1958 356A Speedster Replica

[Firebird]

Here are the only pictures I have at the moment of the interior when it was just finished.

interior 1.jpg

interior 2.jpg

[Firebird]

One weekend we decided to take the car on a slightly longer trip to calibrate the speedometer. Along the way we stopped at a friends house in Modderfontein.... he wasn't home.... but you can see his nice 1956 beetle in the driveway.

bruce.jpg

After that trip a few months passed during which I got married, went on honeymoon and bought a bigger house. Once we were settled I decided to move the Speedster from my folks place to my house.

Before the trip my dad asked if there was enough petrol in the car. I checked and let him know that we needed petrol. I thought he had filled the car, and he thought I had. We left in convoy and I had been driving down the freeway for a few minutes when the motor suddenly stopped running. I took this picture while waiting for my wife and my mom to return with a tin of petrol

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Here is the car in its new house.

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[Firebird]

The rest of 2005 involved installing a pair of Dellorto 36 dual choke carburetors and all the hassles and tuning issues you can imagine. I also drew up a set of bumper brackets based on the arrangement I saw on a 356 roadster. I happened to see the car at a panel beater close to my offices. The manager was kind enough to let me have a look at the car and take as many photos as I liked. I took photos until my camera went flat and then I used my cell phone. Here are a few of those pictures.

[Firebird]

The first thing I did on the car in 2006 was take the car for a trip to a friends house to set up the dual carbs.

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See the tarp on the left. There are two vehicles under there waiting for restoration, an original Fiat500 and a BMW boxer motorcycle.

[flatfourfan]

Niiiiiiiiiice, I like the detail on the rear boot lid and the early fuel tank, it's touches like that, that REALLY set a car off...........nice work.

[Firebird]

Hey Gary, I am glad you noticed that, unfortunately my car doesn't look like that just yet. Those pics are of a 356 roadster. (I have loads more if you need reference material better than what can be found on the interweb) I have a skin for the deck lid and the rear interior that was moulded off an original. I spent this weekend fitting the rear interior panels and will work on the deck lid during the week. I will post the pics as soon as the rest of the build is up to date on the forum. I am gonna have to make the engine look a lot sexier too if I am going to be opening the lid to show off the interior details.

Stay tuned

[Firebird]

Okay back to the build - At the end of September 2006 I collected a batch of laser cut components that I had spent a few months drawing up.

The 'kit' method for mounting the bumpers has always bothered me. Mostly because it doesn't tie into any reasonable location on the chassis, if at all. I know some connect the front bumper to brackets mounted outboard on the front torsion bars, which is just such a terrible idea. Even in a minor impact you are left with the expected fiberglass damage AND a bent front suspension! After looking carefully at how it is done on an original 356 I came up with the system you will see in the following images.

bumper01.jpg

rear1.jpg

rear2.jpg

The rear brackets are mounted to the sub frame and have angled arms which mount to the sub frame sides. The offset angle will cause the brackets to buckle in a reasonable hard shunt and this should absorb some of the impact force as the bumper travels towards the car body. A mild impact should only displace the main distance adjustment on the brackets which can be looseness and moved out once more. This is all in theory off course

front1.jpg

The front brackets are mounted to a very large plate attached to either side of the battery tray.

front2.jpg

The metal tabs are attached to the bumpers with epoxy like so:

gluing tabs.JPG

Both front and rear brackets are fully adjustable for height, distance from body and bumper angle to account for deviation from one kit body to another. Mounting the bumpers in this way makes it very easy to remove them using just two bolts per bumper and exposes the same 'slots' in the bodywork that are evident on the original cars going bumper-less for a day of racing.

The mounting tabs are attached to the inside of the bumpers with epoxy. I created a dam of pattern makers putty (the yellow stuff in the pic above) to stop the epoxy running down the curved bumper.

[Firebird]

In 2007 I returned to freelancing and I spent a great deal of my spare time building my new business...

When I could spare the time I worked on small cosmetic parts for the car.

I bought a set of 356A door handles but without locking buttons. I didn't buy the locks because they were incompatible with the beetle door locking mechanism in my car.... ... okay, it's actually because they would have cost twice as much as the freaking door handles did!!

Anyway, I turned up a set of 'concave' (as original) door handle buttons from billet aluminium and shined them up with some Autosol (love that stuff) and they still look fantastic today!

Speedter bits.JPG

While I was making things on the lathe I turned up some bezels for the guages as well as a plug to mould the 'beehive' indicator lights.


As I have mentioned before, the KCC/Venom cars solution for the front horn grilles and indicator lights leaves a lot to be desired when compared to an original car.
At the time there seemed to be a global shortage of original Porsche horn grilles so I went over to Carrera Motors and John was kind enough to let me measure up and take photos of a 356A they had on the floor. I took detailed measurements of the horn grille and indicator assembly. The result of lots of CAD work and milling and sanding was this: (still lots more sanding and polishing required)

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[Firebird]

It wasn't until the December holidays that I was able to actually mount all the shiny bits that I have made throughout the year.

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_________________________________________________________
Parental side note:
Anyone thinking about getting their young kids involved in the garage. I offer a small word of caution. This leads to an extreme aptitude for all things mechanical. This morning the child pictured above, now 5 years old and his 4 year old brother, 'Dissected' our old edge trimmer, on the carpet, in my office. It looks like an edge trimmer kit now they even unscrewed the trigger switch AND removed the copper terminals. Another reason to remove the plug from old appliances, which I did.

[Firebird]

The project remained dormant for most of 2008

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speedster01.jpg

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Towards the end of the year I took the car to a friend's house to set up the dual carbs once and for all.

He phoned me out of the blue just after xmas because he had run out of petrol. I went out to find him with a bottle of juice and was very surprised to find that him and his daughter were actually on their way to my place in the Speedster because he had finished setting up the carburetors and it had run out of petrol AGAIN !

porsche.jpg

Next up... the infamous floor rebuild, but you guys will have to wait till Turesday for that because I have to go sort out what I need for my meeting tomorrow... in Durban... yay

[flatfourfan]

ahhhh, I see what you mean by the rear deck lid............I was just so fired up that there are a few more speedster builds on the forum, it's nice to compare notes. I have to admit that you're going WAY more detailed than I could ever have hoped to go with mine. Beautiful work. You have some great ideas, I like the idea with the bumper brackets, that's one thing that I may steal from you as the KCC idea sucks balls.

You wouldn't by any chance be looking at selling any of those horns grills and indicator bezels? The KCC ones look way chunky compared to yours.

[Firebird]

@flatfourfan
Hi Gary
You are welcome to purchase any of the things I have made. I still have all the files so I can have more made to order. Let me know what you need and I will work out a price to manufacture them for you
Regards
Roger

[Firebird]

This is one of the first pictures that went into my collection of 'reference pics' for my Speedster build.

p17.jpg

The rear interior of the replica does not look this way however.

Before.jpg

They made it the way it is because it makes the body easier to mould. I did like the practicality of having a lockable storage area but it just isn't original and when I set out building this car my goal was to make the car look as close as I could to an original 356.

This modification began in August 2009 as a pretty straight forward process. I called up Eugene (Ex KCC owner) and asked him if there was anything structural about he rear 'back rest' panel. Without me even having to explain what I was about to do he just said "I know what you are planning to do, it's something I always wanted to do to the car... go for it!" So with his blessing I began. I planned to cut out the panels and expose the firewall which would make the interior 'good enough' once carpeted. But the build took a nasty turn after I had removed the 'back rest' panels.
Once the panels were removed they left behind an odd looking overlap in the floor which would have shown through the carpet.

After much deliberating I phoned Eugene again and asked him how the panel was secured and if there was any material under the thick white panel. He said that it was just Pratley puttied against the black inner tub which formed the firewall and rear floor and that if I just I just pulled on it hard enough it would break loose. Right... so I cut shallow grooves all round the panel and then began pulling it up with all I had. I could feel my weedy back muscles just about pulling out of my back but continued because I could hear the putty cracking. It became easier to lift and eventually with a load *CRACK* the panel came out and I lifted it high above my head with the recoil and almost fell out of the car. I then looked back at the car to see how it looked without the panel and I saw this:

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I felt pretty sick when I saw the gearbox and thought about all the work i would have to do to reconstruct the floor.
I decided to fabricate a plastic floor which a could then mould in fiberglass.
This tuned out okay but I was not happy with the very rectilinear look.

DSCF5732.JPG

I was stumped so I pretty much left the car like that while I looked for an alternative. A few months later I saw the progress of Impi's Coupe build thread and explained my predicament to him. A few months later I took a drive out to his place to collect a beautiful new rear interior and, as a total bonus ... a deck lid inside skin!

panels.jpg

The weekend after collecting the new parts I went round to try them out on the car (It is 'sleeping inside my in laws spare garage a few blocks from my house) Things are a bit cramped there and I dare not fire up an angle grinder for fear of receiving a barrage of strongly worded letters. I had a quick look and then locked the car away again.

This past weekend I decided to bring the car to my place for the weekend so I could get stuck in. I have actually been trying to get going for the past few weeks but have had no helpers to assist me in towing the car. Yup, that's right, it doesn't run any more. What is worse though is that when I parked it two years ago I inadvertently left the handbrake up and the shoes have welded themselves to the drums so the car can't even be pushed.
My wife eventually succumbed to my begging and agreed to drive the tow car. I managed to free up the brakes enough to get the car out of the driveway and hooked up to the Passat. While being towed along I also noticed that the tires are now 'square' from being parked in one place for so long... bouncy bouncy. Anyway, a friend arrived to help me push the car into my garage and the work began. I eventually decided to cut off the two side panels you can see in the picture because there is just no way to incorporate these features into the existing body without extensive cutting and gluing and even then I am not sure how strong the body will be afterwards. Here is a picture taken about half way through.

test fit.jpg

I spent the rest of the weekend cutting little by little off each side and test fitting until it fitted nicely. I also decided to remove about 50-60mm from the top of this sub-frame beam:

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Once that is cut down the new panel will fit in perfectly!

[flatfourfan]

Armand told me a while back what you were planning and that is going to make all the difference. All in the details.

[Harry Jones]

What no pics of the seatcover in a Bikini ......?