Porsche 924 Carrera GT, Part 3: Engine Out and Bodywork
This is Part 3 of our Porsche 924 Carrera GT restoration series. Missed Part 2? Read about the journey here.
In Hungary, the car went up on the ramp in a smaller workshop, where the engine came out for the first time in decades.
Up on the ramp, we got our first proper look underneath since the car arrived: the floor, the rear axle and transaxle, and the odd patch of surface rust.
The engine comes out
The heart of any Carrera GT is its turbocharged, intercooled 2.0 four-cylinder engine. Out it came, and it was taken apart piece by piece.
One small find told us a lot. The fuel filter carries a date stamp of 20.08.87, which matches the 1987 sticker on the window. It looks like the car was serviced that year and then never touched again.
On a car this rare, nothing gets thrown in a box. Every bracket, clip, bolt, sensor and injector was laid out and catalogued as it came off, so that the car goes back together with its own parts wherever possible.
Down to a bare shell
Next, our workshop stripped the rest of the car down to a bare shell on a dolly. It's the only way to see exactly what you're dealing with on a car that has spent decades standing still.
The firewall
The biggest job was the firewall. At some point in its life the car had an aftermarket air conditioning system fitted, and it hadn't been fitted correctly. Over the years that caused rust in the firewall, and once the paint came off it was clear how far it had gone.
The only proper fix was to cut out the affected section and replace it with new metal, shaped, trial-fitted and welded in.
With the repair finished and the area cleaned back, you can see the original chassis plate still in place.
Footwells and battery tray
The battery tray had rusted, as they so often do on these cars, and we found a handful of other rust spots in the footwells and floor. Each one was cut out and repaired with new metal.
The footwells hid another job too. We had to open them up to straighten the two longitudinal members, which had dents in them, most likely from a forklift at some point in the car's life, or from something hitting the car underneath.
Given how long the car had been sitting, that's a list we're more than happy with.
20 hours on the wings
Then came the part that tested everyone's patience. The Carrera GT's flared front wings and front bumper are made from polyurethane rather than steel, and getting them to line up properly is notoriously fiddly. The team spent around 20 hours on the front wings and bumper alone, adjusting and refitting until every gap and line sat exactly where Porsche intended.
