Fred's Backyard LE Restoration Options

[friethmiller]

So, I finally decided to create a build thread for my 2nd 914.

Quick Story: Last summer (6/2022), I found this car listed on FB Marketplace and it intrigued me. It was listed as a ’72 but some of the pictures were telling me that this thing was probably a ’74 and possibly an LE. Against my better judgement, I decided to call. The man who owned the car told me that it was, in fact, an LE and that the “72” was a misprint. I told him I’d come pick it up and pay him his asking price of $1000. So, I rented a U-Haul trailer for $68 (incl. insurance), and drove 4 hours from Austin to Leonard, TX, which is about an hour northwest of Dallas. Got the car home without issue and shoved it into a storage unit for a month while I got things prepared at my house/garage. Unfortunately for me, I had promised my wife that I wouldn't restore another car "in our garage". So, I'm stuck in the backyard [for now] attempting to restore a very rusty, old car. It’s kind of a pain when it rains and have to cover everything up, but I prefer being outside.

Condition: Poor! To say that the floor pans were a little rough, was an understatement. The car had been sitting in a field with all the doors/hoods off for years. This is never a good thing. When I saw the car in person, it had about 5 inches of wet leaves in the bottom. The trunk replacement was a "hack" with no welds to the transmission support. I can’t imagine driving the thing with the backend loose like that. The hell hole was in horrible condition with about ¾ of the passenger side longitudinal ripped open with rust. The list goes on. However, it did have its original 2.0L (minus FI) + transmission, and the dealer installed A/C. To be honest, the condition didn't bother me at all. I love restoring and repairing these cars. Plus the COA (or whatever they call it now) came back as a CanAm package car. This thing needs to be saved! I’m going to do my best to bring back this bumblebee. I've got a lot of pictures to post but here are some of the initial pics.

[friethmiller]

Rotisserie (10/2023): Having completed the repairs I thought necessary to stiffen up the chassis on the LE, I went ahead a built another rotisserie from scratch. Unfortunately, I had sold the previous rotisserie that I had made for my other 914 a few years ago - 'cause I never thought I need it again (IMG:style_emoticons/default/huh.gif) However, I did employ a few "lessons learned" from the last one like: using a drill press for the support bar connection holes on the hoops, and properly cleaning and painting ALL of the metal. Keeping your hands free of that dirty, oily coating is really the way to go.

So, using the same Restoration Design blueprints, I went forward with the build. I ordered/picked up 12 pieces of 12' X 1 1/4" square tubing along with several scrap pieces of 1/2" plate for the casters and the for the four mounting points on the car. BTW, the casters were purchased off amazon for less than $100. I actually only used 10 pieces of tubing for the rotisserie, the other two pipes were saved for an engine test stand that I will be building later.



One thing to note about the RD plans is the fact that the angles listed for the rear hoop's mount to the transmission support tunnel are 180 degrees out. I also think additional support metal should be added to the mounting points, which is easy to do with some of the leftover metal scrap. The following pics show how I used my old flux-core welder to build the hoops that were cut, cleaned, and primed. This process is easy to do based on the drawings. I used Simple green to clean all the pipe and painted everything (once dry) with some self-etching metal primer. I would also recommend welding the hoops with the aid of the flat garage floor, like I did.



Back outside, I finished any necessary welding on the hoops and began the process of constructing the front and rear mounting points. Once completed, I painted the hoops with some cheap black spray paint. I then decided to add some additional bracing and welded two 6" plates for the casters to the bottom of each hoop. Sorry, I don't have a good picture of the front hoop's mount to the 914's Aux Support bar that is utilized with this design. I also cut the 8 long connecting bars to length and added a 2 1/2" piece of angle iron to each end. A hole was later drilled through each bar end to secure each bar to both hoops.







These final photos show the car being mounted to each hoop and later secured with the 8 support bars. All that is left is to remove the remainder of the rear suspension so the car can be rotated. This entire process took me 3 days and cost less than $450. IMO, this is not a very difficult job to do. You just need a welder, a drill, and something that can cut metal.