Resto Hero
Tref Willingham’s early assessment of this über-rare Porsche soft-top turned out to have been a bit wide of the mark but it turned out to be one great resto.
This beautiful restored Porsche 924 Cabriolet is a sight to behold.
So, exactly how do you restore a classic that was never original in the first place? Especially when there’s an army of ‘Porscheinistas’ ready to spot every deviance from stock? Answer: make it up as you go along. That’s exactly what super-talented engineer, Tref Willingham and partner Claire ended up doing when taking on the restoration of their Porsche 924 Turbo Cabriolet.
Aficionados will tell you that Porsche never made a soft top version of its entry-level sports car, though a handful of Porsche-approved coachbuilders took on the challenge. The result was just two Turbo cabriolets making it onto UK roads.
One of them is Claire and Tref’s 1981 Guards Red survivor – believed to be the only one on the road and possibly the last of six built. Found in a field up to its arches in grass and with a seized engine, the baby Porker had almost had its bacon by the time Tref got his hands on it in 2005. ‘We probably paid over the top for it,’ says Tref, whose £450 investment now seems pretty shrewd. ‘The wheels barely turned, there was a hole in the wing you could put your fist through and the hood was just about usable as a pattern.’
Hen’s teeth
There was one pleasant surprise given that the car had had a staggering seventeen previous owners: ‘We found a brochure for ‘Porkies Conversions’ for 924s, 944s and 928s in the glove box.’ Neither the Devon telephone number nor the company still exist, but this documentation is as rare as hen’s teeth and provides an invaluable clue as to how the conversion came about.
Tref set himself a ten-month target to turn the 924 around. As secretary of the Porsche Club GB’S Dorset region, he was already becoming something of a transaxle expert, owning several 944s including one converted to LPG and fitted with a tow bar – the perfect vehicle to bring the 924 home to Dorset.
Once ensconced in the garage-cum-workshop, Tref’s day job as a senior design engineer set the tone for the re-build: ‘There were clearly four very major components to deal with – bodywork, mechanics, roof and interior. I reckoned it just needed a new wing, an engine and a roof.’
The engine had allegedly been replaced so Tref consulted the PCGB Forum and the consensus was to obtain a donor car with a working motor. A Turbo coupé came up at the right price and settled into its final resting place adjacent to Tref’s Cabriolet.
‘It was sad to switch off the donor car’s engine for the last time,’ he says.
Every item removed from the donor engine meant another gasket would need replacing. ‘It was also somewhere else for dirt to get in to!’ says Tref.
‘I like to keep things as clean and ‘together’ as much
‘A 944 running on LPG and fitted with a towbar brought the 924 home’
as possible. I knew from the Cabrio that you didn’t have to move the torque tube but did have to drop the wishbones, steering rack and front anti-roll bar to get the engine out. I marked the crossmember position and wishbone rear mounts with Tipex so I could return them to their original positions.’
Finally, the donor engine was ready for extraction. ‘A good engine crane and balance bar obviously helped,’ says Tref, ‘By keeping the chains short, it wasn’t even necessary to remove the bonnet.’ However, the most difficult job was to come. ‘I could not separate the exhaust from the wastegate and a couple of the nuts began to round with every attempt. A combination of a cold chisel and hammer, nut splitter, a Dremel and a slitting disc did the trick. As Tref says: ‘Standard techniques, patience and bloodymindness were all that we needed.’
Meanwhile, Claire removed and cleaned all of the ancillaries ready for later re-assembly. ‘A useful side benefit of having a donor car is that we had somewhere to store all the shiny bits!’ says Tref. Next, blanking plates made out of MDF to prevent wildlife and water entering the engine’s internals were installed before cleaning and a coat of dazzling Smoothrite.
Vroom for improvement
With the donor engine successfully transplanted in to the cabrio, the plan was to have the car Mot’d – even though it was bound to fail – so that Tref and Claire would know if they had missed any serious structural faults. ‘The windscreen was cracked and none of the lights worked after the bonnet cable release snagged on the headlight cranks, pulling the cable through the bulkhead and wreaking havoc with the fuse box,’ says Tref, ‘but it was a realistic test on all components with the engine running. We ended up with the testing station’s most comprehensive failure list ever – 27 points in all.’
The Porsche could now be sent to the body shop where Tref would strip down and repair known problem areas such as the hood and boot lid. It emerged that there were two hood conversions available in the Eighties. The Lainwather & Blazek hood kit was a trademark of the ‘Porkies Conversions’, however age had taken its toll and the hood wouldn’t close. ‘The pivots for the hood comprised a couple of longer bolts that seemed insecure,’ says Tref. ‘The rear boot came off relatively easily despite one of the coach bolts shearing off!’
Interior and hood specialist, Larry Piper, immediately spotted a broken pivot bolt in the frame – an easy fix. Meanwhile, the boot lid was sagging and missing one catch, the hinges were loose and the fibreglass was split down the middle and held in place with self -tappers. Once again, Tref’s engineering brain demanded a better solution.
Using custom steel angle to connect the hinges and catches meant that the boot lid became purely cosmetic. Attaching the repaired lid to its
mountings with sticky tape raised a few eyebrows at the time: ‘I have used 3M VHB tape for a number of industrial applications in the past,’ says Tref.
‘It holds together road signs on the A34, the wings on buses and even the flaps on some jumbo jets.’
The home straight
With two new front wings and the bonnet from the donor car in place, much sanding, priming and filling ensued before the Turbo was finally ready to be sent away for paint – a whole year behind schedule. Multiple coats of Guards Red were applied by Tref’s friend Paul in his booth and at long last, the car was ready for final assembly. Clear front indicator lenses were sourced from a club member who made them from scratch. With refurbished bumpers and brackets, the car was almost done. New carpets and a dash top that Tref had squirreled away helped to finish the job.
One of the finishing touches was the caps that fit on the end of the sill covers. Long discontinued by Porsche, they are very rare, but Tref came up with some engineer’s genius. ‘I wanted to glue them on because I didn’t want to drill the bodywork. I solved the problem by modelling and 3D-printing a set, made from ABS, a recognised material that Porsche uses in many other places.’
Despite being only 99 percent finished and hardly original, Claire and Tref’s car earned second place on its first concours outing. The Turbo Cabriolet is a stunning testament to Tref’s ingenuity as well as his willingness to get his hands dirty. With 924 values on the rise, Porsche’s peoples’ car has come of age. Perhaps Tref’s answer to re-manufacturing obsolete parts shows how we might all be ensuring that our classics remain on the road in future.