We are proud to say that we have our own in-house bodyshop and trained, full-time staff to run it. The facility is exclusively for classic Porsche restoration, although occasionally we carry out work on other exclusive marques.
We operate only to the very highest of standards, using top-quality materials, consumables and not least paint. Invariably we remove all relevant windows, doors, bumpers and so on before painting and masking is carried out with meticulous attention to detail.
Unsurprisingly the main problem with many older Porsches is structural corrosion. The company, perhaps more than other manufacturers, paid considerable attention at the time to protecting its cars against rust, but neglect and sometimes poorly repaired earlier accident damage can cause all manner of problem. Don’t forget that many of the cars that we see now are well over half a century old!
There are two main types of corrosion that affect the longevity of any paint job.
The worst perforates the metal, often leaving gaping holes in the painted surface. The only way to remove it is to completely cut out the affected areas and then to weld in fresh steel. Great care must be taken not simply to store up more problems for the future. With this in mind we refuse to patch over the damage and so our highly skills fabricators use a butt-welding process. This takes longer but leaves the finished surface as smooth as possible, minimising the use of filler to finish off the job.
Then there is the rust that sits on top of the metal and bubbles up through the paint. This is the one that keeps coming back. Other body-shops try sanding it off, grinding through it, painting chemicals over it or simply hoping it will go away. It never does! We have recently invested in a brand new media-blasting system from the market leader in this sector, Hodge-Clemco. This machine uses a special grit to remove everything from the surface, right down to bare steel and then we immediately apply an etching primer before further surface oxidation takes place.
We can confidently state that this process removes virtually every trace of surface rust from a typical Porsche body shell and crucially most of the rust from the folded seams and other hard-to-reach surfaces. Careful attention to these areas during the preparation stage consolidates this effort and helps to stave off corrosion in the future.
