If I told you I was going to swap a decklid on the 911 you'd say, no big deal, it's just 4 bolts. Well, nothing is ever really that simple or straightforward with this car. If you recall I bought an unpainted ducktail early on in this project to put on the car based on the metal frame of an OEM 911SC decklid with a fiberglass ducktail fused on top. That was ok but I ended up coming across a Getty Design fiberglass ducktail already painted Guards Red on Pelican so I picked that up as well. The Getty Design decklids are known for their great fitment. That, combined with the fact that it was already painted, made it a no brainer. Today I went to see
SJF Performance to tackle the installation.
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| Test fitting the ducktail decklid - 7-12-2020 |
The main problem we had to deal with was the fact that the ducktail decklids are designed for cars without AC which means it's completely missing the center mounting bracket to hold up the AC condenser. The AC condenser is held up by one bolt on each side to the hinge but the center is held up on the factory decklid by a bracket that it simply rests on. After some thinking and scrounging around for something to use in the shop, SJF found a very lightweight black aluminum bar that would be perfect for this. After cutting to length and adding a rivnut, it was simply bolted onto the decklid across the middle and a bracket was screwed on to hold up the middle part of the condenser just like factory except this has actually better coverage and the addition of some rubber padding means I won't hear any clunking from the condenser moving around when I hit bumps. It's a simple, yet effective solution.
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| AC Condensor Bracket installed |
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| AC Condensor Bracket installed |
On my OEM decklid, I was also having issues with the decklid occasionally not popping open when I pulled the release cable after driving around for a while. The latch wasn't operating smoothly. This was particularly annoying when I'm by myself since you need to yank on the decklid while pulling the release cable which is physically impossible. SJF enlarged the holes bolts for the upper decklid latch so it could be adjusted more and trimmed the washers so it wouldn't pull shift the decklid when tightened. The release mechanism itself was greased and now the decklid latches with a very satisfying click with on a single finger and instantly pops open on first pull of the release cable.
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| Decklid on and emblem attached |
This decklid actually came off a 3.2 Carrera so it had 4 small in the back for where the Carrera emblem was. I bought an old 911 SC silver emblem a while ago, had the pins in the back ground off, and put double-sided tape on. This perfectly covered up the holes and looks proper in the back for a very OEM look. The grill also wasn't a straightforward task. The T-bolts holding it in place weren't long enough so SJF had to fabricate something to use for now while I search for a more appropriate OEM solution. The color of the decklid is obviously slightly off from the rest of the car since it is newer paint but it's not too bad. I can survive with this until the respray.
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| Ducktail decklid installed |
While SJF was finishing off the decklid install, I went on to replace the chrome headlight trim with some new black ones that I got. I thought this would be a simple 3 bolts per side and a quick swap but no, that wasn't simple either. There's only one bolt that actually holds the headlight in place. The other two are about 4" long bolts that are actually for adjusting the headlight aim but you still need to completely remove it to swap headlight trim. The nylon nut holding it all in place made this quite annoying and of course removing it meant I now have to re-align the headlights at some point in the future. There were also 6 "clips" that secure the trim ring to the headlight lens and trying to get all that lined up again when you do the swap required some finesse that I really couldn't be bothered with. Thanks to Jenna and Jeff for helping me with this because frankly, I don't have much patience for something so fiddly when all I want to do is a trivial change. Let's just say I'm not incentivized to replace the headlight trim again in the near future.
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| Black headlight trim installed |
I actually like this new look. It adds a bit of aggressiveness to the front. I'm debating if I'm going to body-color match these when the car goes in for paint but for now I do like this over the chrome rings since nothing else is chrome on the car. The front fenders were also rolled a little to have better clearance at full lock so hopefully that prevents further future damage to it when I turn into steep driveways.
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| Side profile looking great |
I've always wanted an air-cooled 911 with the classic ducktail. The lines just work really well and it's actually functional so I'm super stoked we got this done. I also put in a 12V USB outlet that shows the voltage. I was getting suspicious that the voltage regulator in the alternator was going bad and sure enough I verified that the voltage was fluctuating from 12.6V all the way to 17V. This could explain why the CDI and the AC relay randomly died. Thankfully most of the recently electrical upgrades in the car are designed to handle voltage irregularities but I'm worried this will eventually kill my battery or some other electrical system. I've got a new high output alternator here so that's getting installed very soon along with a new high output lightweight starter for improved reliability.
