Weekly trip to body shop report.
so far this week i ordered the sheet metal from restoration designs:
battery tray and support
engine shelf (tray I think they call it)
rear floor half
seat hinges and mounts and under body supports
jack supports and recievers ( so we can clean up any rust under them and get it nice and new on the long (no surfacerust to grow)

Also ordered front and rear 916 bumpers, because the ones from the parts car would probably take the same amount of $$$ to get nice as new ones cost( you have to remember i am paying by the hour!

Progress at the shop this week includes welding up all the DAPO holes in the drivers door (for bondo adhesion) as well as welding on the pass side flares, and tacking on the drivers rear and cutting out the drivers front.

This week finish with the flares. start to box in the targa bar, get ready to fit the high mounted stop light, finish the drivers door, weld in the new rear floor and battery tray, hopefully finish the hell hole repair, weld up antenna hole etc



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Weekly Saturday trip to the body shop. Progress this week:
1) Repaired all the rusted weather strip channels in the front trunk
2) Mocked up the flared F/G rocker panels and the flares for my approval
3) Took out homemade (DAPO) battery tray and passenger side engine shelf
4) Dug out all rusted sheet metal in “hellhole” area

Decisions made today:
1) F/G 916 bumpers from parts car are so bad it would be cheaper to source new ones and hope they don’t take much work to fit
2) Replace rear half of floor pan due to rust on passenger side
3) Replace all 4 seat hinges and mounts ( drivers hinges broken, passenger hinges OK, but mounts are rusted)
4) Replace passenger side ending shelf with new
5) Replace battery tray and support with new
6) Take off the spot welded flange on targa bar and seam weld deleting the bright trim
7) Replace jack tube supports and jack tubes(?). The supports have some rust on underside, and they are cheap enough. That way we can get any rust that is under them taken care of now.
8) Weld eyebrows to light doors
9) Gave OK on flare placement

Pending. Or under investigation
1) try to source a high mounted brake light(LED) that will integrate into targa bar rear edge


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My baby was soda blasted, and now we can see the extent of the rust. no real suprises. rust in passenger floor pan, passenger firewall area, the back of the sills where they curl up to meet the door post, the headlight buckets, and a little bit of rust through in what i think is the bottom of the hell hole (could only look up at it, not down from the engine compartment like I am used to) pictures attached.
they are going to start patching and fabricating pieces to fix it this week, while I locate some flared rockers so they can locate the flares!
All in all a good result I think!

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PROGRESS!
Well it is only the kind of progress that a checkbook and a pen can accomplish, but progress none the less!
I put the car in my boss's enclosed auto transport, and hauled it's skeletal rmains down to the restoration shop where i am having the "restoration" done.
Had 3 other guys and a rubermaid flat cart to haul the tub into the trailer.

They will soda blast the car this week, and sandblast the rust areas (hood seal channel, passenger floor pan, passenger firewall, and drivers door sill) this week. so I will be driving to the Chicago area every Saturday for a while. After she is stripped, we will decide what is needed, wanted, and what the budget allows!
I will post pics as I get them. This shop is used to doing this kind of work ( mostly on muscle cars) and keeps apictorial "diary" of the progress as well as a restoration log book!I hop ei don't run out of $$$ before she is done!

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so here are pictures of the garage as it sits today. nothing exciting!


first 3 pics of my car in the far end of the garage, parts car in foreground. 4th pic is one of 3 shelf units of parts taken from my car! In the second picture you can see the stack of long parts on the left (rockers, bunpers, engine lid, rain tray , dash etc) along with the wheels, and the shelves of the suspension and other parts on the right. Engine is on the floor in front of that shelving unit.

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I just finished getting my 72 ready to go to the soda blasters/restoration shop. getting excited about embarking upon the final part of the journey.

SO here is the history of my time with the car. I was living in Los Alamos ,NM, and I saw this yellow 914 on the "lemon lot" as we called the county sanctioned used car lot. Since i have always loved and lusted after 914's, i took down the number of the owner and called him. It was a definite 30 footer, i.e. looked good from 30 feet, but had REALLY bad paint job. after doing the research and taking a test drive I wound up with a 1972 with a carbed 2.0 liter, and minimal rust. I drove it for the rest of the summer, until the clutch went bad 60 mountain miles from home. I limped home and put it on jack stands (an all too familiar posture).

Fast forward to the next summer, I got the clutch parts from PP and using the great tech note on the PP site, I dropped the tranny, and replaced the clutch, and took it for a ride. Decided then and there it was time to go for broke and make it the car i was dreaming of when i bought it.

Started the disassembly and collection of "things", and since moved from NM to ID to WI during the next 2 years, always wishing I had more time to work on the car.

Here is a partial list of all the things i have ready to go in no particular order:
• Reupholstered the entire interior, with core doors panels and back pad
• New Getty 911 style dash also with matching vinyl
• 911 front struts
• weltmeister sway bars
• turbo tie rods
• new ball joints
• 911 front calipers
• Elephant Racing poly bronze front bushings
• Elephant Racing top strut Weather-Sealed Front Monoball Cartridge
• Weltmeister hollow torsion rods
• Rear 5 lug conversion using 914 hubs and new bushings
• Rear koni’s
• 180 # rear springs
• 916 style front and rear bumpers (used, need some work)*
• fiberglass trunk with integral lip spoiler*
• Fiberglass flared rocker covers*
• Windshield*
• Reproduction steel flares
• 16” x6 and 16” x 7 Fuchs wheels

*from a 916 clone roller I bought recently

still need:
• Elephant Racing low friction control arm mounts
• Carpet set
• Rebuild brakes
• Side shift conversion?
• all sorts of nickel and dime stuff


Plans are to do all the body work and paint it black with the Fuchs refinished black with polished lips. I may use the 7s on the front, and get 8 or 9s for the rears. That stuff all needs to be sorted out.

Issues still to be addressed / ironed out / decided:
• Use the old “bondo-lishious” doors and repair them, or use the 1973 new style doors from parts car
• Wheel choice
• Gauge package/ re working
• Exhaust (want Tangerine racing, but I am afraid the budget will not allow it! So I will go with the rusted out HEs and the Manta muffler it came with
• May decide to powder coat / paint the suspension parts for some flash
• May paint calipers
• Convert to side shift tranny?

Miscellaneous custom touches. I would love for this car to be one of a kind. Some Pie in the sky idea that will likely not be realized:
• SIX!
• Chopped roof (take 1.5 to 2 inches from the A and B pillars
• 928 style head light buckets grafted on
• black out all the “chrome trim”
• box out the rear chrome trim and eliminate totally
I will add some pictures as the restoration goes on, as soon as we start and I fugure out how to add them!
MARK


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