BUILD OF THE BLUE CLOWN CAR, Rebirth of a 914 and its conversion to a /6. Options

[earossi]

And, so the story begins: In the beginning, I hated the looks of the 914. I had been a 911 guy for years, and was not very impressed when I first drove a new 73 914 belonging to a friend of mine. It was not a pretty car and it was pretty gutless in comparison to my 1966 911. So, I dismissed the 914 from mind and spent the next 40 years owning and driving all sorts of Porsche machinery. But, never a 914.

And, then one day, I met Brad Mayeur. Brad owns 914 LTD, a small independent shop located in East Peoria, Illinois. No big deal, until you begin talking to this quiet and humble man. Brad has forgotten more about Porsches than many of us will ever know. And, he is unique in that he has focused much of his life to the 914.

I would never have met Brad, had it not been for a visit to spend a weekend with my youngest son in the Fall of 2006 at Bradley University in Peoria. Of my three sons, Dave, in addition to being the youngest, is the only one who shares the love for machinery with his Dad. So, during that visit, we were looking for something to do, since Peoria is not the busiest of towns in the Midwest. I remembered reading a story about Brad Mayeur in a magazine, and remembered that he lived in Peoria. It did not take long to come up with Brad's phone number. I called and explained my situation and wondered if there was a way to meet him to talk Porsches. Brad said to come right over, which we did, with great enthusiasm.

We spent about an hour talking shop with Brad, learning very quickly that this guy was not only knowledgeable, but really truly loved the cars. Then Brad cast the hook.......he threw a set of keys to my son (belonging to Brad's personal 914) and said.....go ahead and take the car for a ride. That was in 2006, and the smile and memory of that first ride has never left my son. He wanted to immediately buy an "old 914" to fix up. I suggested that he first find a daily driver that had reliability. In the end, we found him a nice used Boxster S, which he still drives today. But, in his heart and mind, he still lusted for a 914.

Two years ago (7 years after meeting Brad) I ran across an ad for a guy in Salt Lake City, who advertised that he would fully restore a 914/4 steel flared GT for $15,000. On a fluke I called the guy and spent about an hour on the phone talking to him. Typical story. He was a hobbiest attempting to turn his hobby into a viable business. At that time, Gene Rice had about 15 cars at his disposal, and as we talked, I conveyed to him that I was looking for a "rust free 914" for him to restore. He said that he had one that was close to rust free. So, by the end of the call, I had enlisted him to build a car. His representation was that he could fully restore a 914 in 90 days for the price quoted. So, off he went. In the end, the car cost more than quoted and the 90 days turned out to be closer to 6 months; but, I am getting ahead of myself. In Gene's defense, I was an active participant in both the schedule stretch and the increased cost.

Unfortunately, the first photos I got were taken at the time the car was on a lift during the installation of the flares.







In reality, the car was not rust free. But, most of the rust was minor surface rust. And, more importantly, the car did not have evidence of any collision repairs.

The builder, Gene Rice, had prior experience doing restoration work on Corvettes, but believed that the 914 was a niche segment that he could compete in once up to speed. Now, looking back on it, I can say with honesty that Gene is an able craftsman. His welding and assembly skills were fine. And, as I will detail as this story unfolds, Gene's main struggles were his lack of experience with 914's. Mine was "ok", but his next one will be better as Gene moves up the learning curve.

As you can now tell, my story telling is less technical than many of the threads on this forum. Though I intend to talk about the build, I believe that half the fun on one of these projects is the "journey" and the people you meet on that journey.

I would appreciate any comments, suggestions, and words of encouragement that would help me in telling my story.

[earossi]

As I watched the car roll off the transport, I loved what I was seeing. But, then things started to materialize that took some fun out of my new car.

I immediately encountered starting issues with the engine. She would crank over easily but not start. It took me about a dozen tries before the engine finally fired off. And, when it did, the exhaust note was incredibly loud. The engine was equipped with an after market exhaust that created an annoying resonance. I asked Gene to replace it. Unfortunately, the exhaust flanges on the heat exchangers were of a different configuration than the early cars, for which Gene did have some stock mufflers. My car, being a 76 model had a triangular pattern on the flanges. To use an earlier muffler would have meant changing out the heat exchangers and all the ducting that was unique to them - work I did not want to do at the time.

Gene also had no idea what the starting problem issue was. He stated that the car had always started easily for him. Not a good thing for me to hear at the time.

Then I noticed that I could not actuate the pull handle to open the front trunk on the car. I pulled as hard as possible. Even looped a length of rope around the handle and then standing outside of the car, to gain mechanical advantage, attempted to pull the handle. It would not budge.

I concluded that Gene must have locked the handle. So, I tried the several keys that had been provided with the car. The only one that would fit the trunk latch handle was the ignition key. As soon as I put a little torque on the key while attempting to activate the lock......the key snapped off. And, I had no spare key. Called Gene, and he did not have a spare. So, you are beginning to see why my enthusiasm began to go into the toilet!

I was able to get a new key cut from the broken key remnant. Then, over the phone, Gene walked me through how to open the front trunk by removing the front bumper, which turned out to be an easy task.

When I finally got the front trunk open, it was not obvious to me why the latch mechanism did not work. With the lid open, I could fairly easily pull the latch handle under the dashboard. I disassembled the latch, lubed it, and then reinstalled and aligned the mechanism. No difference. So, I suspected that the issue might be the new rubber seals between the lid and the trunk I removed the rubber, and locked the trunk and again could not open it. I tried several other things that did not work and finally ended up replacing the pull cable and the plastic sheathe that houses it. On disassembly, the pull cable was rusted and had worn a hole through the sheathe creating enough friction to make it extremely difficult to actuate the cable. With the cable and sheathe replaced, that problem was fixed. On assembly I lubed the new cable with white grease.

As an aside, I've "learned" that many things on 914's at first glance appear to be difficult or impossible to do. Replacing the hood cable was a good example. I dreaded crawling under the dash to get the cable out of the car.....until someone on this forum pointed out how to get the old cable out by accessing two obscure small cap screws from the trunk area. Once I knew about those screws, it was an incredibly quick and painless task to pull the cable and its sheathe out of the car. Removal of the bumper was another example of an easy task. And, there are others that attest to the ingenuity of German design.

And, then I drove the car. The gear box was extremely difficult to shift. I had owned a 901 gearbox in my first 911, and knew how vague the shifter could be.....but, the one on my 914 was absolutely horrible. Gear changes were unpredictable.....at best.

And, for the short time I drove the car, there were many only "little" things, that each of and by themselves was not a big deal.......but, taken in totality, left me totally disheartened with the car. I blame myself for the outcome. I was not clear in my expectations to Gene Rice, and I pushed schedule. All of which created a large gap between my expectations and the delivered product. I would have saved myself all of this pain had I flown out and done an acceptance inspection on the car before taking delivery. Though I would have probably not caught some of the flaws, I would have not taken delivery until the car was in better shape. With the finished car in my possession and 1500 miles from the builder, I was in a dilemma that I had created. My bad!

Enter Brad Mayeur and his chief mechanic, Michael Hanson. When Gene had passed on doing the /6 conversion for me, I had contacted Brad (suggested to me by Rich Johnson) and initiated discussions with him about delivering the car to him for the six install. Brad's advice at the time had been to drive the car for a bit with the 2.1 liter motor in it. He felt that I might find that the smaller engine was adequate saving me the cost of doing a /6 conversion. I agreed at the time, but knew in my heart that I wanted to do the conversion project.

So, I called Brad and explained the issues I was having. I still wanted to do the conversion, but I wanted Brad to initially spend some time with the car resolving all the issues I had encountered and any others that I was certain would materialize. With Peoria 125 miles from my home while Salt Lake City is 1500 miles away, it was an easy decision for me to make. I trailered the car down to Brad and Michael in November, 2015.

Over the next two months, Brad and Michael spent over 40 hours going over the car making it right. I would get a call from Brad with emailed pictures detailing the issues and offering scenarios on how to fix the issue. My responses became fairly consistent: replace rather than fix. I wanted a no compromises car. Brad's experience with 914's is so extensive that he just "knows" all the idiosyncrasies of the design. He was fairly complimentary of much of Gene's work and chalked up most issues found to previous owner work, not corrected by Gene or to a lack of understanding of some of the 914 design items by Gene. In short, Gene's lack of experience with 914's was an issue that only time would cure. I did hook up Gene with Brad for several telephone calls, where Brad would describe his findings in order to help Gene move up his learning curve a little bit faster.

It took Brad very little time to diagnose that my starting issue was a bad ignition switch. He also found suspension issues where parts had been improperly installed or were missing.....probably the work of previous owners before Gene's ownership of the car. And, some of the new parts that had been installed were not correct. For instance, the new "turbo" tie rods that I had supplied to Gene for the build both had boots that had already failed by the time the car was delivered. Brad explained that the "turbo tie rods" I had purchased (off Ebay) were Chineese made and guaranteed to fail. He replaced them with the "correct" German part as a portion of his work. So the "experience" factor of which I speak has as an example the fact that the Chineese tie rods should have never gone on the car if Brad had seen them first. But, Gene, having little or no experience with poorly made Chineese parts did install them.....simply because I had supplied them.

When finally completed, Brad and Michael had identified and corrected over 20 issues with the car, suspension, accessories, and power train. They suggested that I take delivery on the car, and to drive it; but, by this time, I didn't see any merit in driving the car since by this time I had made a commitment to do the /6 conversion.

About a month after delivering the car to Brad I brought down the 3.2 liter engine I wanted installed. The engine was a used motor that I purchased from LA Dismantlers. It came out of a 1987 911 Carrera with about 75k miles on the car. Prior to delivery, I had had a 3rd party inspection done on the engine. They were not able to run the engine since it had been removed from the car. However, they were able to do a compression check as well as a visual inspection of the motor. They pulled the valve covers for a portion of the visual inspection. The engine had proper and even compression numbers. And, it appeared that an upper end refresh had been done. Now that the engine has run, I can say that the pre-purchase inspection was fairly accurate. The engine starts and runs flawlessly. I have experienced some oil leaks, but what 911 motor doesn't leak after 75k miles? More about the leaks later.

Rich Johnson supplied almost all of the conversion hardware, either fabricated by him, or from his suppliers. Brad has installed Rich's hardware on other cars, so there was no learning curve for him.

Since I was doing an engine conversion, Brad and I discussed how I was intending to use the car. He knew that I intended to use it as a street car with occasional use for auto crossing. He suggested that I beef up the tranny with a billet plate intermediate housing. And, he made the case for installing a frame strengthening system, which was a welded reinforcement for the car's longitudinals tied to the suspension consoles. So, we added both items to the list.

Brad also reinforced what Rich had advised.....which was to stay stock with rubber on all the bushings. On his inspection of the cars suspension, Brad found not only deteriorated bushings in some areas, but plastic bushings also installed in some places. On some of the rubber bushings, where the bushing was intact but collapsed on one side, he offered that we could just rotate the bushings 180 degrees to the non crushed side. That would have saved some cost, but was a compromise that I refused to accept. We changed out every bushing and either went back with OEM rubber, or some of Tangerine Racing rubber designs.

Then Brad installed the 3.2. We elected to leave it stock, which produces about 235 hp. I also elected to retain the stock injection system for reliability and drivability reasons (recommendations from both Brad and Rich).

The tranny is connected to the 3.2 using a Kennedy clutch system. My only concern with the arrangement is the fact that the shifting geometry was slightly affected when you mate the 901 tranny with the 3.2. Apparently, the pivot pin location for the clutch release arm is slightly displaced in the fore and aft plane relative to the position of the flywheel so that with the clutch correctly adjusted pedal position for complete disengagement is on the floor. Since my 993 encounters total clutch disengagement at about mid throw on the pedal, I have to adapt to the 914 configuration whenever I switch cars. This "fluke" is something that I will want to correct in the future. But, that is a project for another time!

Brad pulled all the instruments and I sent them off to Palo Alto Speedometer for refurbishing and modifications. The stock fuel gauge was replaced with a 911 oil temperature and pressure combo gauge. I provided a 911 turbo tachometer for modification to replace the boost gauge (housed with the tach) with a fuel quantity gauge and to relocate the red line on the tach for use with the /6. The speedometer was simply refurbished and calibrated to 150 mph.

Regarding gauges, I had initially gone to North Hollywood Speedometer, which was the firm that most folks had used; however, on my second call to them I learned that they had just been sold and that there were backorders on work in their shop. They quoted me 3 months to do my gauges! So, I turned to Palo Alto.

Be aware that refurbishing gauges is NOT cheap. The package containing 5 gauges priced out at a little over $1000 at both North Hollywood and Palo Alto. For that amount I got "new" gauges that were matched, with one additional gauge over the original 914 dash configuration.

A few photos of the car in Brad's shop in Peoria with the 3.2 installed.