906-138
September 2, 2002

After a few days at work, gray duratech was painted over the cockpit surface.

These are the two front panels, the one on the left surrounds the dead pedal and the one on the right would be positioned about the passengers feet.

The inside of the panels were reskined with a German S-weave. We used gray pigment which matches the gray paint that will be brushed on not sprayed.

If you look closely you can see the edges were sanded with 36 grit sand paper for better adhesion when the door seal is glued to all of the surrounding areas. We will use approximately 60mm wide 1-1/2 oz fiberglass mat to make all of the panel connections.

The dead pedal panel, which you could see in one of the above pictures, is actually made in reverse to the other cockpit panels. This means all of the panels inside the car, with the exception of the two front kick panels and the floor, are smooth on the inside. If you notice in the picture, the back smooth piece is the door seal and the front panel which will be glued with a mat patch has the cloth surface on the side you are looking at.

Note, the same panel is now smooth and the door seal panel to the right has the cloth surface.

Some pieces are easier remade than repaired.

We have molds for most of the Porsche prototypes and now and again we get to use them.

Luckily, these two front kick panel molds (which are seen just painted with gray duratech) are owned by a friend, John Corson, who is quite a good race mechanic and Porsche restorer. Thanks again John.

We wouldn't have to paint the Porsche factory gray (rustoleum navy gray) because of the gray pigmented panels, but Porsche painted the cockpit and glass panels gray before customers received them.

Notice, I am not wearing respirator because this is a down draft spray booth, thus making the nasty fumes go through the grates in the floor long before I breath them. Also, it is about 9,000 degrees inside here Labor Day morning at about 9:15 Florida time, and if I were to put a mask on sweat would pour off of my face onto these parts. I guess someone in a hundred years might be able to prove Kevin built this part through his sweat DNA.

The part is now finished and will be trimmed before it is removed from the mold.

The curing or drying of the part can be adjusted by the amount of hardener (M.E.K). In this case, I wanted the parts to install later in the afternoon, so I kicked it pretty fast. On parts that have no great structural need speeding up the cure does not effect the brittleness of the glass. If this were something like a fender or a wing the cure would take approximately 6 hours to touch and 10 hours minimum before removing from the mold. This is the process that we use in the summer in Florida other climates would be different.

The part was removed at 4:00 and I will install it after Kristie, Sharon (she is about to become the new reluctant webmaster because Kristie is going back to school), and myself the web "talker" are finished with this update.

Here are the two pieces and the molds side by side. Just for reference it took me about 5 hours to make the parts and install them, if I had to save the old parts it would take about 10-15 hours.

 

 

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