Friday, July 3, 2020

Small Interior and Exterior Fixes

With hot and humid weather and heavy thunderstorms in the forecast I didn't want to take the cars out today but instead focused on getting some deferred mini projects out of the way.

Project Day at Steguis Motorsports - 7-3-2020
First up was treating the new GTS Classic Seats. I asked Stefan at GTS Classic what I should do to keep the plaid cloth on the seats in good shape. He recommended using some fabric guard. This stuff's pretty cool, once it cures it pretty much makes the cloth bead water. Hopefully it'll help keep it clean. You're not supposed to apply it on leather so I masked off all the leather then when I was done treating the clotch, I applied some leather cleaner on all the leather parts. Now I can let it cure properly for 24 hours before sitting in it.

303 Fabric Guard for the seats
Next up was to do something with the ruined clear coat on the front right fender and hood. I'm still planning on getting the car painted but I still have a few things I want to get done before doing so. In the meantime, I just didn't want it sticking out like a sore thumb because frankly it looks pretty horrible if you look at the car head on.

Clear coat damage on the front fender
Clear coat damage on the front fender
As you can see it looks like someone was sweating on a black T-shirt and had all that salty sweat leave a crusty white mark everywhere. I wanted the car to at least be decent 10 feet away so I tried this L'Oxide oxide Reducing Emulsion. I was skeptical but at this point, I had nothing to lose since these panels are already in bad shape. After one layer I was already pretty impressed with the results. Sure if you're close you can still see the roughness of the clear coat but it's definitely not as bad as it was before. I'll probably put another coat next week and that'll hold me over until I get the car painted later this year. This also has to cure over night so it'll be ready for when I take her out for a drive tomorrow.

L'Oxide oxide Reducing Emulsion
After the emulsion, not bad, especially in a photo lol
Another minor thing that was bothering me was the factory fuel filler protective flap. After 37 years it basically stiffened up and kept getting in the way when trying to add fuel. I got a new one and it's nice and flexible again. It's the little details that make all the difference when you actually use a car.

Old fuel filler protective flap
Even off the car it's stiff 
New fuel filler protective cap
That's more like it
Before I dropped the car off at the shop a month ago, I installed the Element Fire Extinguisher on the rollbar and use the Rennline seat mounted extinguisher on the Cayman instead. Well after seeing how nice it was on the Cayman, I decided I had to do the same on Scarlett. Plus, it seemed super 90s ricer to have the fire extinguisher so visible from the outside when parked.

Rennline EZ Adjust seat fire extinguisher mount
Clean install, easy to get to and mostly out of sight
I even got this super easy to install/remove cup holder. I normally don't eat or drink in my "nicer" cars but sometimes you just want to bring a bottle or something with you and it's nice to have some place to put it securely. This installs with a simple thumb screw and can go pretty much on either side of either seat. I'm going to try this location first and see if it gets in the way.

Emergency Cup Holder
Finally, I was trying to keep the original 1980's rear license plate frame but there's just too much "Porsche" going on. It clearly already says Porsche right above it so I don't need to plaster more "Porsche" on the car. Thankfully Porsche makes a more appropriate license plate frame because I whole-heartedly agree...Porsche, There is no substitute. The black frame looks appropriate too with all the black accents on the car.

There is no substitute
One thing I didn't photograph because I know some people will take offense is that I put a Broadway mirror over the factory rear view mirror. Something JDM had to find its way into this car eventually. Frankly I did it because the top of the rollbar actually blocks a good amount of my rear view with the factory mirror and the larger 240mm Broadway mirror let's me see under it better so it's really a safety thing. If someone has a more appropriate German equivalent, then let me know.