Bringin my '76 back to life, 76 Resto Options

[mdelwiche]

This thread is going to document my restoration of my '76 which I picked up about a year ago. This vehicle lived its life in southern California and was in relatively good shape compared to a lot of 914's I have seen for sale. The restoration I am doing is not going to be a full 100% nut and bolt concurs rest, but one to bring the car back so I can enjoy it as a driver. I originally started the work back in September, don't know why I didn't start documenting then, I have learned so much from others who have posted their work on here, so all I can hope is that I return the favor to someone else. The first series of post and photos will be to get everyone caught up to where I am now...below is my wife posing with the new member of the family!

[mdelwiche]

Started hooking uptake electrics to test and I was getting some sparking at the battery post. I isolated it to line for alternator or the alternator itself. The original wire harness for the alternator was pretty brittle from the age, but I traced the whole line and i didn't see and areas which it may have a cut in it and was shorting out on the chassis or on something else. The next step would be to test the alternator which means I would have to remove it though to check it. With the engine in, I thought this was going to be a PIA. After doing some research and finding a nice article on the Pelican sites, I saw it was not an impossible tasks.

Once I had pulled the alternator, and took off the backing plate, I notice one of the terminals had pushed through the protective boot and was shorting out on the backing plate. The alternator I had put in there was a replacement and luckily was still under warranty, I was just unsure if NAPA would replace it. Luckily when I went back to the store I bought it from, their tester was done so they just ordered me a new one. I also decided to buy a new alternator harness from Jeff Bowlsey just to potentially eliminate and other potential problems.




New harness from Jeff Bowlsey...Definitely a work of art. Great guy and awesome customer service. I emailed him on a Sunday and he got right back to me and I had a harness at my house by Wednesday!



Old harness next to new harness



New harness attached to alternator. I made sure the connecting post were ground down enough to not make contact with the backing plate this time...

Re-installed alternator (took about an hour)...problem solved!