Porsche saga… take 1 or “On a quite night you can hear it rusting in the garage…”

Once again here I stand. On the cusp of the abyss. -This next story is not for the faint of heart.
I had been looking for a 1968 901 body styled Porsche for some time. I had come across over the decades, several –and been damn close. But there was always something wrong.
I fixed my sights on this year for me because as most know it is the last year of the 3” inch shorter wheelbase. -And I really had a thing for the originality of that 4-banger 356 engine, so I would be looking for a 912 which narrows the scope a bit.

Okay, enough about my theories. The rubber hit the road on this:
A 1968 912 with 66k ORIGINAL miles. ONE owner car from Westchester County New York.

Here’s our story: about 2 years ago I heard through another member of the PMCA that a neighbor of his had an old 912 that was sitting in his garage and he would look into it for me if interested. As always (and I always say the same thing) I said sure. Great.

About a month later he called and said he drove down to the guy’s house and had a cup of coffee with him. The guy brought him out to the garage and took the oily cover off. There sitting (and rusting) was his father’s 912. It seems his dad had it imported and bought it through his company back in 1968. –he had ALL that documentation, etc from Stuttgart btw (!). –this is the way it was done back in the 60’s, you worked through one or two importers to get your vehicle.
So my friend told him about me and my pursuit. The guy said he really didn’t want to sell the car. He had been planning on restoring it as it had belonged to his father (and his dad had passed away a decade earlier). He added he had it on the road last in 1989 and drove it for about a month or so. Nonetheless, he wasn’t interested right now. They said goodbye and parted ways. The owner added if he changed his mind, he would let my friend know.
So often when buying an older car it’s like a dance. You go back and forth.

So I let it rest for about 4 months. Then called my friend again and we chatted. It seems that the Porsche guy had been thinking about it and had a change of heart. But he wanted to know my intentions. Since my friend had an established relationship, I told him to tell the guy about my long standing PMCA relationship as well as Porsche being a client of mine. So after another month or two we finally agreed on a price. I sent the flatbed out to pick her up –and then she was mine.

First thing we did was bring her over to Frank’s. once there, we put her on the lift. She had some pretty bad rust, but we’ll get to that later. –she also had a really poor paint job done at some point in the 70’s.
We tapped the gas tank and the jelly-like gas came out. We then hooked up an air compressor and blew back through the system (and out through the tank) the remainder of the fuel.

Then we drained the oil, changed all the filters, replaced the destroyed fuel lines, new plugs and points (fun to say that word again!) sprayed the carbs with gumout and WHOLLA! She turned over! A LOT of smoke, but she was alive!

Stay tuned…

NEXT CARB REBUILD, BRAKE REBUILD and the new body parts..


Peace,

Joe