Eric's Six Conversion., ...It's about time I got this show on the road Options

[Detroit]

Greetings all...

As the title suggests, I'm undertaking a six cylinder heart transplant on my four cylinder '74 914. I've always wanted to build a hot rod of some sort, and a 3.X 914 seems a pretty solid choice. I just hope the patient and donor organ both survive the surgery...

The motor is a 3.0L out of an '82 SC. It needs rebuilding. I'm going to start a separate thread for that over on the Pelican forum in the engine rebuilding section, because I'm going to need lot's of advice. I realize that there are plenty of peops here who've built sixes, but as that forum is dedicated purely to the task it makes sense to me to start the thread there. I'll paste a link for anyone interested once I've got it started. It's not going to be some crazy race motor. I just want a good reliable street engine. I'm not a hundred percent sure what I'm going to do with the chassis at this point, but I have plenty of time to think about it. I work slow.

The overall plan is to rebuild the motor, and then get it running on a start cart, which I've already started to cobble up. At that point I'll pull the four cylinder, do any chassis mods, and stick in the new engine. It all sounds so simple when I type it... Stupid brain.

I've already torn the engine down to the long block, but have paused to get a few things around the garage cleared up. There will be additional pauses along the way. I've got a zillion things to do around here... I'm pretty determined to get this done though, so hopefully said pauses will be brief.

I will do my best to keep everyone updated along the way. And of course supply plenty of pictures. Here's a few to start.

The car.


The six.


The start cart (and mock up engine and trans).

[gereed75]

Not Ben, but I will chime in with my experience- the header/ heat exchangers are a very finicky fit. They take some finessing. Although the stud pattern on the aircooled motors of this era are the same, There can be subtle variations in the actual spacing since the heads bolt up to the engine assembly individually. And they can move around a bit as the engine heat cycles through normal use. Include that variation with the tolerance variation that is inevitable even in very well built header flanges such as Ben’s, and any slightly bent or stripped and repaired studs, and the angles that occur as you mate the two, and how you hold your mouth etc etc and it can be tricky.

I would not bother trying to fit headers to any motor than the one they are intended to be used on without good reason.