My '54 Coupe, that we call "Curb Appeal"

[mr. warehouse]

[mr. warehouse]

[mr. warehouse]

Finishing touch that just so happens to cover up the nice OG logo I was so worried about having...







I'm going to clean up some of this mess and put that dash in later. The windshield was enough stress for one day.

[mr. warehouse]

Sept 1st 2012 -

The big 3 minute drive to the cruise night was cool, but the 45 minute drive around town afterward was even better.

I didn't have a tripod handy so I had to make due with a *somewhat* steady hand and light poles to get so decent shots.



With this I think we can move this to the "done" thread....

[mr. warehouse]

March 1st 2013 -

As stated earlier I was asked to have my car shot for AirMighty Magazine. The photographer is in SoCal, so I tied that in with a trip to the 356 Registry Weekend.

Against my better judgment I took the 356 for a drive today to get some video before loading it for the trip south.

[mr. warehouse]

Part 2 Nice winding back roads

Part 3 Boring traffic

Part 4 Wait for it.....

So much wrong in that video.

Not turning the engine off when smoke started pouring out of the rear.
Continuing to drive with the oil light on
Never looking at my gauges / lights, instead looking in the rear view.

No worries though, the ending is great.

[mr. warehouse]

Oil every where. Engine bay, body, glass, and on the ground.

I called Kobus and Ed Foxx (the photographer) to break the bad news to them, and send them these pictures as well....

[mr. warehouse]

The good part out of all of this was that I had a truck with trailer attached waiting for me at home. My plan was to take a cool drive and roll up in the trailer for a closing shot.

Instead I walked home and called for help along the way.

I wasn't as worried about missing the weekend / photo shoot as I was about not having the car ready for my wedding which was only a few months away. My wife(to be) wanted the car to be our "get away" car.....

[JTR70]

Here's the video that Justin wanted me to post earlier...

Un-edited footage...
I need driving lessons

It's actually a little scary.
The front lifts quite a bit and gets "light" when on it. I'm sure Steve can vouch for that.

2 days behind the wheel now and I'm finding the gears a bit easier.

First gear from a dead stop uphill is needed, otherwise I do a 2nd gear take off. Funny, but I do the same thing in the 11G with the crash box and 25hp.

I just took my sister and then my brother in-law for a quick trip through the neighborhood. Coming back from the 2nd ride with my brother in law I got a stern yelling at and lecture (I totally deserved it for driving like a dick through a neighborhood. When will I learn??) from an older mom with a LOW cut shirt who had to bend over to see into the car while yelling.

Totally worth it!

A fantastic pictorial Greg! A lot of photos and a lot of description all equaling a great deal of time and effort spent here. Thank you for taking this time to share it. After looking through these pages one thing really jumps out at me; Where is All the rust??? You've only had to address the fun things like motor, interior, wheels, etc. You're living the 356 hobby of the 60's and 70's my friend. Seriously though, this is a solid nice car!!!!!!! The photos with the windshield and dash out really tell the story of what a dry car you found. Congratulations on this score BTW!
Thanks for finding that video too! Missed shifts and gears aside there are two points one at 1:11 and 3:35 in where your motor makes the sweetest exhaust note. Not to mention it clearly demonstrates how fast this car really is. Love it! After watching it again I can't for the life of me figure out why you'd ever consider going back to a 356/912 motor no matter what it looks like. I know its generally considered sacrilege to run VW motor in a Porsche but I personally could care less about a pushrod Porsche motor(just my personal opinion/taste) I need real HP and performance. Before I got hooked up with Dean's engine I had a full blown Type-4 motor in the works for my coupe. 2.8 liters, super-flow heads, all of it. In reality and just like your current engine about the only thing "VW" is the block and I could have lived just fine with that. Again, don't know what you have planned but at the bare minimum I'd keep this motor and dress it like a 4-cam. At the very least.
Thanks again, great build!
Justin

[356]

Awesome!

[mr. warehouse]

Thanks guys...

As far as the rust issue. When I found this car it had been sitting in a garage for +/- 25 years well taken care of. The owner was a retired Porsche (dealer) mechanic. He was a wealth of info on not only this car but Porsche's in general. He built the 1720cc engine himself using a 65 SC engine as the base. A build sheet, parts list (with prices) and a ton of other paper work came with the car. There are a few spots of rust here and there that I took care of with the curb repair, and there are still a few others I need to handle.

A little back story on how I ended up with the car.

At some point the trans gave up on him (cracked R&P) and before he could fix it life got in the way. 25 years later I come into the picture.

I had just bought a basket case '54 coupe out of Washington (that's a whole other story / thread) for $15k off an internet ad.





When I got it back to my shop I immediately tore into the suspension to see what I could do. When I was done it looked "cool" but that was about it. I literally pushed it into the back corner of my shop until I could figure out what to do next.



A few days later a buddy comes by and sees it. He asks what I paid for it, among other things. I tell him, we have a short visit and he leaves. A couple days later I get a call from him,

"What year is that Porsche you bought?" "How much did you say you paid for it again?" "OK, well my buddy Bob has a friend Charlie who has a friend with one just like that but complete with a bad trans. He might want to sell it."

I asked him to get the contact info for me and that was that. About 2 weeks later I get another call from him with the guys number. I called him asked about the car, he told me he has not planned on selling it but gave me a ballpark price and we agreed to meet a couple days later.

I obviously thought the car was great once I saw it. I'm sure he could tell as his price jumped a bit but we shook hands on a deal I gave him a deposit and a week or so later I came with the rest of the cash and had it towed home.

I kept in contact with him after the purchase as he and I both wanted him to get a chance to drive the car again. Unfortunately that never happened, he passed in 2011 which was about the same time I had the 1720cc out again and it was sitting in the rain at the engine guys place.
Here's a couple shots of both cars together while I was in the building of this one.

[mr. warehouse]

As far as the engine is concerned, writing this thread, reliving some of the hoops I jumped through, and watching the videos has me wondering why I would swap out that engine as well.

If you listen in that last video (the one you like Justin) right around the 3:50 mark you can hear what is definitely transmission noise. Not good on a new rebuild. So really, everything had to come out to get that sorted anyway.

The shroud set up I sold to a customer for use in his Porsche Bus along with a 1904cc engine. I knew if I went with another VW engine I wanted to ditch the carbon fibre look anyway.










I still have the monster engine, but those SuperFlow heads + that style fan shroud do not equal good cooling. I'd need to switch to a VW style casting instead. Doable, yes but there is the small part of me that wants a nice calm driver now. Maybe have 2 engines? One for lazy Sunday drives, another for fun not so lazy drives.

[mr. warehouse]

With that, lets get back to the story...

March 1st 2013 -

So after my engine failure and my calls to Kobus and the Ed they both tell me almost the same thing. "We can shoot it without it running you know..."

So my buddy Mike meets me back at the stranded car, I have the truck and trailer. We push the car into the trailer, I don't even bother tying it down. I stick it in gear and pull the e-brake.

Short trip back to my shop where I roll the car out and get to cleaning.
Power washer, degreaser, you name it. I threw everything I could at the car to get the oil off before it set in. I load it back in the trailer after a quick wipe and tie in down. The next morning I was leaving for SoCal.

[mr. warehouse]

[mr. warehouse]

March 3rd 2013 -

We did 2 shoots while in SoCal. One for AirMighty and another for the very nice young lady posing with the car who wanted pictures for her portfolio. She was looking to change her image and wanted some pictures to help with that.













This last shot makes me laugh every time I see it.
We unloaded the car at the top of a hill in the desert, my buddy Jeff would give it a push to get going and Ed would follow the car to get the blur / driving effect. In reality it was going *maybe* 1 mph.