'73 Resto & Suby 6 Conversion, or a primer on "How to convert your 914 to a Subaru 3.0" Options

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What's it been? A year since I got Blackie running. I finally get it tuned to a daily driver status and should have been happy as a Lark then but what do I do? I sold the engine (w/90 hour's on the Hobbs) on the last Dawn Patrol GMR run. So I pulled the engine and began preparing Blackie for her transformation.


Before I go any further check out my Jack Stands. Min height 19.5", 12 ton and should hold up to a 6.7 quake or direct nuclear attack.


And out she comes.




One thing you have to love about these cars is that you can remove an interior in 15 minutes. 30 min's if you have a console. This was one shot before the interior is gutted.

and an hour later I'm scraping tar floorboards.

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OK so here we go again. This is the area behind the drivers behind. Immediately to the right of this pic is the pull tube attach for the engine lid release. More on that later.



Another look at it from below, looking up. See the crack of light? No you can't because it's the last pic in this post. Don't know how I did that but could'nt correct it. lol

The backup spoon in place..........



Another look at it from the cabin side this time. Flash really puts a tinge to the color. Anyway you can clearly see the copper in the pic.



In this pic you can see where the crack was filled and ground down (on the left side). See the "V" area to the right that has rusted away. Imagine that area going another 1" down and that is how far the rust traveled on the back side. This area is close to that pull tube which gets a lot of work so I want to reinforce this area.



In order to do this I need to make a pattern.....



And a piece of .045".



The pattern is taped in place and traced onto the steel piece.





A quick cut out. This piece will be trimmed and edges polished with 3M wheel before it is welded in place.



Initial fitting.........



See the saw blade? It's laying on what is left of the old flange. It does 2 things. It gives an accurated location for a bend reference and #2, with a little movement it will scribe your piece for you.



With the piece scribed (I marked the scribes w/felt tip to show in the pic's) we are ready to mark the bend line. I thought we just did? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/slap.gif) Well close. Our mark is where we want the bottom of our flange to end up, right? To get there accurately we have to take a couple of things into account. The thickness of our metal and the bend radius. In this case the metal is .047" and the bend radius is .0675". Add those 2 numbers together, subtract them from your reference line and mark your bend line.



Years ago I did this and you might also. These cheap Chinese vices are good for something. It's quite easy to radius "one" jaw with a file, quickly. It can be done with a long file in <5 min's and won't effect future operations. Notice the jaw on the left is radius-ed. This next part isn't important unless you want it to fit so pay attention. Notice the feeler gage. The base of it is aligned with the scribe mark on the new bend line. You cannot see it but it is at the top of the fat lower ink line which is for illustration. The point is that the bend line "must" be aligned with the top of the jaw(or bottom of feeler gage).



I'm using a piece of hardwood but it could be a piece of square tube as well. But I slowly hammer it down being careful to not let the wood piece rise as it is tapped. BTW, anything longer than this would require my brake but his is < 6" so no biggie.