904-090
December 13, 2002
Welding
a roll bar in a 904 is a great idea because the original one
was bolted down with 6mm bolts and there were no down bars.
In this photo, down bars were welded in. The arrow points to
a dent in the down bar because as you'll see in the next photo,
one of the previous owners decided where the bar was welded
the first time wasn't such a great idea.
The
arrow above points to where the bar was welded first. For safety
reasons, it's fine, but for chassis stiffness, the bar welded
higher on the shock mount allows for less chassis twist.
This
photo is the right side. The kinks in the pipes are where they
heated the pipe and just pulled it up & welded it at the
shock top (crude, but it works).
Again,
the arrow points to where the bar was welded first.
Most,
but not all 904's had an I D number. They were stencil painted
on the back of the dash gauge pod. As you can see, this car
was originally red. Sometimes you would see two sets of numbers
on the dash. Let's just say, hypothetically, that the numbers
were 80 - 85. This would really throw you off if you had a 904
that was numbered 904-082. You'd think your car was not 82 because
the numbers on the dash were stenciled 80 - 85. The reason this
was done is because the suppliers for the suspensions,engines
and bodies came from 3 different directions. Sometimes the suppliers
got behind because all the suspensions and engines were numbered
to match the car they were going to get bolted on. To keep the
build records straight, it was easier to make one chassis represent
5 or so sets of mechanical parts. I have a photo of a car that
I restored that has 2 numbers on it. A million years later,
Jurgen Barth at Porsche told me why this happened. Maybe in
Jurgen's new book, it will also explain this double number phenomenon.
Gauges
on the back side look brand new and are marked with the date
3-65, which is when they were made. The outsides don't look
so good, so we'll send them out for restoration.
This
is a site that only Andy can enjoy. Andy is our wiring guru
and all this is dead nuts original.
You
can't see this very well but the finish inside the door jam
has the roving pattern (square woven glass). It's not finished
with pretty paint and was a little archaic. We will sand it
and paint it with the same look.
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