Project Lazarus

[Racer Boy]

on the story about your dad putting the Ford into Park.

Great to see the progress that you are making!

[husker boxster]

It seems like I haven’t gotten a lot done on The Mistress lately, but now that I’m going to chronicle the last 2.5 wks, it appears I have a lot to report.

Steering Wheel
I got a call over a wk ago from the upholsterer. He wasn’t happy with the fitment of the leather on the top of the wheel. He said he had extra material and the holes weren’t going to line up well. He felt the best soln was to cut it and make a seam at the top of the wheel (there already was a seam in the lower half). He caught me as I was walking onto the golf course. I said that was fine. The next day I got an idea of putting a stitch of black leather as a wheel center marker. The proper color for the swath would be cream to match the seats, but that’s not a common color, so I thought black would be easier to employ. I texted him some links to some wheels on Suncoast’s website. I didn’t hear back and got busy and didn’t call to see if he got my text.

Yesterday he called and said the wheel was finished. I drove to Lincoln this morning to pick it up. It looked very good but didn’t have the black center swath, just a seam. I asked him if he’d gotten my texts. He said he doesn’t do texts. OK. My bad for not following up. It ended up being $225 (we agreed on that price after the phone call about the seam) and it was well worth it as it looks very nice.




Windshield
Someone on RL found a source for the elusive 85-88 928 windshield. It was an Italian parts store in ATL. He got the windshield for $760 + $200 shipping. It arrived in good shape and the installer had no issues putting it in. He gave the contact info in his thread so I beat feet to get an order in. I go to the website and see the price is now $840 + $200 shipping, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers. That price is still $250 cheaper than from Porsche. Order it up and wait for a tracking #. Get an email instead saying the w/s is on back order and will take 2 wks. OK. I wait 2 wks and don’t hear anything from them. Called them this morning. They called back and said they hadn’t heard anything from that supplier so they’ve sourced the w/s from someone else but it will be 2 wks. Let’s hope.

Key
The key hasn’t arrived. Left a msg with the nice lady in NC.

Dash
I took the dash apart to replace the faulty odometer gear. I had to remove the dash pod, then pull the dash cluster out from behind.





Once I got the speedometer out of the cluster, it was obvious the old wheel was in sad shape.





I was able to get everything apart and put back together again. I also spent a lot of time cleaning electrical connections in the hope that would solve my lack of instruments working. Everything went back together and looked nice. Popped the cluster back into the dash pod, cleaned the 3 wire plugs, and put it back together loosely. Put the key in, started the engine, and… No instruments. Shoot. Will need to look at fuses and relays next.

Window Switches
I purchased a pair of window switches hoping this was the cause of the no window workie issue. Purchase the pair from our sponsor’s site. Pull the passenger switch out (plus the 2 ft of attached wires), install the new switch, and find that 2 of the 4 wires are 2” short. WTF!?! Here's a comparison of the old and new wires.



I go back to the website and look at the page. There’s 1 comment and it says 2 of the wires are short. Crap, wish I’d looked at the comments. Why in the Wide World of Sports would anyone produce it like that? The other 2 wires are the exact proper length. The site does sell another switch, but it’s $75 instead of $44. For $31 x 2 I can get my soldering iron out and make the wires longer.



Do both sides and now for the moment of truth… No workie. I check the fuse again but it looks good. There’s a complex relay also associated with the windows and the sunroof. Not sure how to test it, but I’ve gone ahead and ordered a new relay. Figure the switches and relay are 30 yrs old so it’s adding value replacing them even if they’re not the culprit. If the relay doesn’t solve the problem, will look for broken wires in the doors.

Sunroof
I’ve saved the best for last. The new sunroof trans arrived and I put it in. Hit the switch and the sunroof went completely open and then completely closed. I adjusted on fitment a bit more and got it looking a bit better. Still worked fine. I popped the headliner back in and even got the 3 impossible screws in. Tested it again, worked fine. Then decided to do a water test, so I poured a glass of water over all the edges. No water inside, all ran out the drain holes (which I’d cleaned earlier with the trombone cleaner). Think I can consider this one at the Done Sign.



Obviously you can tell I haven’t had a haircut in 3.5 mo. Sorry about that.

I still have several things to track down, but I’m getting closer. However, I’ve had to spend a bunch of time recently getting ready for our DE this upcoming weekend. I’m the club’s registrar and we’ve had almost double the entries for this event – lot’s of pent up desire to hit the track. That’s great except it makes for a lot of paperwork on my part. And we have a lot of COVID paperwork too. I’ll also be instructing at this event as well as observing the classroom sessions as I prepare to become a Chief Driving Instructor. Oh yeah, I have to get my car ready too. Once the DEs done, I have two people who are interested in me selling 3 of their cars. This retirement gig keeps me really busy. Maybe I need a job to allow me to slow down.

[husker boxster]

It’s been awhile, but today was a major milestone.

Windshield
The guy in ATL continued with the ‘you’re still on 2 week back order’, so I began looking elsewhere. A local glass shop said they could get the windshield for me and in fact had one in their warehouse in KC. I specifically requested an 85-88 with the antenna. Yep, they had it and would have it in OMA the next day. Could put it in at my house on the following Tue. Before I committed, I needed to see if I could get out of my ATL commitment. I was able to, so ordered up the local w/s. Everything is good.

Tue arrives and so do the installers. The main guy’s done a 928 w/s before and says mine looks good & shouldn’t be difficult. They pull their stand out of the truck and put the new w/s on it. I look and say it’s the wrong one. No radio antenna. Crap! They call the boss and he says he’ll do some calling. To their credit, the w/s has a tag on it that says 84-95, so it probably showed it would work in their computer system.

Several days go by & I don’t hear back from the boss, so I call. He says he has a couple more contacts he needs to talk to. A week goes by, still no word. I debate whether I should buy the $350 w/s and deal with a different antenna. Not sure how the earlier models do the antenna, but in 89 they did a shark fin antenna on the roof. However, I’m not too excited about this for 2 reasons: 1. I have to drill a hole in the roof and 2. I’ll have to remove the leather headliner to fish the wire to the antenna. The leather may be shrunk in its old age and may not want to go back into place. Kind of a defeatist attitude but nothing has gone to plan with this project.

My other option is to bite the bullet and bye the uber expensive factory Porsche w/s. I’ve had a good run of Wheeler Dealer sales lately, so I decide to splurge with the factory model and get this part of the project to the done sign. I stopped at the dealership Mon afternoon and place the order. $1366 (after PCA discount) + $160 for primer (whatever that is) + $220 for shipping from Germany. With tax, it comes to $1872!!! The parts guy tells me it will probably take a week to arrive (yeah right, I’ve heard that before). The local glass company happens to be next door to the Porsche dealership, so I stop over and set it up for them to install it when it arrives. Yesterday morning I get a call from Porsche and the w/s has arrived. Wow! 3 days. I asked if it was already in some warehouse in the US and they said no, it shipped from Germany. I call the glass people and they can come this morning.

A different guy arrives this morning and goes to work removing the old w/s and the glue that held it in. Pulls out the new w/s and yes it has the antenna. That’s as close as I got to it after verifying, as I didn’t want to accidentally bump it off the stand. He gets the new w/s installed and charges me $168.

It’s been a long haul to get to this point. Hopefully you’ll indulge me while I show off some pics of the final leg of this adventure.

Current w/s. I think some kids beat it up with a baseball bat. (Or the prev owner got upset with a project not going well.)



Out with the old.





In with the new.






Looks sooo much better. I still have to put the trim around the w/s, but I like admiring it even with the trim off. Will need to rummage thru my box of parts in the basement for the rear view mirror.

The shark has been gathering dust lately while I shifted my attn to my Wheeler Dealer activities. Now I should have more time to get back to her. With the new w/s, she looks significantly better and may be the impetus to get back into the ball game.

Post Script
It looked to me like the installer used his own primer on the window before he dropped it in. So I went on a mission to track down my $160 primer. After a discussion with the glass place and then the dealership, I got $160 refunded on my cc. Yay! Takes a little of the sting off.

[piper6909]

A new windshield makes such a huge difference, doesn't it?

I've always been impressed with windshield installers. Particularly how one person can handle something of that size an plop it down with such precision. Then they smack the hell out of it to seat it and somehow they don't crack it! I tried installing a windshield in my teen years, but had no such luck. I immediately cracked it when I tried to seat it.