Recovery from 15 years of PNO, How to get running again? Options

[soupbone]

I have acquired a 914-2.0 from my father which I believe is a model from 74. Its been garaged for 15 years and hasnt been started since. Its currently blocked in and covered with a bunch of old garage junk. Where is a good shop in the Bay Area to get this car road worthy? What is a guesstimate on costs? I would like to maybe drive the car next summer.

Problem areas I saw include:

Battery box rusted and area around it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif) Leaky battery removed 14 years ago.

Sticky creeking pedals

Grinding shifter

Passenger exterior door handle broke and removed.

Also maybe a smaller steering wheel for a six footer? The shift lever hits the knee. Ill try and have pictures at a later date once the garage has been cleaned out.

Thanks

[anthony]

If you tow it to a shop, my guesstimate would be $2-6K to get the car roadworthy. It depends on whether the engine has seized or not, whether the car had any problems before it was taken off the road (usually nice running cars don't get taken off the road), and whether the battery acid rusted through to the suspension ear and/or the longitudinal.

Frankly, it's probably not worth it when you can buy a nice driving 914 for $5K unless you can start digging into the car yourself. So if you always wanted to be a DIYer now is the time to start!

At least start doing the easy but time consuming things to see if the car is worth it - pretty much everything previously mentioned (fluids, hoses, tune-up parts). You can also pull the rockers away from the car (they unscrew from the bottom) to see if the rust has rotted through the car. In fact that would probably be the first thing to do before wasting time on anything else. The other place to look is under the right side of the car, under the battery tray area, where the rear suspension arm attaches to the body. Check for rust there.