WALK ON THEWIDE SIDE

A WALK ON THE When Jon Miller sought ideas for a project to showcase his restoration business, he needed to look no further than Porsche’s back-catalogue of legendary road-racers. Drawing inspiration from the mighty 2.8 RSR, he created a 930 Turbo hot-rod

2.8 RSR inspiredandbased on a 930 Turbo, Jon Miller’s mean green machine is a hot rodlike no other

There’s no way you can ignore it, whether it’s the colour, the Rsr-inspired wide-arched styling or, when playing hooligan, the distinctive flutter from the wastegate as the turbo reaches peak boost. As a means of transport for the shy and retiring, it’s a complete failure – as a thrill-seeking ride for a blue-blooded Porsche enthusiast, it’s game on!

Let’s turn the clock back to 2012 and imagine the scene: in deepest Ireland, the owner of a specialist Porsche workshop is scanning ebay one night. Come on, admit it, you’ve done it, too. You’re on the search for that elusive bargain, the one that nobody else has bid on. If you’re quick, you can click ‘Buy’ before somebody else spots ‘your’ bargain. As owner of Classiccarreras based in Limerick, County Clare, Jon Miller was on the lookout for a project, something which he could use to showcase his company’s skills.

His winning bid grabbed him a bargain 1986 930 Turbo in black with deep red interior. Sounds good, you might think, but there was no available service history, the mileage was the wrong side of the magic 100K mark and, worst of all, it had a blown turbo. Or so the seller believed.

But, recalls Jon with a smile, ‘Upon getting it home and stripping down the induction system it turned out that the blown turbo was actually nothing more than a blown seal, so that was a result.’ Sadly that appeared to be about the only plus to a project which at this stage looked set to start with a whole lot of minuses.

Initial inspection showed that the Turbo had the usual rot in the kidney bowls and bumper mounts, so whatever course of action Jon chose to take, it would have to start with a strip and repair. Over the next few weeks, the unsuspecting 930 was torn apart, reduced to a pile of parts on one side of the garage, and a bare shell on a trestle on the other. Jon taped off some areas of the bodywork which he didn’t want blasted for fear of damage, and then sent the shell away to be stripped. It came back as the usual scare story, but not one which caused Classiccarreras any nightmares. After all, restoring older Porsches was their speciality.

Jon tells us, ‘We are primarily a restoration business, but 90 per cent of the work is Porsche, covering everything from service work to engine rebuilds, full restorations and backdates. In fact, everything except gearboxes and trimming work is done in-house. In recent times we’ve also been catering for the newer water-cooled models, both regular servicing and preventative maintenance.’

The bottoms of the 930’s B-pillars looked rather colander-like, as did the sills. Cutting away the lower portion of the rear wings revealed kidney bowls that were virtually nonexistent. The first repairs were made to the bowls, followed by the sills. ‘Normally I'm a stickler for using genuine Porsche panels,’ says Jon, ‘as others don’t usually fit that well, but on this occasion I tried a Dansk one for size and it didn’t seem too bad. I decided the time making it fit would be similar to backdating the genuine sill panel, so went with the Dansk.

‘I wasn’t trying to recreate a particular car – I just wanted a wide-arch long-hood with go to match the show…’ says Jon. Among the decisions made at an early stage was to build an Rsr-inspired beast, a relatively straightforward conversion one might be forgiven for thinking, given that the Turbo already comes with wide arches front and rear. But as any of the Porsche cognoscenti will tell you, the profile of the genuine RSR flares is subtly different to that of the stock 930 panels.

As only the best was going to be good enough, Jon ordered a set of the correctlyshaped flares from Ben Coles and set about modifying the stock panels accordingly. This was no five minute job, as bothfront and rear wings needed plenty of attention to get things while the sills were still off the car, Jon made up new oil lines and threaded them through the sill (unlike the early 911s where they sit exposed) in an effort to clean up the lines. It may have been a lot of work, but the end result was definitely worth it. It’s one of those details which you don’t notice until somebody points it out to you, and those kind of modifications are often the deciding factor in what determines the difference between a good rebuild and a great one.

Jon loves sun roofs – especially those fitted by Porsche – but the one fitted to the Turbo from new had to go. After all, it didn’t really fit in with the whole Rsr-style ethos of less is more. A steel ‘delete’ panel was thus welded in place, leaving no trace of the missing sun roof.

Other little tricks included reworking the dash top, so that it resembled the early single-speaker design – it’s another subtle change that doesn’t smack you in the eye, but makes all the difference. More obvious was the change made to accommodate the early ‘long hood’ conversion, requiring the installation of a new front slam panel and bulkhead. That in itself is relatively straightforward but Jon also wished to fit a large fully-functional front-mounted oil cooler.

The RSR front bumper moulding could

show… ” I just wanted a widearched long-hood with go to match the

accommodate this, but the front panel of the shell couldn’t without restricting airflow. Jon’s answer was to cut into the bulkhead and fabricate a duct which would direct air that had passed through the cooler down under the car. Using a hand-fabbed panel, it’s an elegant and functional solution to keeping the engine cool.

Aside from attention to any remaining areas of rust, this fairly much took care of the bodyshell, but there was one area under the car that needed to be examined in detail if one of Jon’s proposed upgrades was going to be possible: fitting a G50 transmission into a car designed to accept the old 915-based 930 four-speed gearbox.

The original transmission is strong, true enough, but its four widely-spaced ratios relied on the torque of the 3.3-litre engine to make up for the lack of gears. Simply installing a five-speed 915 from an early 3.2 Carrera wouldn’t work as it would wilt under the strain, so Jon looked into swapping to the much-improved G50 – but that won’t fit straight into the earlier shell as the torsion tube gets in the way. OK, so you could cut the tube away – a ‘simple’ solution as the plan was to install coil-over suspension – but that didn’t appeal to Mr Miller.

OK, so what’s the alternative? How about shortening the G50 by 29mm so it would fit? And that’s just what he did, or rather that’s what gearbox maestro Mike Bainbridge did, shortening the bell-housing and input shaft by the requisite amount to allow the new trans to fit the 1986 shell. At the same time, Mike installed a Quaife TBD (torque biasing differential – the modern take on the traditional LSD) along with the fifth gear ratio from the ’89 Turbo ’box for better motorway cruising, as Jon had some long trips in mind, such as attending Le Mans Classic, a round trip of some 1400 miles…

When it came to the matter of suspension, from the start Jon knew that the stock torsion bar set-up had to go, making way for a fully adjustable and infinitely more sophisticated coil-over set-up, front and rear.

Such a design is great for all the obvious reasons, but does place more strain on the bodyshell, in particular the upper shock mounts at the rear. With this in mind, he fabricated some gussets to weld around the shock towers at the front of the engine bay, and also added some strengthening under the car between the rear crossmember and the adjoining bodywork.

Things were moving on apace, but the details continued to flow. Look again at that dashboard. I know, we’ve already told you about the speaker grille, but did you notice the lack of fresh-air vents, or the ‘missing’ switches between the main gauges? Little things that you wouldn’t find on a 1970s-era RSR, so they had to go. He also stripped the door frames of their black anodising, and

managed to pick up a pair of Nos(new old stock) Hella 4004GT door mirrors – elegant, streamlined items that fit in perfectly with the period style. And then it was time to look at the interior…

The seats are something a little different to the norm, being a pair of rare Recaro Rallye III buckets, which feature tilt backs for rear seat access. First released in 1980, they were the third incarnation of Recaro’s classic Rallye seats, the first of which appeared in 1967. The seats Jon found were in dire need of retrimming, and still had the original meshstyle headrests. The latter looked too modern for the car, so were replaced with earlier-style headrests which needed some modification to fit the Rallye IIIS. Now retrimmed in black leather with Porsche 914 lime green plaid inserts, they look (and feel) just great – and are warm, too, as heated seat pads were included in the retrim!

The same plaid material was also used on the rear seats, while the door cards were covered in black Connolly hide and equipped with home-brewed leather pull straps. The door check straps were made by Jon and feature ‘Porsche’ embossed into them using a press tool made by – you guessed it – the slightly raised, unlike some other similar conversions which end up hiding the handbrake lever almost out of reach.

Check those gauges. Late-style instruments they may have been, but now that North Hollywood Speedometer have worked their magic, they look spot on for the early-’70s look Jon was after. In fact, you end up doing a double take when you notice the ‘silver dot’ tachometer incorporating a turbo boost gauge. A Momo Prototipo wheel adds the finishing touch to a very classy interior.

Wheels and tyres? We thought you’d never ask. Rather than go for the rather more obvious satin-anodised Fuchs, Jon chose to buy a set of 8J and 10Jx15 PAG (Campagnolo) replicas from Group 4. Normally finished in the original gold hue, they were ordered bare so they could be finished to match the car. First they were powder-coated in black, and then the rim and the spokes were diamond-cut back to bare aluminium, before each wheel was then clear powder-coated. The result is a unique look to a classic wheel.

As for the tyres, there was only one choice as far as Jon was concerned: Michelin TB15S, the fronts being 18/60R15, the rears

4…“Jon chose to buy a set of PAG (Campagnolo) replicas from Group