My Martini RSR build project

[patrick911]

Hi everyone,

My name is Patrick, I'm originally from The Netherlands, and I bought a light yellow 1973 911 2.4T just before the prices went crazy, and am now in the process now of building a 2.8 RSR. I have a thread going on the early911sregistry in the US, and regularly post on the 'Classic Porsche Australia' FB page, but I figured I may as well share my project here, as I hope to get some advise on where to buy stuff and get recommendations for certain jobs.

So although I have a degree in telecomms, I'm a program manager nowadays and until I started this project had never worked on cars. Yes, I replaced the odd lightbulb or battery, but knew little about the inner workings of a car. Call it midlife crisis, or maybe just boredom, I like to think that I really needed to do something myself, being a manager by profession, rather than getting others to do the work.

Anyway, even though I drive my yellow T often and hard, I always liked the RSR better. Not for the sheer performance, although for a car in 1973 getting over 300bhp out of a 2.8/3.0L engine was pretty damn impressive, it's the combination of looks, performance, the Martini livery of that car and the fact i had an inspirational chat once with Gijs van Lennep, who drove one of these cars to victory on the Targa Florio.

I believe there's only 55 real RSRs ever built by Porsche, so getting my hands on an original is never going to happen. And because I like to have a car that is as close as possible to the real deal, most of the project/RSR clones for sale didn't do it for me or were too expensive. Plus, i felt the need to built something myself.

So when i had the chance a few years back, I bought a great donor car in QLD and drove it back to Melbourne, only to start taking it apart to become something else. I was looking for a non-sunroof, left hand drive, 1976+ (galvanised) car with a magnesium 2.7 engine, and the car I found was exactly that. Even better, it had a SC-RS/RUF aftermarket bumper set and was sprayed in 'Morpheus purple' by the previous owner. He had to sell, and as early G-series weren't popular a few years back, I think I made a great deal.

So what's the project? I've set out to built a copy of the R6 works Martini RSR (#8) as it did the Targa Florio, similar to what Mike Moore in the UK has done a dew years back (he built the prototype #107 car).

So in this topic I like to take you through the steps and decisions made and explain why and where I deviate from the original, because i do have time, but no unlimited budget. I have studied the car - and RSRs in general - for years, but am also well aware that 'period correct' is not always that easy; these cars raced to win and were changed to remain competitive throughout the season. Even the recently restored real R6 (911 360 0588) car has a few mistakes, so I'm happy for anyone to point them out for my job, as such a discussion in itself is part of the fun and process.

 

[TINGY]

Welcome to the forum Patrick and what a great way to introduce yourself.

This will be very interesting to watch, please post plenty of pictures of this journey as plenty of people on here will be following this i am sure.

[patrick911]

A bit of background to the RSRs in 1973:

The books tell us that the RS and its racing variant (M491) RSR came to be because the 917 got outlawed from 1972 onward, and Porsche decided to enter its flagship 911 road car to meet FIAs newly set 3.0L maximum capacity for its prototype class.

So for 1973 Porsche upgraded the 911 to fill that up-to-3 liter category and in the process kept the 911 interesting until the 928 replacement would come along. The 2.7 RS got homologated for racing in group 3 (production GT) and group 4(special GT) after it built the required 500 road going cars. The RSR version however reflected the real goal that Porsche had for the Carrera; to produce the perfect car for motor racing. 

The RSR incorporated every improvement permitted under the racing rules for Group 4, but because of the cumbersome homologation process and the huge cost to convert these cars, only 55 (including the factory 'Rx' prototypes) were ever specified as M491 (RSR).

During the winterbreak of 1972/1973 Porsche planned out their strategy and decided on enytering a factory team for the '1973 World Championship for Makes' and leave the GT European championship and other various championships to privately run teams. The factory team entered 2 cars, hired Gijs van Lennep and herber Mueller to drive one, leaving the second for multiple different drivers (Follmer, Joest, etc) and struck a deal with martin & Rossi for their sponsorship.

Indicating the change these RSRs went through during the season:

 

[patrick911]

The car I'm building is going to be a clone of the RSR with chassisnumber 911.360.0588, also sometimes referred to as 'R6'.

This car was taken of the standard production line and designated for the M491 racing package, which included extended flares front & back, bigger wheels (9" front and 11" rear), reinforcements, and of course a modified engine (twinplug 2.8L), limited slip diff and lots of other modifications.

The factory (or works) cars differed from the other, customer delivered RSRs as well. The racers have a 120L fuel cell for example, rather than the plastic 110L tank you mostly see. 'R6' was one of the two cars allocated to the factory race team, sponsored by Martini, and participated in the following races.

Then, after the mixed result 1973 season, where R6 was developed over the season to run as a group-5 prototype, the car was sold to Roger Penske's Sunoco team, who entered it at Watkins Glen where it came home 6th (in blue/yellow Sunoco livery), being driven by Donahue & Follmer.

It got then purchased (at the track, paid for in cash as legend has it) by Mexican racer 'Roberto Quintanilla', who used it extensively in the rest of 1973 and 1974. But, because R6 (in group-5 trim) wasn't legal for IMSA events, a lot of parts were exchanged with other RSs and RSR 0705. Quintanilla stopped racing the car in 1976 and the car ended up in Kansas City (McClelland). There's nothing I could find on it's further endeavours until I found pictures of it in LeMans trim (with the huge, one-piece Mary Stuart flares), owned by Peter Kitchak in 1992. In 2010 it was sold to Europe, and again in 2014 to the UK, and it's been recently restored by Maxted-Page

(see their website for some stunning restoration pics)

Maxted-Page restored the car to its Targa Florio winning body, and has shown it last year and this year at the Goodwood festival.

 

...and this is what the donor car looked like: 

[James P]

Hi Patrick welcome..

I bought the seats out of your purple car & remember it well,  its a very clean donor car

Good luck with the project & can't wait to see the finished result 

James 

[patrick911]

Hi James, I hope the seats were OK?

[Raven]

Subscribed .............looking forward to this build 

[patrick911]

So after I finished my garage to be able to even work on the car, I started the big job of taking it apart.

Easy enough, mostly... it's probably the putting-back-together that is really hard.  I took lots of pictures and labelled most items and stored them all in cabinets and crates, but I find, 5 years later almost now, that my notes and pictures are still not clear enough. Fortunately most of the parts will not have to go back in.

As you can see from the pictures the original color was 'vipergreen'. Awesome color, I almost feel bad it'll be 'boring' silver when finished.

Hardest job was to remove all the seam-sealer& underside pvc/rubber-like protection material from the car. It's really everywhere and the only way to get it off is to use scrapers and a heatgun. I must have spend 200 hours I think in total, but although it's a shit job, with some good music on its actually quite relaxing.

few pictures of the 'schutz' removal (rear seats & under dash area).

[Raven]

So was the original factory color of the car the  green ..........? Wow cool indeed 

Yes that sound deadening rubber stuff is a nightmare to remove ..

[patrick911]

Last post of the day.

I bought a dolly from a local club member here in Melbourne and managed to get the car on it so I could remove the engine with a friend. Having the car on the dolly also helps in reaching the underside, but removing the underside-protection that way was still too hard - I wanted to leave job for when the car would be on a rotisserie.

I already bought various parts left and right over the last 5 years, whilst studying the subject and I did a couple of TAFE welding classes. I admire the work Jeff (Home built by Jeff) has done on his RSR replica, and really wish I could do the same, but I recognized pretty quickly that my welding skills were pretty bad. Therefore I decided i would need a workshop to do all the body-work. Based on some recommendations and seeing first-hand some of the cars Jason (Caroll) has completed, I decided on 'Chequered Flag Restorations' in Bayswater. Not only has he completed the Chesterfield car, he has also worked on one or two real RSRs which came in real handy.

So last January it finally happened; after I sanded to topcoat off the chassis and finished removing all the sealer & schutz (except from the underside), the car was collected and transported to Chequered Flag in bayswater. Now the fun part starts... 

 

[Raven]

The Guys at ZAG Did this one a while back ,,seen it in person came out nice ..

http://www.motorsportretro.com/2014/05/martini-rsr-911/

 

[LeeM]

36 minutes ago, Raven said:

The Guys at ZAG Did this one a while back ,,seen it in person came out nice ..

http://www.motorsportretro.com/2014/05/martini-rsr-911/

 

 It ain't like that now if its the car I'm thinking of. All the decals were removed and recently sold again from Adelaide

 Gday @patrick911 Welcome to the forum 👍

[Raven]

1 hour ago, LeeM said:

 It ain't like that now if its the car I'm thinking of. All the decals were removed and recently sold again from Adelaide

 Gday @patrick911 Welcome to the forum 👍

I do remember the car being up for sale a Sydney classic throttle shop ,,,,That,s a shame is it just plain silver now Lee ....?

[patrick911]

...after all that effort he went thru, it turned out that particular livery, as copied from the museum car, was completely wrong.

The car displayed in the old museum with #8 turned out to be the car that came 3rd at the Targa, running with a red roof and the number #9 on the sides. They did rectify that recently. 

@moderators: Did i start this thread in the wrong location? If so, please move to the correct spot. Still finding my way around the site.

[LeeM]

All good @patrick911 👍

@Raven Yes mate, all silver now

[patrick911]

The first thing to do regarding the bodywork was to change the G-series (impact bumper) car into an F-series. Second will be to make all the modifications required to change it into an RSR (flares, reinforcements, etc). and finally, add things to either make it roadworthy (VICroads requirements, like retractable seatbelts) and factory RSR specific changes.

Using other projects, Porsche forums, period pictures and the books on the subject ("from R-to-RSR" by Starkey and "Carrera RS" by Konradsheim), as well as using Jason's extensive knowledge on these cars, we made a list of all the things that needed to happen. There's a few assumptions though, as these cars changed throughout the season. So even if the book list that a modification was made in June 1973, which is after the targa Florio held in May, the race cars were often used to experiment so they may have had these changes earlier.

Case in point is the so-called Lollipop seat. It is common knowledge these were used from the 1974 season onward, and a lot of 935s have them fitted, but R6 had one of these already fitted during the Targa Florio to test. Similarly, I thought the RSR did not have any of the battery boxes, yet I've seen RSRs with the right one still in place...  Then there's the widened flares. Every builder that aims to replicate correctly states that they need to be steel. During the 1973 season though, in a continuous battle to lower the weight of these cars, it is proven that more and more parts of the car (front flares, doors, ducktail) were changed to GRP. So I'm not trying to use this as an excuse for why things may be 'incorrect' or different, I'm just trying to explain it's not always black & white. I'm hoping that by posting this on various places I can add to the knowledge on these cars and make the right choices.

R6, chassisnumber 0588 is very likely to have been one of the first series RSs that used the thinner steel for the body. The factory kept using these parts until they ran out, so also here I haven't been able to find a clear date or chassis number cut off. But I'm obviously going to keep the 'normal' steel for my body, so there's the first real difference already.

this is the list of the changes we set out to make, including the reason why, but the list has grown since, as we found more and more things whilst going through old period or restoration pictures.

[AD911S]

Had the good fortune to work on this genuine 2.8 RSR years ago when it lived in the Adelaide hills

[patrick911]

Hey, I thought HOT-911 was light blue? Isn't that the one that has the gills in the front fenders?

Only RSR that i know that is right hand drive (although not as delivered from the factory). Have you got more pictures?

[Jason E]

where's my popcorn??   following.........

 

[patrick911]

The metalwork at 'Chequered Flag' started with fixing some of the G-series specific holes in the dash and for the airconditioning. At the rear, the G-series specific centre piece was removed and the holes in the panel that holds those stickers was filled too. Only later did we remove that square on the left that is G-series specific, thanks to someone on the earlyS forum that obviously spotted that.

Other items removed where the baggage loops in the parcel tray and the G-series specific seat mounts.

As you may have noticed from the pictures, I was very lucky with this donor car. Apart from one of the elephant ears, that looked like it was hit by a shotgun, and a little surface rust on the parcel tray, this car was totally fine rust-wise. I don't know much of the history of this car, other than that is was delivered in Japan, but clearly it has led a cherished life, and has been garaged mostly.

I ordered the front and rear RSR bumpers, the hood and the front RSR fenders in GRP from Mike Tankard, who people advised me was 'the go-to guy her in Victoria. The rear (metal) flares were ordered a year or two ago from Aase in the US, so those could now be fitted too. 

As said before, I'm not sure about the correctness of the front flares in glassfibre for my particular car as it was at the Targa in '73, but there's sufficient evidence that most of these cars over the racing season had metal panels replaced by glass, in order to reduce the weight further. So I'm keeping in that tradition of what racers would have done back in the day.

Next was the removal of the G-series bumper mounts (painful, as all spotwelded) and cutting the front wheel arch pieces, to replace them with the correct F-series ones. We also replaced the front latch panel with a F-series one, only to cut the lower half off right away to allow for the central oil cooler duct.    

 

[AD911S]

Yes restored to blue and with gills

[patrick911]

^^ awesome! thanks AD911S

[Harold996tt]

Mate was wondering when you would pop up here!!! I'm also not too much of a regular here. But now I know where I can see more details of your babies project!!! Hazza (Harold) here!!! 

1 hour ago, AD911S said:

Yes restored to blue and with gills

What's with the big Dutton plaque on there.... 

[Raven]

Was at the last Rennsport event in Sydney few years back ...

 

[Airhead]

I remember that car resided in Bendigo Vic at one point. Owned by the guy who ran the Shamrock Hotel - can't remember his name. I do remember that it sounded really good. - i.e. loud.