I seriously believe that when someone sees you fixing up an aircooled 911 that you're somehow made of money and that you want all the best things and anytime you want something done, you want it done to full concourse, all original goodness. That's not me. When I got this car late last year I knew the paint needed some TLC but more importantly to me, what I wanted to focus my effort and money on was making sure she was mechanically solid. For those that have been following this build, you can see that I didn't compromise on making sure when things were mechanically questionable, things were replaced with equal or better parts. That's how all my cars are set up, everything inside and under the car gets all the attention first, cosmetics come last.
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| Headlights removed and holes taped up |
After going through the entire build to get the kind of mechanical confidence that she can do an entire road trip without even batting an eye, my last bit of focus is to give the exterior a refresh so that she doesn't look neglected. She's an old girl but there's no reason for her to look that old. This is where I rant a bit because as I've made my rounds to Porsche specialty body shops, the numbers they throw out are just insane. They're not insane because they overprice, but because they all want to basically do a full body restoration, so yes, that's a LOT of hours of labor and therefore expensive! I'm not debating that. Anyone spending that much time on a car deserves to get paid that money. Although I will admit, I did have one especially bad experience with one shop that seemed to judge me and assume I couldn't afford a paint job which was further confirmed by the fact that they never even bothered to send me a quote after going over the car with me. I'll just leave it at I think I didn't fit the demographic of people that usually go to that shop.
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| Side mirrors removed, stock wheels and lug nuts back on |
What irks me is that they're not listening to what I want. I get that many of their customers are old people that finally bought their dream Porsche and want it restored back to just the way it was in the 80s. Good for them. That's not what I want. I just want my car to look decent. This car isn't a garage queen. I intend to drive the snot out of it, just the way you're supposed to. I don't want an engine out, down to bare metal, full body respray. I want a respectable exterior paint job and I don't care if the paint in the engine bay or under the carpet or in the frunk or under my seats still looks tired. Unless it's rusted out, which this car isn't, I don't care to touch those non-visible parts.
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| Interior back to stock with just the driver seat for easy access |
Ultimately I ended up choosing K2 because they did a great job on Bumblestook but more importantly because they listened to what I wanted to do. We're doing a glass out full exterior respray. That's still a fair amount of work but certainly much more manageable than basically stripping this car completely down to the bare chassis and spraying every nook and cranny. The car is going to them soon so I've been putting the car back into a state where I minimize the number of parts they need to be extra careful with by putting the old interior back in, reinstalling the old OEM wheels and even removing the headlight and mirrors. I'm slightly sad the car will be "down" for about two months so I won't be enjoying driving her during the Fall but I am looking forward to having her look proper again before she gets tucked away for the winter and I'll have many more years in the future to get to enjoy her anyway.
