One of the most rewarding parts of the restoration process is getting each one of the vehicle’s various systems to come alive one at a time. The past couple of weeks have had me working on a beautiful 1957 Porsche 356 Cabriolet. The car came to the shop last year after being purchased by the current owner a few years back. The car had an older restoration done and had been painted red at that time. The owner commissioned DV Mechanics to take over the restoration after another shop had started the process and completed some of the initial body work. We decided to take the car back to it’s original color (Condor Yellow) and as it turns out this particular car may be thee first Porsche 356 to be painted yellow. This particular car has been very nice to work with due to the fact that is is very straight, complete and corrosion free. The amount of replica/re-issue parts on it has been kept to a minimum and I believe the wiring harness in it to be the original one as well. Despite showing it’s age at all the various connection points, I worked my way through all of the under dash wiring, the gauges, the wipers, the lighting and horns -carefully cleaning and re-tinning the ends of each wire, testing all of the the circuits and connecting everything. It is always satisfying to get the headlights to come on, the blinkers to blink, the starter to engage, etc.. The Porsche 356 has very few bells and whistles and I love the simplicity of this car, it also carries a lot of beautiful little details that give it a lot of depth: the Bosch horns with their “BOSCH” plaques riveted on peeking through the front grilles, the “beehive” lenses with chrome rings engraved with the bulb model number for that particular marker, the electrical connections of brass with screw terminals, all details that are impossible to miss while assembling the car and also details that are easy to lose when replacing old or missing components with new production parts.
