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]

The end result:


And, here is a short video of the first start of the new engine. This was on a very cold day in early February.
 IMG_1438.MOV ( 3mb ) Number of downloads: 94


I asked Brad to hold on to the car and to put some mileage on it since I "expected" other issues to develop related to all the work that had been performed. Over the next 6 weeks, Brad managed to put almost 200 miles on the car.

His report was that there had been some minor "tweaking" required, but the biggest issue he encountered were engine oil leaks. This kind of caught me by surprise since I had resealed the motor prior to taking it down to Brad for installation. Over the next couple of weeks, Brad and Michael were able to trace out most of the small leaks to leaking senders or items that had not been touched. However, there was still a "major" puddle maker left.

Murphy's Law dictated that the worst leak location be in the most difficult area to observe......the front of the engine that butts up against the front firewall of the car! And, Murphy is ALWAYS right! In fact, in discussing Murphy's Law with Brad, I asked him if he knew of McDoogle's Law, which he had not. McDoogles Law is simple and states that: "Murphy was an optimist!"

At any rate, dismissing Murphy and McDoogle, there appeared to be at least two leaks coming from the front pulley seal area. Since I had replaced the crank seals on both ends of the motor, the only seal in that area that I could think of was the #8 nose bearing. And, you guessed it.......Brad had to drop the engine to get a look at the leaker, and diagnosed it to be a leaking #8 bearing seal. Drat! Replacement of the #8 bearing seal, which is a large O-ring, can not be accomplished without splitting the case on a 911 engine. And, I didn't want to split the case on an engine that had only 75k miles on it.

So, I began to research #8 nose bearing "bandaides". Ran across the topic on the Pelican board, and ended up contacting Henry Schmidt who owns Supertech, a California located Porsche performance engine shop. Henry had developed a kit to plug off the leakers from the nose bearing on 911's. He uses an epoxy that he injects between a retaining ring and the engine case. The retaining ring is a slight press fit ring, so it has to be machined to be a custom fit on your engine. With the ring installed, and area rendered "super" clean, Henry injects an epoxy into the annulus between his ring and the engine case. The epoxy forms a dam that will plugs off this leak path. Hey qualified his kit as a "bandaid" since the right way to fix this leaker is to replace the O-ring on the #8 bearing (requiring case splitting). He has never installed one, but has many customers who have and has never heard that the kit failed.

In discussing this repair with Brad, he volunteered that he has done similar repairs in the past with a particular epoxy he uses. The repair is done in a similar fashion to Henry Schmidt's kit, but does not make use of a metal ring to press onto the nose bearing. Brad offered that he has had good success with his fix; so, I elected to go with Brad's approach, rather than to wait for a kit fabricated in California to get to us. It's been about a month and a little over 100 miles of driving, but the leak is, at this time, GONE!

The remaining leak on the motor is minor and appears to be coming from the rear of one of the chain boxes on the engine. This is a "typical" failure point on a 911 engine, and though it can be fixed without splitting the case, it still requires that you remove the cams and timing chains and related hardware in order to pull the chain box off the engine to replace the O-ring that seals the chain box to the cam carriers. So, I'll wait to see if that leaker gets worse. Right now, the leak simply manifests itself by "wetting" the area. No discernible drips or runs.