Dated entries from our notes and photos, oldest first. Tap any photo to enlarge it.
We photographed the car as it sat and put together a room-by-room interior plan: every component from the dash and console to the headliner, sun visors and carpet, with rough costs and lead times. The original interior is an orangish-tan, cork-style vinyl with a brown dash and console, and years of sun had cracked most of it.
We reached out to Classic 9 Leather Shop, which specializes in 928 interiors. Their first read on our color: cork at first glance, but possibly a rarer two-tone mahogany over beige/tan. They offered leather samples to hold against a clean, protected section of the original trim before we lock in materials.
Before anything came apart, we wrote down the rules: photograph everything first (wide and close-up), bag parts by zone and never mix left and right, keep fasteners with their part, and keep rubber and plastic out of the sun. Tubs for each door, glass and motors, the interior, hatch and quarters, and the engine bay. Clips, corner trims, regulators, motors and early fasteners all get saved.
The car went up on jack stands, the phone-dial wheels came off, and the first weathered seals and spacers came out. The glass seals were brittle and crumbling, which confirmed we’ll need a full rubber kit after paint. The factory workshop manuals came out too.
We bought a pair of front power seats from a 1985–86 928 S. They’re blue, but we only need them as cores: they bolt into the early floor pattern and will be re-covered to match the new interior. We also added the full wiring plan to the budget and started drawing up a rolling cart for the engine, transmission and torque tube, since the 928 is a unibody and the shell and drivetrain need separate stands.
We photographed the dash, console, glovebox and A-pillars up close. The dash pad is badly cracked, so the plan is to find a good early non-airbag dash core before anything gets re-covered. We also ordered a new pair of dash ventilation grilles for the leather dash.
We pulled the 1978 factory current-flow diagrams to plan the rebuild. A complete body harness for this car is no longer available, so the plan is to rebuild it ourselves with aircraft-grade Tefzel (MIL-W-22759) wire, keeping the factory end plugs and adding modern connectors where they help. The engine harness comes first. We also photographed both door inner skins and their wiring.
Both doors are off the car and up on stands. Next up: stripping them down, saving the regulators, motors, clips and felt guides, and getting them ready for bodywork.
Finish bagging and labeling the window hardware, choose between a rotisserie and a body cart, hunt down a good dash core and power-seat upgrades, and lock in interior materials. See the full plan →
Get an email when we post new progress. No spam, just the car.