75 914 Laguna Blue Project Options

[Graydingo]

Hello everyone, my name is Duane and I love me a Porsche project. So much so that I've had five air cooled cars (mostly projects mind you) in the last few years. I've pared that down to a mere 2 911s (one massive RSR project and a pretty good little driver 75.) By fate, every single one of them was a 75, or a 77 model year.
I guess I love an underdog and a project! Any-who, here's me latest acquisition...



A 1975 Porsche 914 2.0 in Laguna Blue L50C. What a color!



It all started when I found a 76 2.7 911 motor on craigslist. I inquired and got a snappy text back from a known number. Turns out, it was a friend and the owner of the local Porsche specialty shop. I went over to check out the motor and ended up buying it. A pretty clean 2.7 core, missing a few parts, but had a set of Italian 40 IDTP carbs on it.

While there, I was shown the 914 which the 2.7 was actually destined to go into at one point but then the owner decided to go nuts and planned to put a 3.6 in it.



He had acquired thousands in parts but lost motivation in the project. He had flares, elephant suspension and all kinds of stuff. Sadly (or perhaps fortuitously,) he had sold a lot of the new parts to another 914 enthusiast, so what was left was just the original car.

Already having a big project in my 74 RSR tribute, I passed on the 914 and headed home with my new 2.7. My 75 911 has a similar motor and It's ready to rebuild. I thought I would take the best parts off both motors and make a 2.8 twin plug beast for my 75. Ya never know what condition the crank or heads are in, so I figured it was a good plan to have more parts at the ready for cheap, and then sell everything left over later.

One thing that struck me about the 914 on that first visit, was that the car was extremely dry. Here's the ....ahem... heck hole.



Though the car was taken apart, the previous owner seemed to have all the original parts (though many of them were in his storage facility and not with the car.) Another cool factoid was that the car was actually purchased in a nearby Audi/VW dealership right here in Las Vegas. Vegas in '74 was very, very small, so to have a survivor 914 in the same town that it was 46 years ago is pretty cool in my opinion.



The car was more or less stripped in preparation for a GT conversion. I remarked in my mind about how solid the car was and went home that day thinking it was a good deal but that I'm a snobby 911 guy who doesn't buy anything but 911s :-P The car was definitely marinating in the back of my mind...

Fast forward a few months later and a younger friend was talking to me about project cars, and it got me excited about the 914. On a whim I reached out to see if it was still there and bought it the next day. I think I just really liked it and I fell in love with the color. It feels like a mix between Gulf Blue and Miami Blue. I'm actually painting my RSR Gulf, so I absolutely love all the cool blue colors.

The shop had a bunch of waterpumper parts stored in the back:



PO had the original Fuchs 4 lug wheels, but no tires. the 914 was also on a pretty sweet dolly, but unfortunately that wasn't part of the sale.



I took the wheels to a discount tire and got the cheapest tires I could buy, just so I could make it a roller for the impending flatbed trailer pickup appointment.



I had to scrounge around and find some lugs to mount them. Luckily I had some open 911 lugs as well as some 996 studs to complete the temporary fix.

After getting it back to the shop I thought: "I've got a complete project build going already, wouldn't it be fun to try to build a total survivor driver with original paint, dings, dents, damage and all, but have a bit of a sleeper engine and nice interior. So mostly original, but everything works and is nice in terms of get in, turn the key, take it to the grocery and not worry about parking it. "



Stay tuned for the paint correction...

[Graydingo]

Hi yall. Some small updates here and there as I finish up an 85 carrera project for my friend.

Regarding the previously mentioned cooler that I purchased out of Austria, I had it sent over to Pacific Oil Coolers and they red tagged it. Making it the second red tagged cooler in a row that I've sent them. This one had multiple core leaks unfortunately. These old coolers are aging out now at a high rate it seems.

I reached out to the seller on Pelican and he said it wasn't his problem. Imagine selling a $700 item that is completely useless and then saying "tough luck, not my problem"

I disagreed and luckily had buyer protection via paypal. Long story short, it took 6 months to get my money back and I was out about $150 in shipping costs and testing from Pacific on this bum cooler.

Seller was completely unreasonable, but I'm glad he had to (mostly) make me whole even though he drug it out as long as he could. Initially I offered to take a loss and offered for him to pay me a fraction of what I paid. He hardened his heart and said it wasn't his problem, so I went for the full purchase price with shipping and that's what he had to pay me back. Just a shame he wasted both of our times and soiled his reputation in the process. Steer clear of this seller is my recommendation.

So watch out for a used 914-6 cooler out of Austria. My experience is that this unethical seller will try to resell this bad cooler as I had to ship it back to Austria to do the paypal refund. It'll probably show up here in the classifieds or Pelican again. It looks brand new because Pacific cleaned up the outside when they tested it. He also hid damage to the outside in his pics and didn't mention any of that damage in his sales ad.

It's such a small community, I don't know why you wouldn't just say, "my bad, the cooler is trash, lemme refund you."

I sold many parts on Pelican and other Porsche sites. One time a guy reached out to me a year later with an issue. I offered a full refund on the spot. It wasn't even anything my fault, but my reputation is way more important than that.

In a case where a part is bad from the start and then verified faulty by a reputable third party company, why this individual would try to keep my money is beyond me.

Anyway, rant over, the silver lining is that CSF just introduced a really nice 914-6 cooler to the market so I'll be buying one of these babies! Pic courtesy CSF:



In other news, I reached out to Chris over at Childs Motorsports near Redding CA and inquired about using his chromate process to treat my recently torn down 901 side shift for the project.

I've been following him on IG for a while and like what I saw so i sent my 901 and some other parts off to him.

Chris was awesome to work with. Good communication and reasonable prices. His process is a chemical conversion coating. The parts get dipped into a bath that reacts with the magnesium to convert the surface layer. The bonus is a nice black sheen like early Porsche race boxes. I guess it's similar to the Dow 7 process and provides a corrosion resistant layer. He then sprays some wd40 to further help with corrosion resistance.



I also sent off for George Hussey's "How to convert a 914/4 to a 914/6 manual. All the info can be found here on the forum of course, but it's nice to have a little guide book and I discovered a few things about the process I didn't know before.



Lastly, I came across this cool build by FP Martinez, pics are his too.

I like it because he retained the narrow body, but he pulled the rear quarters out and "pie cut" them. I hope he doesn't mind, but I'm sharing his pics here, heck he might even already have them somewhere on here.







Car looks really good. He's opting for 16" X 8 wheels in back which I think I'll stick to 15X7"



I'm mostly set on running 15X7 in back with a 225/50 so it may not require much cutting, just some careful pulling and rolling.