Olsen Spec Projects

[olsenmotorsports]

It Is always fun when new equipment shows up. Baileigh has been a good partner for us, Shane in their media department is great to work with. He saw some of the stuff we were using to shrink and stretch, called me up and we made a deal




Sorry for the horrible picture's once again but I am pulling screenshots off media vidoes

The MSS-16 is a great bit of kit. Its small and mobile, and helps on the inside radius as the jaws are so small. IIRC it is good to 18 gauge.



The MSS-14 is the big brother. This one is good to 14 gauge *not something we work with frequently - but I am huge fan of buying stuff we do not need so that when we actually have a need (even if its only once) we can execute it and not struggle.

We will probably use the big boy more than you would think for the long exposed panels as it will just take a huge bite and make S*** happen.

How often do you guys upgrade equipment? For me it seems like its never ending. I started our store with no pot to piss in so I had to make do with whatever I could scrounge up, and then upgrade as I could cash flow it.

Happy thanksgiving!

 

[36truck]

How often do you guys upgrade equipment? For me it seems like its never ending. I started our store with no pot to piss in so I had to make do with whatever I could scrounge up, and then upgrade as I could cash flow it.

Happy thanksgiving!

If your not willing to upgrade you will fall behind. Most can't start with the best so you make do with what you can. Then upgrade as you can. The sooner you can the better within reason. You can go broke trying to up grade to fast.

 

[stinkity stoink]

Did this thread die or are you just taking some time off. Lots of good stuff going on here

 

[zmotorsports]

Did this thread die or are you just taking some time off. Lots of good stuff going on here

I think he mentioned he was taking some time off from the shop and heading back to Florida for some R&R. Maybe he's disconnecting for a bit to catch his breath. I think he needs it with everything he has going on in the shop.

 

[olsenmotorsports]

Did this thread die or are you just taking some time off. Lots of good stuff going on here

I think he mentioned he was taking some time off from the shop and heading back to Florida for some R&R. Maybe he's disconnecting for a bit to catch his breath. I think he needs it with everything he has going on in the shop.

Sorry guys - been in a bit of what you would call the S*** over here. 12/31 is coming, working on closing my year as a CEO, and we have fallen behind on some projects. Makes for really long days to catch back up!

I had to change my holiday plans so we do not miss deadlines and came back to the Chicago house on Monday. Been working on cars all week and do have tons of content for you! Will get it all posted up, just been an absolute whirlwind of 18 hour days trying to catch up.


This car came in the day after thanksgiving out of Kentucky as scheduled. It is a 1990 964 C2 getting our tier one light restoration package, with a 3.8L conversion. My sales team have been talking with the client since July designing out the project. He agreed and December 1st was his time slot. That is the current issue I am dealing with. Deadlines are NOT moveable for us in terms of new projects coming in. And once they come in we are on such a tight time frame (we turn these cars inside 90 days as long as there isn’t anything custom) there is no kicking that can down the road. We have fallen behind on some of the other bigger cars that we are doing as customers keep adding/changing their mind. We do 8 of these light restorations a year, two custom car build outs, and the rest of our work is engines and maintenance. Couple that with 4 mechanics and two fabricators on staff and I am sure you can imagine the pace lol. It’s stupid lol.

What is a light restorations? It is a jam out repaint, a full suspension refresh/restoration, and an engine package. Super simple. Anything more than that is a full restoration.

Usually we source the car for the customer through my network, but the customer found this one, it is a complete nightmare, more on that to come. I did this one myself to help us catch back up. Week one is always inspect and do a full project scope. Check for anything (including the harness) that needs to be addressed or repaired. Job list is: Strip and send to paint on a rolling cart, Strip suspension, strip engine and disassemble and send for machining, Strip interior and send for re-upholster. Send out all plating and all powder coating. We run 4 day work weeks so I am sure you can imaging that pace to get that all done in 4 days. Long story short I got it done and car left for paint, all at the expense of not posting here though! Don’t sweat I have hundreds of photos for you guys.



Last night at 10pm the second light restoration came in out of Boston, so now we have both of our light resto cars landed for q1. This is a 97 993 C4 Cab. It is getting a color change, a 3.8L conversion, and the rest of our light restoration tier 1 package.

This car will be at paint by this coming Friday EOD. We have a trade show in Indy that my leadership team is attending later in the week so we have to get cracking on this one ASAP.

I’m going to attend the trade show this week, get this car done with the team, and then fly back to Chicago friday evening, then down to Naples Saturday morning.

My life is complete CHAOS

 

[olsenmotorsports]

Remember a few months ago I picked up an RS5 for my wife to complement her Audi collection. She fell in love with this color (don’t quote me but I am 99% sure it is a one year color run). We looked for a while and finally found one in the Specs she wanted. Previous owner did not protect the paint, and it had rock chips on the front grill and hood.



It came back from paint a couple weeks ago and I got window tint installed. Tint is another thing I am **** about, I only use ceramic, and 5% on everything but the windshield. The windshield we do 20%. I am well aware that this is super illegal, but I have been doing this for years and never had an issue. Rule #1 if you don’t drive like an idiot you don’t get pulled over! Yes it is dark, but we never go to anything considered the “country” so everywhere we go is city and brightly lit. Visibility at night is not an issue for us.


Anyhow we repainted the whole front of the car, and did a full paint correction along with new grills. So everything is perfect for her. If you are in the Chicagoland area and you need clear bra Elite Auto Wraps is the BEST. Highly recommend and they are Olsen Spec. None of that pre cut stuff it is all done by hand and all the edges wrapped. Here john and his team are doing the whole car. Should keep this car perfect for years. The Xpel/suntek stuff is self healing, so if you get a scratch just leave it outside on a hot day and everything is back to perfect again. Well worth the investment if you have a forever car.



Full PPF done and it is time to ceramic coat. I always do the entire car, glass, and interior. Maintain it twice a year and they always look so good.



Here it is done. The only thing I have left on this car is wheels, but wife and I are going back and forth on what she wants. She wants this car at the Florida house so we are going to transport it there and sort wheels out at a later date.

Thanks for following along! Bronco update coming!

 

[olsenmotorsports]

Finally got started on the Bronco build. I am hoping to have it ready for summer ‘25. It is a super easy list (stereo, interior, satin clear bra, powder coat all the silver black, and wheels) but there is thing called time, something I have zero of. I ordered this thing as soon as it was announced and the banks opened (i cannot remember maybe July of 22 or 23), and it came in February of this year. (Ludicrous it takes Ford that long to build a car). When it came in I was antsy to get it so I had it shipped to the FL house. There is no one there to do clear bra etc (at least not to my **** levels of expectations) so I ended driving it a lot. I put almost 2k miles on it this year. Well guess what. Rock chips



Off to paint she goes - they did the hood, fender flares, front grill surround.



Got it back from paint a week ago. Threw it in storage. I am going to have the team at Elite Auto Wraps come after Xmas and do the satin clear bra. I think it is going to look gangster on the black.



The HRE’s for the bronco had come in back in October. Friday we rolled it into the shop and the young guys threw them on for me. What an improvement wheels make. IMHO wheels are everything for a vehicle.



These are the HRE P101’s in brushed clear. It is my favorite finish as they do not tumble the wheels, so you get to see the machining marks, it is basically clear coated straight out of the CNC. Looks amazing. Tires are the Mickey Thompson Baja Boss, my favorite tire as they are really quiet on the road. Humming tires are the bane of my existence, these and the K02 are the quietest I have found, but the K02 isn’t made in a 22x13x37. So had to go with the M/T.

I have all the parts for stereo, and I am close to a decision on the interior. I think I am going to go with a desert tan insert on the seats (probably a smaller plaid pattern, and some other color leather. Just haven’t had time to put it all together and decide.

We bought this one to take the doors and roof and and go to the beach, kind of thinking about mounting some wooded boogie boards on the side where the off road guys usually hang gas tanks etc, but the wife shot that idea down. Might still do it though!

Help me come up with some ideas please!

 

[olsenmotorsports]

964 C2 Inspection

Here is a link to what we found on the 964. This was thursday I believe.

We track every hour at our store and do time study’s on tear down and the fastest most profitable way to get the job done. When we tear down the first thing that comes out is suspension. That saves about a half hour on engine removal as you do not have to remove axles, starter etc, and having suspension out of the way makes it easier to access what you need to.

Next thing that comes out is interior - this makes access to the A/C box much easier as you do not have to take the glove box etc out.

Next is fuel system (tank) etc, as that makes the A/C box even easier.

Last thing that comes out is the engine. That gets split down to the case (takes a hard days work).

This whole process pays around 65 hours to the tech, any tech who works hard can get this done in about 40 hours if they follow the above process. If we let them do it “their way” they can eat up the whole 65. Most techs start with the engine, but for us time is money!

As soon as suspension sub assemblies come out it is handed to the C tech - he strips all the stuff off, and same day the stuff is sent to plating/powder with a rush order. We usually have it back in 24-48 hours (we pay a front of the line fee for that).

How that works for us, we have found through time studies, that it is much easier to re assemble something you just took apart now rather than 2 months from now. So we start sub assemblies the following week. Saves tons of time shuffling and looking through manuals trying to remember what you need to do.



This one was one of the worst we have seen in a long time! It is going to look amazing once it is all done!

 

[olsenmotorsports]

Big updates here in multiple posts

Busy day today for me. The C2 I took apart this week it was time to tackle the sub assemblies. Today I did the front and the rear suspension knuckles.

As soon as they came off the car on Tuesday I stripped the hardware and brackets and sent to be refinished. They came back friday so time to get after it.



LOL what a mess. I am just going to let this photo tell the story.



This is this morning when I got to work. Time to tackle this and get it cleaned up. Cannot put this into the machines as it will just destroy the solution. It’s $2g every time we have our machines serviced so we try and drag that out to once a month.



Brake clean (lots of it) and a brush are your friend here. I like to use a stainless cart, catch the brake clean on it and use a brush just keeping it wet and dunking it on the tray to keep moist. 5-10 minutes is all you need here to knock the crud off. This one was so bad I used a plastic razor blade to scrape the top layers off!


From there it went into the Magido HP-30. Love this machine. It is high pressure (900 PSI IIRC) and heated to 160 degrees. Makes short work of it.

That is the first step in cleaning, now to get the bushings out….

 

[olsenmotorsports]

The bushing on the left is what I needed to get out. This is pretty easy, just air hammer off the cap and press the insert out ( I use the arbor press for this as it is easier and faster. The arm is cumbersome and super difficult to fit into a press.



Once the center is out you have to remove the cap, patience is your friend here. I have tried everything in the past but a good old cold chisel seems to be the fastest. I just grab the edge and tap on it to get it moving. Fold it in here.



Once it is folded in you can use a pry bar to shoehorn it out. I always take a mill file and touch the surface up if I slip with the chisel. Try and make it look like we were never in there!



Then it is off to the vapor blaster for the final stage in cleaning. This machine runs at least three hours a day at our shop. It is our most used cleaning machine. Expensive bit of kit but there is no way you can clean anything this good!



Both left and right arms stripped and cleaned.

Now it’s time to assemble…….

 

[olsenmotorsports]

Moving on to the bearings and bushing install’s.


The key to these arms is making sure you have enough backside support on the right surface to apply the force to push the bearings in. I have done these all different kinds of ways, freeze the bearings, heat the control arm etc. But I have found if you jig everything correctly and have the right tooling there is no need for any of that. Just wastes valuable time.



I know this looks crazy as a jig (and yes the bearing is crooked as I have not started pressing yet lol) but these rear arms are so big and the bends are such that you really have no other choice. Here patience in rigging is key.




Both arms are done and bearings are pressed in. Now on to bushings.



I wait to put the hub in till last as it adds a lot of weight to the arm. Here I am using the arbor press to push in the inner sleeve. This is a 4 piece bushing.



Once the sleeve is inserted then the caps go on either end. Once again arbor press is the fastest to jig and use. Makes it a couple minute job.



Back to the press to push the hub in. These get seated to a quarter metric ton with good support on the backside of the bearing. Once it reaches 1/4 ton I spin the arm while it has that pressure on to make sure the bearing feels good. This pressure simulates the axle being bolted in and torqued. (Just something I learned over time, if you need to fix something now is the time)



Bearings and bushings are now assembled. Just have to finish the arm assembly next….

 

[olsenmotorsports]

While I was doing bushings I had the engine halves in the ultra sonic cleaner. But first I had to clean them by hand. You will see why




They were pretty bad and dirty. This engine was a B**** to get apart as everything was rusted and rotted (more on that later) so I started with the tray and brake clean.



From there I went into the Magido to degrease and knock the rest of the dirt off.



From there in went into our 10,000 watt Ultra sonic cleaner. I ran this for an hour while I did the bushings in the control arms. I had just fired the machine up and it wasnt quite to its operating temperature of 160 degrees so I let it run for an hour. Usually a 30 minute cycle at 160 is all you need. It takes forever to heat up 60 gallons!


Here is is all cleaned. I need to jig it in the mill and fix some broken studs, so it will not get the vapor blast treatment till that is all done.




While the ultra sonic cleaner was hot I threw my bushing press tools and the brush I used to clean the parts with in for 5 minutes. This is super important as when you assemble perfectly clean assemblies your tooling must be clean or all that hard work is for nothing.



Once the tooling was clean it got put back in the drawer….

Now to finish assembling the arms……

 

[olsenmotorsports]

Plating and powder came back friday - love the look of some fresh hardware!



The front knuckles were powder coated (that is factory) so first order of business was to tap all the holes.


Since these are cast steel and bead blasted to prepare for powder and then taped off where the critical tolerances are I treated all these surfaces with ACF-50. That is my favorite protection for bare steel. Never found anything better and like to think I have tried it all?



After I pressed in the bearings with the 50 ton press I impacted on the stub axles and abs rings. I just sneak up on torque here with the gun and then toe tag them to be final torqued once the car is on the ground.



Moving on to the rear. Anytime I put a bolt that is a service bolt (I.e. alignment etc) I use HHS plus on the threads. Does it help? Who knows, but I am **** and it makes me feel good that I set the next guy up for success when he has to get in there and service something.



Final step in the process is all the hardware. This is key. This car wont go back together for at least two months (it is at paint) so getting the sub assemblies done in the first ten days is the key to success later. Things get lost in the shuffle or just plain forgotten. Our procedure is to get all the hardware and zip tie them into the places that they go to…. Saves you countless hours of”hunting later for them” which equates to tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. Ask me how I know lol. Now putting the assembly in the car is 20 minutes instead of all day hunting for the bits. That is how we get these cars done so fast.



Final step is final wipe down to remove and fingerprints. If you keep your tooling clean this goes quick. Nothing worse than doing a great job and realizing all your hard work cleaning didn’t pay off because you didn’t clean your tooling.

That was my day today!

 

[LXCam]

Luv it bud!.

I'm no different then you, I'm always micromanaging time and tasks. Its really bad with my crews as I like to run projects like a manufacturing line which means its me side by side with tools on beating processes and efficiency into their heads.

Your project here reminded me of my worst shop decision EVER trying to manage two completely different tasks. I used to manufacture in house some specialty billet suspension parts, stand alone blower drive pulley systems and high HP fuel hats. One issue I had was there was only two anodizing joints within a couple hours drive of me and they were always backed up a month or more.

So I got this dimwitted idear to set up my own ano line at the shop. After thoroughly (or so I thought) researching processes and timelines I figured this was good to go!. A couple hours here, an hour there, another couple hours for that, a few more for this. Basically a nice break between running machinery.

Well What They Don't Explain in all those instructions is the relentless baby sitting of temps, PH levels, etc. I take that back, they do explain it but it means sitting there with your thumb up your *** for most of the time.

SO, several thousands of dollars later and a month of learning curves. I did finally produce a decent part and made a few runs. Only to realize that was a complete waste of time let alone money. All that **** got mothballed and given away with the exception of my power supply - that was a keeper and very handy for other things.

 

[olsenmotorsports]

Luv it bud!.

I'm no different then you, I'm always micromanaging time and tasks. Its really bad with my crews as I like to run projects like a manufacturing line which means its me side by side with tools on beating processes and efficiency into their heads.

Your project here reminded me of my worst shop decision EVER trying to manage two completely different tasks. I used to manufacture in house some specialty billet suspension parts, stand alone blower drive pulley systems and high HP fuel hats. One issue I had was there was only two anodizing joints within a couple hours drive of me and they were always backed up a month or more.

So I got this dimwitted idear to set up my own ano line at the shop. After thoroughly (or so I thought) researching processes and timelines I figured this was good to go!. A couple hours here, an hour there, another couple hours for that, a few more for this. Basically a nice break between running machinery.

Well What They Don't Explain in all those instructions is the relentless baby sitting of temps, PH levels, etc. I take that back, they do explain it but it means sitting there with your thumb up your *** for most of the time.

SO, several thousands of dollars later and a month of learning curves. I did finally produce a decent part and made a few runs. Only to realize that was a complete waste of time let alone money. All that **** got mothballed and given away with the exception of my power supply - that was a keeper and very handy for other things.

I totally get it dude. I get frustrated with outsourcing and I do want to bring everything in house. Thank god I have a leadership team that reins me in otherwise I would have 50k sq feet all the equipment in the world and a business that wasnt profitable.

I cannot even imagine the daily pain you go through with stuff being far away. I am so blessed to be in Chicago which is literally the get **** done manufacturing capital of the US. Everything is an uber away.

You had me LOL’ing with throwing the experiment away. Ive got a dumpster full of bad ideas over the years. 100% all my fault.

What I have found is overpaying the vendor helps us out a lot. Our labor rate is $275 an hour and that add’s up fairly quickly. So paying a vendor a couple hundred bucks extra to rush something (or even freight we overnight almost everything) doesn’t even affect the balance sheet but it sure helps top line revenue if you can throughput the projects faster. Just something I have learned over the years. Doesn’t matter what it costs it matters what you can make. Cannot do that without throughput and efficiency.

 

[olsenmotorsports]

LOL what a mess. This is friday last week and these are the front control arms off the 964 C2. Gotta love salty roads and the long term destruction it causes.



The ARB cap is toast and needs to get replaced but I think we can save the arm.


First order of business was clean the dirt off. For this just blasted them quickly with the Magido and then ran a cycle in the ultra sonic cleaner. Love that machine because you press the button, walk away and let it work.



Fresh out of the ultra sonic it was time to get the bushings out. Hate these things as they are split so extracting them is a pain. When they are rusted through it is even worse. I always start by taking my mini sawzall with a metal blade and scoring the inside of the sleeve. Then a cold chisel on the air hammer is used to grab cap and start to fold it in. Patience and trigger control is key here. I usually turn the hammer down to the middle setting.


You get the concept. If it isn’t rusted you can use an internal puller, grab the edge and slide hammer it out, but with these I didn’t even waste time attempting it. Once you have it folded up like this it is pretty easy to go 90 degrees to the other side and air hammer it out. Rinse and repeat on the other side of the bushing.



Here it is removed. Look at that internal corrosion on the aluminum! There is no way to not leave witness marks, especially when they are completely seized. (Maybe someone has a better idea on how to remove??) Hate that but we can fix it.


To clean up I grabbed a rasp half round file (to get the bulk of the corrosion off quickly), a round file for the radius, and a mill file to finish.



I used the big rasp to file the surface flat and get rid of the corrosion. Key here is try not to do to much, Just knock it flat, but leave as much of the orginal surface intact, (I.e. there will still be a little pitting but the meat is important as it is the structure).


Once you are happy with the surface prep into the Vapor blaster to remove all the corrosion and do the final finish. Once again this machine makes it easy. Less than 5 minutes for both arms and you have a perfect piece.



Final result. Restored, all the corrosion is gone and it is ready to receive new bushings.

Now on to the engine….

 

[jake28]

Great stuff, keep it up!

 

[bugnut]

I really appreciate what you are doing and your vision. If the shop was mine, I'd have a timer on the ultrasonic and it would be ready when the shop doors opened. I have a tabletop 2 gal and I have considered doing that for my at home. I hate waiting for it to warm up!

 

[olsenmotorsports]

I really appreciate what you are doing and your vision. If the shop was mine, I'd have a timer on the ultrasonic and it would be ready when the shop doors opened. I have a tabletop 2 gal and I have considered doing that for my at home. I hate waiting for it to warm up!

Appreciate the kind words bud. Really do. Just trying to live up to everyone’s standards!

It actually is programmed to turn on at 5am so when we get there at 7 it is ready to rock and roll. We work Tuesday-Friday and this was a Sunday lol.

I felt like when I hit the buttons the machine was like Really? We are doing this on a Sunday??



It is a pretty robust machine. Has a 7 day timer, adjustable wattage control from 1500 to 10,000 watts (we change that depending on what we are cleaning) Built in filtration, oil separators and an oil skimmer.

I saved up for a long time to get this puppy. It wasn't cheap by any means but it is a fraction of the cost of the headaches that an employee that gets paid to clean (if you know what I mean by that) brings. Money well spent.

 

[olsenmotorsports]

Tuesday Morning I got the engine pulled out of the C2. LOL I will let some pictures tell the story of what I was up against. Im kind of glad I took this one on myself, the other techs would have hated this one.



TBH on this one I didn’t even try taking the engine tins off. I just cut them into pieces. Made quick work of them, and nothing can be saved. They are too far gone. Take a wild guess how much they are new from Porsche? You guessed right 5g’s! In stock at the Atlanta DC.


I got the tins and intakes off etc. Every sensor etc is getting replaced, I knew I was going to get my *** kicked on rusted fasteners, and since we were replacing everything (and verified in stock) I grabbed the dykes and cut it all off to speed up, belts, sensors, plug wires, hoses everything. Probably saved 10-15 minutes but I was going to need that later.



Top side of the engine doesn’t look terrible, but this client purchased our tier one package and that is full hardware restoration. This means every stud comes out. There are 87 studs in a 911 motor and every one needs to come out. As soon as I popped that intake off and saw the corrosion on the studs I knew it was going to be a long day.



Anytime you see rusted cylinder head nuts on a 911 you know they are going to break. The fins on the heads where they meet the jugs is where they usually break. That is usually a non issue though, I have tooling that makes those easy to extract.

 

[LXCam]

Wow bud, that ride is extra special isn’t it. How often do you get cars in that kind of condition?

I’ll admit I'm not a Porsche aficionado so I have zero intimate knowledge of the models nor rarity. So is this particular model worth the price of Olson admission or does it make better sense to find one in better shape?

 

[olsenmotorsports]

Surprisingly internally the engine was in good shape. Only one carnage and that was a broken rocker arm. I have taken at least 100 of these engine’s apart and seen a lot of carnage, but this was my first broken rocker.



Here it is, remarkably the cam was in great shape - usually in an engine like this you expect to see pitting on the lobes etc, but these looked great.



The M6 and smaller studs come out with the MSKM10 stud remover kit. It’s a great tool. I use a super shallow impact socket on the CT761 and a 19mm wrench, Impact it together, break it loose with the wrench and impact it out. I think IIRC there are 18 studs each side (don’t quote me on the valve covers.



Cam housings off it’s time to remove the studs that hold these on. For that I use the CG500 remover. Another amazing tool.


The corrosion on these things was crazy, anytime you see white its going to be a long day



For these you just gotta be patient. A little heat from the torch (not much as it is aluminum head) and some HHS plus, crack it loose a 1/4 turn then work it in and back out 4 or 5 times till you get it backed out a full turn. Then you can impact them.



Right bank had one broken head stud. Those are easy. On these where they break it is super soft and brittle. I take the death wheel and cut at least an inch off till i get to fresh steel. Then I use one of the 1/4 drive extractors to remove those with some heat from the torch at the base. That set is similar to the BEX13b but mine are 1/4 drive extractors. I dont think Snap on offers them anymore. But they are in .02mm increments from 6mm-10mm. Worth every penny.

 

[olsenmotorsports]

With the engine all apart it was time to tackle the air conditioning box.



That is where it sits, up underneath the cowl, behind the fuel cell. Isn’t that hard of a job to get out, key here is take the hood off, makes it much easier to gain access to everything.



This is pretty typical of what you would find in any of these cars from the 90’s, This is where the condenser sits. Over time it just gets nasty in there, and this is what you are breathing. Pretty easy sell to the customer and it’s a good paying job. I dont think most people do it right though. We completely dis assemble it and replace EVERYTHING. Most just vacuum it out and slap a new condenser in it.




I started by replacing the internal foam from the second picture. I am not sure what you guys use, I have tested a lot of different stuff and I sue the foam from Blend Door USA. Really great product. But always interested in trying something new so we can improve.



There was nothing wrong with the blower motors, but we had them in stock so I replaced them anyways. No point in doing all this work to have one fail in a year and have to pull it all back apart. it is just smart when the car is 30+ years old.


new blower motors, condenser, expansion valve, and all a new box seal around the condenser. On the lower blower motor on the outside edge of the box you can see I have started to lay in the seal into its channel to close up the box.


All the blend doors got new foam as well. Should be good to go for a long time - if not forever. this car will never see harsh conditions ever again.



new fresh air bellows. These parts are all straight from PCNA (we do not buy aftermarket parts only OEM straight from Porsche) and it kind of bugs me that they aren’t black anymore.



All sealed up and ready for blend doors actuators. These also get replaced but we didn’t have them in stock and they are coming out of Germany. Should see them late next week. For now though all the hard work is done. On to the shelf for when the car comes back from paint.

Thanks for following along! happy to answer any questions!

 

[olsenmotorsports]

Wow bud, that ride is extra special isn’t it. How often do you get cars in that kind of condition?

I’ll admit I'm not a Porsche aficionado so I have zero intimate knowledge of the models nor rarity. So is this particular model worth the price of Olson admission or does it make better sense to find one in better shape?

That is a great question. In previous years we didn’t see cars this bad that often. But lately as prices have driven up (a good 964 donor car is around 100g’s) the donors have gotten worse and worse as people are looking for better deals.

To be honest the tub on this car is perfect. The 90’s stuff. Responds really well to harsh conditions as the rubberized undercoating is pretty much bulletproof. The areas the needed protection were sprayed with cosmolene so as long as that stayed in tact they clean up nicely. Then it is just fasteners etc. This one for some reason was exceptionally corroded on a lot of the areas that it usually isn’t, so I think it was winter driven.

The biggest problem we find in these cars is previous bad workmanship from other shops. The stories that I have OMG.

 

[Scuderia-F1]

Tim, that C2 sure was a turd. Does this comeback on the client, since he sourced it? Or do you always calculate this, or in this case do you have to eat it!?

Really interesting pictures. I'm used to really rund down 964's, but I have NEVER seen anything like this one, or even close.

 

[WoodsTruck]

With my experience of air cooled VW's in the winters in Idaho, do the dual fans for the A/C pull heat from the heat exchangers and do a better job of creating a warm cabin for winter driving?

 

[olsenmotorsports]

Tim, that C2 sure was a turd. Does this comeback on the client, since he sourced it? Or do you always calculate this, or in this case do you have to eat it!?

Really interesting pictures. I'm used to really rund down 964's, but I have NEVER seen anything like this one, or even close.

Homie!

We added time to the tear down on the engine (4 hours). We usually pay 8 to the tech to split a case. I don’t think 8 is a crazy amount of time do you? It’s a fair amount of work?

Not sure how you estimate rust. But over here we use a 1.5 multiplier on time.

This is 100% on the client. We try and be fair, but he bid this one and did not get a PPI.

How do you estimate tear down of a car? We take the systems, (say for instance condenser), and use our estimator for R&R and just split it down the middle for the removal.

Hope your doing well!

 

[olsenmotorsports]

With my experience of air cooled VW's in the winters in Idaho, do the dual fans for the A/C pull heat from the heat exchangers and do a better job of creating a warm cabin for winter driving?

Those in the front do pull, but it has assist from a big blower in the rear before the heat exchangers.

Believe it or not the heat in these cars actually works really well!

 

[olsenmotorsports]

I forgot a couple of Pictures!

So the rocker arms on an air cooled Porsche are retained by a rocker shaft. It is a hollow shaft that expands under pressure from the squeezing of a screw and nut. Usually it is a non issue to extract. Not on this car LOL.

The screw is a socket cap 5mm and the other end is a 8mm recessed Allen. Issue with the 8mm side is that there is only 3mm of engagement so you really cannot put a lot of force on it. Hard to explain.

The 6mm bolt (5mm Allen head) is torqued to 13.2 Ft Lbs. Well whoever did the last valve adjustment hit it with a 3/4” breaker bar and for extra insurance coated it with some loctite (AKA rust ) Of course, it was the furthest rocker in the cam housing, which the other side is buried up against the chain housing. Why did I agree to take this ticket??? Turns out this was the one with the broken rocker arm, I am sure the over tightening of the shaft had something to do with breaking the rocker arm, but I cannot prove it outside of theory.



I grabbed one of my Mac RBRT 5mm sockets, chucked it in the lathe and pulled a few tenths of a MM off of it. I needed to go all the way through the rocker arm journals from the back of the engine to the front. The RBRT was just a hair proud of that hole.



I grabbed a 16” 3/8 extension and pounded it into the Allen and was able to extract it without having to drill the head off the Allen. Saved a ton of time. I do have some 24” long M6 drill bits that I have had to use in the past to drill these Allen’s out. This time I was so over this project I just decided to make a tool for it.



Here you get the idea. Made short work of it. Obviously now the socket is modified so warranty is out of the picture now. I called the Mac guy and had him order me a spare now so in case something happens I am not out of a tool.

 

[Scuderia-F1]

Homie!

We added time to the tear down on the engine (4 hours). We usually pay 8 to the tech to split a case. I don’t think 8 is a crazy amount of time do you? It’s a fair amount of work?

Not sure how you estimate rust. But over here we use a 1.5 multiplier on time.

This is 100% on the client. We try and be fair, but he bid this one and did not get a PPI.

How do you estimate tear down of a car? We take the systems, (say for instance condenser), and use our estimator for R&R and just split it down the middle for the removal.

Hope your doing well!

Makes me happy that you upcharged for this.

Well, I'm a one man band and I run my game a little different. I don't care about book time or whatever. I charge for the time that I spend, if I research something for 2 hours, that provides value to the project. Then it is 2 hours added to the bill. I run a fixed hourly rate, no matter what it is that I'm doing. With the beginning of January 2025, I will charge 1 full hour for every new hour spent, regardless if I spent 25 minutes sorting it (I will have the first 15 minutes as wiggle room for a "new" hour). My background is aviation & racing including historic F1. If anyone is obstructing about my billing, then there was no client relationship to begin with. I don't have a menu, filter or whatever. Either it's done to highest possible spec, or nothing will be done.

All is well here.

I hope that you get some good rest over the Hollidays so you can recoup from your sprint marathon. ;-)

 

[zmotorsports]

Makes me happy that you upcharged for this.

Well, I'm a one man band and I run my game a little different. I don't care about book time or whatever. I charge for the time that I spend, if I research something for 2 hours, that provides value to the project. Then it is 2 hours added to the bill. I run a fixed hourly rate, no matter what it is that I'm doing. With the beginning of January 2025, I will charge 1 full hour for every new hour spent, regardless if I spent 25 minutes sorting it (I will have the first 15 minutes as wiggle room for a "new" hour). My background is aviation & racing including historic F1. If anyone is obstructing about my billing, then there was no client relationship to begin with. I don't have a menu, filter or whatever. Either it's done to highest possible spec, or nothing will be done.

All is well here.

I hope that you get some good rest over the Hollidays so you can recoup from your sprint marathon. ;-)

That is good to know Anders. I know I keep shorting myself by rounding down on many jobs. I look at them and think to myself that it shouldn't have taken that long and end up shaving time off.

I feel I provide better service than people can get elsewhere so I just need to buckle down and charge the time I spend and if the client is not ok with that, then I have no problem with them taking their stuff elsewhere. I guess it comes down to changing my mindset.

 

[olsenmotorsports]

Makes me happy that you upcharged for this.

Well, I'm a one man band and I run my game a little different. I don't care about book time or whatever. I charge for the time that I spend, if I research something for 2 hours, that provides value to the project. Then it is 2 hours added to the bill. I run a fixed hourly rate, no matter what it is that I'm doing. With the beginning of January 2025, I will charge 1 full hour for every new hour spent, regardless if I spent 25 minutes sorting it (I will have the first 15 minutes as wiggle room for a "new" hour). My background is aviation & racing including historic F1. If anyone is obstructing about my billing, then there was no client relationship to begin with. I don't have a menu, filter or whatever. Either it's done to highest possible spec, or nothing will be done.

All is well here.

I hope that you get some good rest over the Hollidays so you can recoup from your sprint marathon. ;-)

I approach things one way and it is pretty binary. I do not lose money. Period. If I do it is because on one of three things (or a combination of all of them )

1. Improper tooling (solved immediately and order placed)
2. Improper information (solved as quickly as possible but priority one)
3. Not enough effort from the team (another thing dealt with immediately)

For me, if I follow those three simple things it is really impossible not to succeed. My business’s rely’s on cash flow, and that is provided by the customers, we have to get the stuff done yesterday so we can draw and bill.

Early on it was much much different. I struggled mightily and things were much different. I tried to do more with less. Yeah that never worked and I tried and tried to make it work. I changed my mindset to those three points and BOOM off we went.


REST??? WTF is that? Money NEVER sleeps

Actually we are closed between the holidays so I fully plan on hitting the gym and taking some time to get ready for the next **** show

That is good to know Anders. I know I keep shorting myself by rounding down on many jobs. I look at them and think to myself that it shouldn't have taken that long and end up shaving time off.

I feel I provide better service than people can get elsewhere so I just need to buckle down and charge the time I spend and if the client is not ok with that, then I have no problem with them taking their stuff elsewhere. I guess it comes down to changing my mindset.

IDK bro, service demands a price. When you go to capital grill on Friday with the wife and need to go to the bathroom are you pointed in the direction or are you led to the door and it is opened for you? Do you fend for yourself at the sink or does the attendant hand you a towel? That comes with a price, and I believe you provide that service. Don’t undervalue that.

 

[danski0224]

capital grill

Been there once, years ago.

Not for the faint of wallet.

I didn't pay, very limited drinks, and it still was around 150 a person.

Their chocolate cake was really good.

 

[Scuderia-F1]

I approach things one way and it is pretty binary. I do not lose money. Period. If I do it is because on one of three things (or a combination of all of them )

1. Improper tooling (solved immediately and order placed)
2. Improper information (solved as quickly as possible but priority one)
3. Not enough effort from the team (another thing dealt with immediately)

For me, if I follow those three simple things it is really impossible not to succeed. My business’s rely’s on cash flow, and that is provided by the customers, we have to get the stuff done yesterday so we can draw and bill.

Early on it was much much different. I struggled mightily and things were much different. I tried to do more with less. Yeah that never worked and I tried and tried to make it work. I changed my mindset to those three points and BOOM off we went.


REST??? WTF is that? Money NEVER sleeps

Actually we are closed between the holidays so I fully plan on hitting the gym and taking some time to get ready for the next **** show


IDK bro, service demands a price. When you go to capital grill on Friday with the wife and need to go to the bathroom are you pointed in the direction or are you led to the door and it is opened for you? Do you fend for yourself at the sink or does the attendant hand you a towel? That comes with a price, and I believe you provide that service. Don’t undervalue that.

 

[Scuderia-F1]

That is good to know Anders. I know I keep shorting myself by rounding down on many jobs. I look at them and think to myself that it shouldn't have taken that long and end up shaving time off.

I feel I provide better service than people can get elsewhere so I just need to buckle down and charge the time I spend and if the client is not ok with that, then I have no problem with them taking their stuff elsewhere. I guess it comes down to changing my mindset.

Mike, that **** stops NOW!

Quality comes at a premium, if that doesn’t fly, well they can look elsewhere.
By no means don’t misunderstand me, I’m not taxing people without them getting anything. But there’s NO free ****.
I charge accordingly to what I provide. I use the best hardware money can buy, the same goes for all supplies. I don’t feel like stocking different price bracket stuff. I stock what I believe is the best money can buy, so of course I charge for whatever I use. Why would time be any different?

 

[zmotorsports]

I approach things one way and it is pretty binary. I do not lose money. Period. If I do it is because on one of three things (or a combination of all of them )

1. Improper tooling (solved immediately and order placed)
2. Improper information (solved as quickly as possible but priority one)
3. Not enough effort from the team (another thing dealt with immediately)

For me, if I follow those three simple things it is really impossible not to succeed. My business’s rely’s on cash flow, and that is provided by the customers, we have to get the stuff done yesterday so we can draw and bill.

Early on it was much much different. I struggled mightily and things were much different. I tried to do more with less. Yeah that never worked and I tried and tried to make it work. I changed my mindset to those three points and BOOM off we went.


REST??? WTF is that? Money NEVER sleeps

Actually we are closed between the holidays so I fully plan on hitting the gym and taking some time to get ready for the next **** show


IDK bro, service demands a price. When you go to capital grill on Friday with the wife and need to go to the bathroom are you pointed in the direction or are you led to the door and it is opened for you? Do you fend for yourself at the sink or does the attendant hand you a towel? That comes with a price, and I believe you provide that service. Don’t undervalue that.

I really need to adopt the highlighted portion above. When I had my speed shop, I wasn't rolling in the money by any means, we did ok, but there were times I cut deals, still do for some reason. I track my time pretty accurately each night with time and a brief overview of the work I performed, but even last night when looking over the hours, I saw a couple of areas where I felt like that particular task shouldn't have taken me as long as it did, so I trimmed the hours back a little here and there. Yes, screwed myself.

 

[olsenmotorsports]

Been there once, years ago.

Not for the faint of wallet.

I didn't pay, very limited drinks, and it still was around 150 a person.

Their chocolate cake was really good.

That’s kind of the point though right? Years ago you went there and still remember the details. Remember where you went the next week and what you had?

You always remember stellar things. As well as garbage things

The mediocre things get discarded from memory.

 

[Scuderia-F1]

I really need to adopt the highlighted portion above. When I had my speed shop, I wasn't rolling in the money by any means, we did ok, but there were times I cut deals, still do for some reason. I track my time pretty accurately each night with time and a brief overview of the work I performed, but even last night when looking over the hours, I saw a couple of areas where I felt like that particular task shouldn't have taken me as long as it did, so I trimmed the hours back a little here and there. Yes, screwed myself.

If it took you time, it needed that time to be done to a standard that is associated with your name, & stop doing them deals….

 

[olsenmotorsports]

If it took you time, it needed that time to be done to a standard that is associated with your name, & stop doing them deals….

This. You have the value add just need to sell it!

 

[ScepterToad]

So, what's the story on the clear bra material you're putting on cars? How does it hold up over time? Does it come off?

In the RV world, there's a lot of folks out there that have a clear bra on the front of coaches. They don't last and they spend quite a lot of money (or time) trying to get them off because they get mold under the edges and look like complete ****. These any different?