After spending a year going back and forth with the shop to get all the mechanicals sorted on Scarlett, it was finally time to fix her paint. The body was always straight and rust-free but the paint left much to be desired. I actually would've loved some patina but something had me suspect that the car had previously had a relatively cheap respray done because of the way certain panels had faded or chipped over time differently from other panels.
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| First drive after paint - 4/3/2021 |
Pretty much every place I went to ask about doing this job wanted to do a full, strip down to bare chassis, chemical etch and paint. I get why they want to do that. It's the "right way" to do it if you want everything to be super fresh but that's not what I wanted to do. First, it's way too much money. Second, that would mean all the mechanical work just done would need to removed in order to do this leaving me back to some unknown/untested state after job completion. If I was going to do this, it would've made more sense when the engine was out of the car and the transmission was being rebuilt. The bottom line is I wasn't trying to make this a "new" car but just wanted it to look less beat up.
I really just wanted to get the exterior looking even and fresh but keep the rest of the car original paint because frankly there was nothing wrong with it. I took the car to Eric at
K2 Auto Body in Edgewater since they had
repainted Bumblestook for me and did a terrific job with that. Aside from their excellent paintwork, I knew they were going to work with me on doing this project the way I wanted. I dropped the car off in October last year so they could work on it over the winter. After speaking about what I wanted to achieve, we agreed that doing a window out respray would be the best course of action.
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| Windows coming out |
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| Adhesive overload |
Whoever previously installed the windows used a ton of adhesive which isn't the way Porsche actually specifies the windows should be installed. That definitely confirmed that the car had at least some portion repainted. They took the car down to bare metal to make sure that there were no issues with any of the panels. Thankfully, it was clear that it was just a bad paint job and all the panels were straight and not bondo filled. There was also no sign of rust anywhere.
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| Sanded down to bare metal |
We wanted to replace all the seals with fresh ones and that added to the delays as some of the seals had to come from Germany and were back-ordered. Everything was primered then painted Guards Red and clear coated. The holes left behind by the rear bumperette delete were welded shut to keep the lines clean.
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| Panels getting painted |
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| Rear bumperette holes welded |
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| Chassis primered |
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| Chassis painted |
One of the interior issues was the rear shelf. It had warped due to heat over time and falling apart. They had an interior specialist recreate part of the panel in aluminum and then recovered in matching vinyl.
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| Rear shelf getting recreated |
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| Rear shelf completed |
The windows were then painstakingly re-installed the right way, with zero adhesive and all new trim and seals.
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| Windshield reinstalled |
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| Rear quarter window with fresh seals and trim |
After the car was reassembled and cleaned, I took the car home and started putting on some minor cosmetic mods that had been in my garage for months now. They were the "Human gimme food" fuel bib and the embossed leather Porsche horn button by
Car-Bone in Poland.
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| Human Gimme Food |
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| Replaced the plastic horn button with embossed leather |
Today, I put the interior back in and the summer wheels/tires back on, filled her up with a full tank of fresh fuel, and took her out for a nice long 150-mile drive to really get the fluids going and make sure everything was working as it should. Obviously, I couldn't resist doing a little photo shoot to commemorate the moment.
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| Interior back in |
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| Scarlett - 4/3/2021 |
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| Scarlett - 4/3/2021 |
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| Scarlett - 4/3/2021 |
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| Fresh hood emblem |
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Faithfully recreated option sticker under the hood by
https://www.open-s.de/ in Germany
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Faithfully recreated rear decals by Car-Bone in Poland
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I really want to thank Eric for the great work. The car came out awesome and she's a real head turner now. We're not quite done with the build just yet. Over the winter, I ordered a Classic Retrofit electric AC conversion and
Speedsport Tuning will be tackling that install for me this summer. For now, I'm just going to enjoy driving her.
