944 Pre-season Work

It was a rainy weekend, and the 44 was at the body shop so lets tackle some of my pre-season tasks on my to-do list.

I was bored with my purple rain wheels. All the fashion magazines say that "Bold Colors" are in this spring, so lets see what we can do.

Matte purple - so last year ...

I'm a big tool fan. After a tedious 5 minutes of sanding the wheel and getting nowhere fast, I looked around the garage at the work ahead.

And that's only a portion of the phone dial collection

 I switched to using my #1 tool, my brain. Mr. Brain said if tools are good, power tools are even better. A hunt around the garage and I dug up my Dremel tool and set to work.

In progress

Yeah, that worked out

An hour later I was applying the first of several coats of my favorite go-to wheel paint, Rustoleum enamel with a foam brush. No fancy paint booth or spray system here, this is down home garage work here. It goes on reasonably thick, lays and settles well and ends up looking pretty good. It's pretty tough and durable also, standing up to brake dust. I wouldn't put this on a Ferrari GTO if I happened to own one, but for a racecar, good stuff.

White wheels? for racing? are you crazy? You don't even wash your racecar,
you just paint over the bugs. How are you going to keep these clean?

Meanwhile the 944 came back from the body shop, looking a little better than it went in. They fixed the crunched rear panel where Chris L and I came together in the Nationals. That was the only panel that hadn't been hit on the car. Almost made me cry when it happened. Charlie and the boys made the hood and fender flush. They also fixed the rear quarter, mudded it up and primed it. I declined the paint as I had about 20 cans of Rustolem Flat Black back in the garage.

Getting ready for  the pièce de résistance: Krylon Flat Black

The next item was to strip and clean the front suspension bits. I had some cool MantisRacing CNC'd strut hats and bar that I won a couple of years ago at Nationals. I ran into some fitment issues and while I'm sorting that out, I took apart the camber plates, strut hats, and sway bar assemblies. Cleaned all the grit and lubed them up and reassembled.

Mantissport strut hats and the Ground Control camber plate and my strut bar attachement

Next on the tick list, was replacing the hood pins. The goal was to make them a bit more fool (me) proof. Here's me at Lime Rock 2 years back.

This is when the loose nut behind the wheel forgets the hood pins.

Here's the former setup

And the new flush mounted edition with internal pin.

Drivers side, easy peasy. Passenger not so much. Seems there was about 5 lbs of bondo on the corner of that hood and when I started drilling and sawing the hole, it started flaking off in huge lumps. If it's not one thing its another ...

Putting the bondo universe back in balance.

And what started this whole post, oh yeah, the wheels. What is he going to do with them. Leave them white? Of course not. Remember Spring Fashion Tips? A pop of color? I'm painting them in the traditional Porsche color of Pink! Remember the Pink Pig? Here's my tribute.

Sunglasses not required. It will be raining when I'm running these.