Eric's Six Conversion, chassis work has finally commenced. 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.

EDIT - Here's a link to the engine build thread:
https://forums.pelicanparts.com/911-engine-...3-0l-build.html

The car.


The six.


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

[Detroit]

It continues to be a challenge to find significant blocks of time for this project. As I'm sure most peops who attempt these undertakings will understand. But, I do make an effort to make some small amount of headway at least every few days. A little progress is better than none...
I've had a finished carpenter installing moldings throughout the house, and I gave him the 'parking side' (as opposed to the 'shop side') of the garage in which to set up all of his equipment. So, for over a month the 914 has been up on the hoist with the Ferrari under it.
I did, however, have access to my bench and sand blast cabinet, so I took to refurbishing some of the suspension bits.

I welded sway bar drop link tabs to the control arms, and dropped them off at the powder coater...


...media blasted and painted the struts. Jamie has installed new bushings for me. These are Bilstein struts which of course were originally green. As this is a restomod rather than a restoration, I figured I'd change to yellow so they'll match the shocks.


The rear hubs I had plated some time ago. This weekend I Alodined the front hubs in the hope it's provide some small amount of corrosion protection. I suspect it won't do much, but I already had the chems to do carburetor bodies... Then I pressed all the studs back in.