I believe there is material at Home Depot that is thick black foam with a foil backing that is very similar to Dynamat. I just can’t remember the name but it is used for insulating ducts. Peel and Seal? Just Google Dynamat substitute. Or, in a pinch, the heavy grade foam rubber carpet padding will work very similarly. What newkitman has…[Read more]

I don’t agree. The package shelf in my TDR is like a drum that magnifies the engine noise. Sound deadening wouldn’t mask the engine but would reduce the magnification and transmission of it to the driver and passenger. And from past experience, sound deadening on the floorboards greatly reduces road noise. I personally would rather listen to…[Read more]

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We lived in Wellington for 7 years and loved everything but Hurricanes Frances, Jean, and Wilma.

I live in Vegas and have never heard of a pool cooler.  Shade is everything here.  It makes a tremendous difference.  We are at 110 degrees today and thanks to my solar heating panels, I got my pool warmed up enough to swim in (85-87 degrees).  The morning temperature is usually in the high 70s.  That’s because my pool faces east and a wall shad…[Read more]

I did what Baytown did.  Narrowing the front end by 2″ makes the tires fit under the fenders a lot better, and together with lowering it, the car looks a lot more like a real TD.  As far as I can tell, it drives normally, although I do get some slight tire rubbing in sharp turns.  Haven’t driven it enough, however, to tell exactly what is ru…[Read more]

Back in 1976, I had a “cherry Karmann-Ghia” except it was actually a 1971.  It was my first “real car” (after the 1930 Ford Model A that I restored in high school and then sold).  Pretty, but I remember keeping an ice scraper handy to scrape the ice off the INSIDE of the windshield, and putting expanding bolts into the rust holes to fill them.  …[Read more]

Do you guys seriously drive these cars in the dark in the fog?  I mean, the basic headlights are so weak that is disqualifying IMHO all by itself.  I look at this as primarily a cosmetic issue.  There is no way I’m taking this car out after dark.

“… I will make up my own harness.”  Good luck with that.  The previous owner of my TDR botched the job, used all wire in the same color (!), and about half the old gauges didn’t work.  I replaced the dashboard and the gauges, and what was left after removal of the old stuff was “a complete mess.”  I don’t do electrical and so I turned it ove…[Read more]

A lot depends on the condition of the car that is not shown in the pictures, such as whether it runs(!), compression, whether the transmission and clutch are good, how old the tires are, and what shape the paint, chrome, and upholstery are in — pictures can be deceiving. And a lot depends on your intentions. Are you satisfied with it as-is, or…[Read more]

As a Missouri attorney — formerly of the Kansas City area BTW — you and the lady (and your attorney, unless you simply misunderstood him/her) are all full of misinformation.  Let’s start with the idea that it’s somehow more difficult to transfer title across state lines.  Ridiculous.  If that was the case, used car dealers across the U.S. wo…[Read more]

You are of course right about the GPS not working in tunnels, but there are no tunnels here. There are parking garages, but if I am going fast enough to worry about my speed in a parking garage, I don’t need the speedo to tell me that. I just think it is a neat fix that resolves all the mechanical, tire, and wheel issues while looking a lot like…[Read more]

My Vintage Repro speedo would show double the mph. I replaced it with a Speedhut GPS speedo that has no mechanical connection at all, and is 4-1/4″ diameter with a style similar to the real TD’s (can be customized). The GPS “memorizes” where you are so the speedo works immediately when you start driving instead of waiting to acquire satellites.…[Read more]

I have seen those wheels on a TDR, so I know it can be done. A lot would depend on the offset and exactly how wide you want your tires. Also, nobody says the front and rear tires have to match. The rear tires can go quite a bit bigger without hitting on things and it’s unlikely anyone would even realize they are bigger than the fronts. You…[Read more]

My boss and I painted his old Buick Skylark with brushed-on Rustoleum back in 1985.  It was robin’s egg blue and started peeling off within about a month, and I can’t get that image out of my mind.

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Heck, a Porsche 914 itself has a VW engine in it. Modified of course, but that car was even marketed in Europe as a “VW-Porsche”. Porsche itself uses a lot of Audi engines today, and it’s own engines aren’t all they are cracked up to be. Google Porsche Boxster and “IMS” if you want to see. A lot of Boxsters have engines that grenade due to…[Read more]

Looks like the $5000 isn’t so bad after all. There are cheaper alternatives, but with no space to work, a wife who is more stressed out about my car than I am, and with the money I’ve already thrown away, er, spent on this, the $5K actually starts to sound reasonable. No matter what I do, I’m deep in the hole — might as well finish it right so…[Read more]

I got two paint estimates — both about $5000. To be fair, it’s a lot of work I asked for … partial disassembling, realigning the hood and center strip, fixing a few stress cracks, repainting in the same bright red with clear coat, sandblasting/repainting the wheels, and of course reassembling. Still, $5000 seems like a lot, considering it’s…[Read more]

When I first got my car last October, I foolishly thought I’d have it on the road in a couple of months, so in my excitement I made a set of five (5) hubcaps identical to the one on the left (actually, I got the idea here).  They have been sitting in my garage ever since.

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Having recently made my own wooden seat platforms, this is my assessment the difficulty involved in making the seat platforms.  I am a very amateur woodworker, I have portable power tools and no dedicated wood shop, but hey, I thought, how hard can it be to build new seat bases?  Well, it was a lot harder than I thought.  You need to thoroughly th…[Read more]