Porsche 911 RS conversion

This one's our own. A 'wanted' ad placed on one of the best known internet auction sites found us this lovely early 911. It was originally a RHD 1970 911 but had suffered a pretty poor 'RS conversion'. It's previous owner had bought it and wanting to repair a small patch of rusty bodywork resulted in a full body restoration. At the same time he fancied a T/R conversion and had the appropriate panels fitted once he had restored the body and then painted in the gorgeous Zermatt silver that it still is.

So it came to us as a rolling shell with a 2.2s engine in the rear and various RS upgrades (alloy calipers, front oil cooler etc). As the conversion had already gone this far and having driven and worked on an original RS I didnt take much persuading to convert to M471 spec. A combination of the RS panels and silver paint just looking so cool and gorgeous and also a refreshing change from white/guards red soon seemed a more viable proposition than returning the car to it's original body.

On arrival back at the workshop we carried out a thorough inspection of the car and found as expected the previous work to be carried out to a high standard. However as the car needed to be a project that we could promote as 'our car' the decision was made to strip the car to a bare bodyshell and start again.

We started with the interior, stripping out the dash board as the original finish was marked in places. The dash was then rubbed down, primed and sprayed the correct matt black finish. The dash top itself was to be a problem - it was marked in a few areas and the plastic had discoloured and faded. After a search we realised an early RHD 1970's dash top was going to be a tough find, apparently the speaker grille is still available from Porsche at high cost!! but the dash top itself is an extremely rare find. By chance a root through the paint cupboard found some vinyl bumper paint that we thought would be worth a try and after a clean up and prep the dash looks superb, although I must admit if we find a new one......!

Next up was the alloy/vinyl trim that fits on the face of the dash. The early 911's have a basket weave but the RS has a normal vinyl finish. The glovebox is deleted also on the RS so the necessary alloy backings were cleaned straightened and had vinyl glued to their faces. These strips were then re-attached to the dash.To complete the dash trimmings the bottom pads/finishers were given a good clean and refitted.

Check back next month for the front suspension rebuild.........