it also has some T-5 parts.



Later design with elbow drain.



The rubber water drain from the vent box connects to a metal pipe in the trunk side wall that extends through the passenger door well then drips down below the car. As you can see Bubba was handy with his paint gun!!



This is the whole vent box assembly. There are two brackets that hold it in place under the cowl. The T-6 cars have a vented cowl to allow fresh air into the trunk.



Cowl vents when installed in a nice car



Rubber drain hose and brass insert to hold it to the vent box.



A woven mesh is on the top to keep debris out. A foam gasket seals the vent box to the cowl.



The mesh was also changed during production. The mesh over the air box in the early B T-6 is woven nylon/vinyl and in later B T-6 thru C is a wire mesh. Both are light grey (off-white) like the C fan shroud.



Lots of overspray even inside the box.



The woven mesh is NLA.



Industrial Netting will supply a sample piece of netting, which can be cut to size. A small section needs to be glued together to cover the whole area. The box has been stripped of the paint overspray and the netting has been painted the correct color.



The new mesh glued in place.

[ukinusa]

Quite the jigsaw - glad all I have in A to worry about are the windows to wind up and down ! Not even the little vent window !

[merbesfield]

Quite the jigsaw - glad all I have in A to worry about are the windows to wind up and down ! Not even the little vent window !

X 2

[Phil Planck]

John
Heres my tube on Foam car, I believe 1963:





For more trivia, the bottom of my trunk latch and original bracket have light green paint. Im sure Bruce knows the code

[John Pierce]

My car was built at the Karmann karosserie so they may have had more parts in stock and left over if they weren't building the cars as fast as Reutter. My heater tubes that go through the longitudinal were definitely the T5 style.

Green primer on your parts?

JP

[356JAGER]

Built in August 1962 ( just after high school graduation and in time for my
18th birthday on August 20. Less than a month prior to my enlistment)

[John Pierce]

Part of the T6 fresh air system is the side vents, which control where the air is vented into the car.



The side vents are tucked into the rear side portion of the trunk. A cable from the dash controls their function. Just a bit of overspray on these.


Air is vented to the dash and foot well through rubber connectors. These are now reproduced, but are very expensive, so try to refurbish the old ones.



The dash cable connects to these cogs to control the internal flaps.



Just a few parts to refurbish.



The rear of each vent was stamped with a painted marking.



The two halves were riveted together, which can be drilled out.



Two flapper valves control the air flow and each is held in place with magnets. Foam insulation was originally attached to the flap faces to make a tight seal.



The flaps in the fully closed position so no air enters the cabin.



Position where air is vented to the foot wells.



Position where air is vented to the windscreen.



Much cleaner after media blasting. The round black area is where the magnet was.



Time to replate all the parts. The Porsche parts manual lists what type of plating is required. I bought the Caswell plating system, which is easy to use. The buckets contain a degreaser, distilled water rinse, muriatic acid, sodium bicarbonate, and the plating solution. The degreaser and plating solution need to be heated to 190 F and 110 F respectively.



Plating occurs with constant current. Formulae can be used to figure out how much current to use, but it's easier to watch how much bubbling occurs during the plating and modify it. This is not rocket science



The parts are hung with copper wire on a copper bar. They are degreased, rinsed, acid etched, rinsed, neutralized in sodium bicarb, rinsed, then plated and rinsed again.



The parts are placed into the plating bath and connected to the transformer for about 20'.



I am zinc plating so there are two zinc plates on either side of the piece to be plated. Later on I bought 2 more zinc plates to give a nice full 360 coverage.



After and before picture. The Caswell name for the process is called Copy-CAD. It's easy to do and turns out well, especially for small batches. I like to plate the parts that I'm currently working on instead of getting a whole batch to send to a plater, which then may lose these small parts.



Blow dry the parts to prevent streaks and then let them hang overnight.



This is how they look when complete. Nicely zinc coated. You can control how shiny you want the pieces by adding a brightener to the zinc solution.



The vent bodies were epoxy primed and painted. Now for reassembly.



I added new foam insulation to the flap controllers to prevent air leaks and whistling.



Completed with a new Behr sticker, which is only on the passenger side air vent. A green marking was originally placed on the cog assembly nut to indicate that it was tightened and checked.



New OEM marking were placed on the rear of the bodies with white paint and foam letters/numbers.



Passenger side vent.


The zinc plating turned out nicely. Like OEM, tape was placed around the edges where the two vent halves meet and are inserted into the rubber pieces.

Thanks for following.

[Don C]

Outstanding John!

[VirtuallyReal]

At the end, this car will be so perfect that it will be... undriveable!

Your work is simply amazing John.

[bbspdstr]

All I can say is........holy shit!

This is a scary space, John. I have never seen the inside of a T-6 air valve other than what can be seen from the outside. I have never gone Corvette-ish Gold with the "C 2" letter/number (Carrera2?)....'cause it can't be seen when installed. Etc.

In the early '70s, I was involved with a movie about Bob Sharp Racing out of Connecticut. As cutting began, a title was yet to be chosen. We sat around, boozing and passing around a fat doobie, kicking around car guy names for the film and hoping to associate a name with the myriad details of a small racing organization that made it so successful. One of us who wasn't a car guy came up with something that stuck: "Some People Collect Stamps." Maybe this applies here and now?

On another note, I recently received my Caswell plating kit but did not get the powerpack. The instruction book IS rocket science to me, an admittedly poor reader. I am light years behind John. One thing...what is being done to those air valves is unoriginal, isn't it? Whichever vendor who supplied Porsche did not use EPOXY coatings, did they? HA! I thought not!

Whew. (That's exhaled in a good way.)

Bruce

[Phil Planck]

Took the words right out of my mouth Bruce.

[Red911]

Hi John,

I also use Caswell's plating system with five gallon jugs.

One trick that makes both bright zinc sparkle and the yellow "cad", even though it is not cad is too dip the parts for 45 seconds in Blue Chromate just prior to the cad. Check out the bright zinc springs. This provides this kind of an end finish for me in Cad. The Caswell site speaks about this. An Aussie brought it to my attention.





Your parts look very professional.

Tom

[John Pierce]

Thanks guys for the compliments. Bruce, I always love your stories. You are the most fascinating man!! I'd love to come work for you. That is such a cool title for a movie

Don't buy the transformer from Caswell....way too expensive. The one below works very well for the size of pieces we normally need to plate and it's $85 with Amazon Prime:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B073TW8H2S/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Tom, your plating looks very professional with beautiful colors. I used the black chromate on the parts that called for it and it turned out nicely. What car were you restoring back in 2007?

Everything on the side vent was put back as OEM.....white paint on the "C2" lettering. I restored a second set of side valves with an "F2" on the back side so don't think the C2 was for Carrera, but it sounds good.







JP

[bbspdstr]

These are most certainly "C 2"



But these would most likely be the "F('d up")2" versions