Introductions

What you are about to read will be the rolling diary of my efforts to put a '75 Porsche 911 back on the road. This car is the embodiment of a 25 year obsession for this scribe. It's not my first restoration, but it is my first 911 and as usual I find quickly how much I don't know. I don't pretend to have the deep pockets of some that choose to love cars as toys, and as such I try and make up for that with as much DIY as I can manage (which is usually most anything).

I've read "The most expensive Porsche is a cheap Porsche". I won't color myself shocked if this holds as true for me as has for many others, but the allure of a good deal on a car that checked off so many wish list boxes for me was too great to pass up. So in beginning of May ('10) I found myself dragging my Dad and a car trailer almost 1,000 miles away to pick up what was a stalled project of some other dreamer.

Thankfully the bodywork had been done (and seems to be of pretty nice quality) and painted in the same color I'd have chosen if I'd have painted it myself (big bonus). The car was still rather disassembled but came with [most of] the pieces that came off of it several years ago. There is even a fair amount of brand new pieces collected ready to be installed.

The trip home was......interesting. Aside from just being stressful ferrying my new prize back down the country we had one mishap. My car came with a somewhat rare vintage accessory top (Saratoga Top). When I picked up the car I noticed it seemed loose from the front frame. This made me nervous enough that just a few miles down the road I stopped and duct taped it to the windshield. Apparently the tinted Lexan's hold on that frame was much more tenuous than I realized as it now resides off the side of a highway somewhere in New Jersey (I still have the front frame though :) )

So there's the acquisition, next up: My initial discoveries