Buying an 914, Need advise before buying Options

[Juel72]

Hi there 914 fans.

I am calling in from Denmark, Europe.

I have just sold my BMW 2002 because I want to buy a 914.

I have received some pictures from the seller of the car I am interested in-

It is a 1,7 from 1970. Yellow with baby Fuchs. Nice interior. Paint not perfect but useable. Engine runs fine. Bursch exhaust and aftermarket air filter fitted (MSD or something like that). Koni shocks in all corners.

Price is fair :-)

Please see the pictures and comment. I would very much like to hear what you guys think of the car.

Looking forward to hearing your comments

Best regards
Juel

[Rob-O]

Some things I noticed.

Weird paint cracking around the door handle. Usually paint doesn't crack like that unless there is some type of substrate (usually filler/bondo) behind it. If there is filler or bond behind it, that would suggest to me that there is or was rust there. It's an area of the car that is known to collect moisture and produce rust.

The rear trunk area is weird too. I will be the first to say that I don't know the early cars well, but the pan in the trunk looks like it was skimmed over with some type of filler material near the taillights.

In the front trunk picture, there is something going on by the drivers side headlight bucket. There is a triangular piece that I don't recall seeing on other 914 bodies, early or late. But someone else can chime in on that. To me, it looks as if there was a repair made there at some point after an accident and the headlight bucket didn't meet back up with the front panel correctly, so they added a piece of metal to cover the area where the two panels weren't meeting.

In general though, it's tough to tell the exact shape it's in from these pictures. The crux of a good 914 lies in the pictures that were mentioned by Brant and yourself. The rocker panels need to come off and the battery tray/hell hole need to be photographed.