Are you a good DIY mechanic? it sounds like this car is being brought back from the Land of the Dead, or at least Purgatory...
I'm pretty good at reading!
I brought a 1979 Yamaha XS750 back from "purgatory" (wasn't dead yet, but it needed some work). I never managed to acquire the skills necessary to ride it (it's a large bike for someone who doesn't know how ride them), but I am pretty sure I managed to at least get it to "comatose".
Part of the reason I bought this car, is that it came with a bajillion extra parts (many of the NiB).
Replace the brake pads; check the discs for thickness & runout with a dial indicator.
Amazingly someone appears to have redone the brakes, and put new tires on it (which doesn't make much sense because you couldn't drive it very far in its present condition). Also, someone put new springs on the front struts.
Replace all rubber brake hoses and fuel hoses. This will prevent an untimely death.
I'll have to look at the brake lines, but all the fuel related ones are braided stainless steel. I believe there are also new rubber CV joints in myriad of parts that I have. Heck, there are even some new tie rods. Also included were like basically every gasket, a new water pump (but I think the one in there isn't broken), auxiliary fuel pump (same story), some valves (not sure whether intake or exhaust), extra exhaust manifold, there is even a replacement clock (the one currently works perfectly). I think the only wear part that I don't have a replacement for would be the clutch plate. I think I've even got the bearing to rebuild the torque tube. I've also got an extra dual impeller Bosch fan (which I am not even sure will fit on the radiator)
You can make it very nice if you modify it some - e.g. by putting in a lot of 944S4 parts.
I've seen people do some crazy things with the 924, but the 79 I have would require even more than most would. It has 20mm driveshaft (944 has a 25mm) and matching Audi-sourced transaxle. From what I've read it will just break if you make the engine output more than 160-ish hp. I think this one is gonna remain pretty stock, unless a whole buncha better Porsches happen to all crash in front of my house but the body/frame on the one I currently own is the only usable one of out the bunch. I've only recently acquired the car, but I think to make very sporty the "easiest" (not easy at all) way would be an engine swap, mounting an appropriate transaxle/clutch thing to match it, along with all the rear bits-and-bobs to required attach some rear discs. I don't think it is financially feasible or even sensible (it might be fun though).
I am not sure what the story is with this car exactly. Somehow it has managed to acquire quite a few replacement parts (that I'm not even sure are strictly necessary, because everything on car appears quite), but none of the previous owners ever installed them.
But I promise that you want to replace all the shock absorbers with digressively valved shocks.
I will look into this. This isn't something I've seen discussed.
You want to add butyl sound deadening to cover 25% of each panel. Rap it with your knuckles first and note the resonance. Then stick it on there in and near the center. Rap it again and compare. NO NEED to cover the whole thing. Avoid all in one products, some of which are very popular unless you want to add too much wt. and cost...
This seems like solid advice. I'm not totally sure what it looked like stock, but the parts catalog makes it seem like it was just single layer of some sort of padding between the outer panel and then interior panel.
