'63 356B T-6 Rebuild

[Jack Staggs]

John, pardon my ignorance, but where were those fitted on a factory sunroof? I have never seen them there. Pics?

[JTR70]

What a frickin' mess, a monkey with a wire welder. I admire your patience John, I would be cursing that guys name while I struggled removing all of that crap.
Thanks for the update and keep up the fantastic work!
Justin

[John Pierce]

The sunroof "clip" I have is a bit large. It includes rusted out torsion areas. Now to fix mine.



I drilled holes large enough for the bosses with enough space for welding.



Everything bolted in place to give the correct distance and height measurements. Also to act as a jig to cut down on the amount of heat distortion.



Nice and strong again.

Onto the inner and outer frame repair.

Thanks for following.

[John Pierce]

Got some quality time with my car this last week



All the rust and crappy replacement metal has now been removed and the new metal has been fitted.



Outer view.



Have to work inner to outer so the first thing to repair is the heater duct and rear defrost. I made a replacement piece with connections to both.



The inner frame repair piece fitted to the heater duct. I made a flange to weld to.



This is a very tight fit with very little wiggle room.



Tacked in place.



Every time I see this I am amazed how the Porsche engineers crammed so much into this small area. The heater duct barely goes through.



I fit one section only to find more thinned metal that needs replacement.



All buttoned up.



Ground and planished.



Looking so much better from where it started.

Next will be the outer frame member.


John

[Jack Staggs]

John, I'm always amazed at the fabulous pieces that you fabricate. A few snapshots make it look so easy and quick, but I know it takes hours to make and fit them, with the welding requiring only minutes... then grind and planish (more hours)! Well done, sir.

[Jonesy_356]

Amen to that! I'm still mucking around with my door, you've done most of the rear of your car! Great work as always, thanks for sharing.

Jonesy

[John Pierce]

Thanks guys! Stoddard sells small repro sections of the inner and outer frames that are pretty close to the contours. They are made from 19 gauge metal, which is a bit thinner than the originals, but to make these complex shapes you gotta take what you can get. Unfortunately, a close approximation does not mean that it will fit as desired. The center portion of the repair panel is nice, but the front and rear portions don't fit at all. Like any repair panel the outer sections are only run-out. I cut out all the sections that didn't fit and placed the heater duct holes in the desired locations. Lots of time involved in the fitting.



This is during the fitment stage. Lots of tweaking to make fit. The bowl shape on the inner frame was a lot off and had to be cut to relieve the stress in the metal then reshaped.


JP

[DG58INNM]

John, your repairs look great. I am doing the right side of the Swiss Miss now, making almost identical repairs as yours (mine don't look quite as pretty though ). One thing I will say is that I don't think the Stoddard panels are strong enough for this task. I bought a set of these, and after measuring I decided not to use them. I found they were about 20ga. The original outer panel was 16 ga. (the metric equivalent anyway), and the inner panel 18 ga.

Since it looks like you have not attached the outer panel yet, maybe you could add another internal layer with your spot welder, to give the area some additional strengthening? Just a thought.

[John Pierce]

Hey David,

You are spot on! I also measured 18 gauge for the inner frame and 16 gauge for the outer frame. I replaced as much of the metal with the appropriate thickness as possible, especially the area holding the bosses around the torsion bar. So those areas are very strong.

I too was worried about the strength of the Stoddard repair panels. The way I look at it though is: 1. The complex curves, bends and flanges add a lot of strength to the metal; and 2. The freakin car is 50 years old and the original metal that is left is no longer 16/18 gauge!! I knew that trying to bend 16 gauge metal to those curves in my basement would not be possible. It's a little too thick for my biceps

I just finished repairing the outer frame, which I'll post in a bit. What I did to add more strength and rigidity to this area was to weld the outer frame to the heater duct. Originally there is only a flanged opening that the duct passes through. I'll also end up welding more of the outer frame to the inner frame where they meet at the longitudinal. In the end I think the whole area will be very strong....once again.

Thanks for commenting.


JP

[roy mawbey]

John,

Some very nice work there.Difficult area indeed to get correct.

Well done!

Roy

[Phil Planck]

John

In our quests for "correctness" this may only be a Reutter thing, but the front of the bottom pinch weld flange on Foam Car had a rounded, pointy shape which I preserved:





Maybe Karman's did not have that.

Phil

[bbspdstr]

Two cents, common sense and engineering safety factoring (which is usually a minimum of +3) gives some wiggle-room. You'd be OK (at least in a stable Coupe) with thinner metal one gauge down (up, numerically) but thicker is better if at all practical, especially if one expects to actually drive the subject 356.

(Again, up on my soapbox).......
Still, it would be nice if all of us could get "counterfeit NOS" rather than "repro"....repro I usually think of as akin to horseshoes and hand grenades; close, but no cigar. I find that I am buying parts and returning them far more than ever before in my career...as the bar has been raised and the demand for higher quality restoration results goes up and repro parts can't keep up.

I think many parts available now are better, advancing out of the kit car mentality, but I keep asking why, if the vendors's suppliers are doing the repro parts at all, why not do them just like the original?

So, cloning for guys like Victor Miles is imperative! The only alternative for having original parts done with the true definition of restoration is to have access to really good clones of those same parts.

Great work, John.

-Bruce

[bbspdstr]

In our quests for "correctness" this may only be a Reutter thing, but the front of the bottom pinch weld flange on Foam Car had a rounded, pointy shape which I preserved:......Maybe Karman's did not have that.
Phil

I have seen that forward end 'finished' in many ways, both R and K. Usually rounded, not pointy and often just bent over, it seems that it was whomever had the most time to be spent did whatever they could to make the pinchweld end somehow less pronounced.

I'm sure Jack has seen more survivor cars than I have, so maybe he will shed some experience to this detail.

-Bruce

[John Pierce]

Thanks guys for all the feedback. I've ruminated on the 20 gauge vs thicker gauge issue for weeks now and agree with what everyone is saying. I just finished the outer frame repair and still have the opportunity to replace some of the straight sections with thicker gauge.



This is what I started with. Not much to be desired.



The inner frame member. Not too strong especially as there are gaps with no metal around the torsion tube.



After removing most of the offending metal.



I replaced the flat metal around the torsion bosses with 16 gauge and welded new bosses in place to give the original strength and rigidity to this area. The inner frame has been installed and the cavity has been painted.



Crazy looking repair panel. The hole is flanged so it can be welded to the heater duct.



After a few fittings.....Voila! The outer frame buttoned up with new metal. After these great discussions here, the flat metal from the heater duct to the middle longitudinal will probably be replaced with 16 gauge to strengthen it further. Unlike OEM I welded the heater duct to the frame for strength.



As seen from inwards. Things have come a long way.

Thanks for following.


John

[JTR70]

Beautiful repairs John!!

I see that you have more adventure awaiting you inside of that longitudinal. Is that PVC pipe and crumpled tin foil that I see lurking in there? Keep fighting the good fight, she's definitely getting there!
Justin