Andy's 75' 914 1.8L Options

[Aayala]

Howdy everyone!

My name is Andrés, and earlier this year I got my hands on a 1975 Porsche 914 1.8L project car. I’m new to 914World and pretty new to working on cars in general. I actually was not aware that the 914's existed until I spotted one parked on the street with a Porsche badge and had to stop to take a better look at it. I got instantly intrigued as I had never seen or heard of these before.

One thing led to another—I started reading up on 914s, watching videos, digging through forums, and as fate would have it, a 914 popped up for sale on Facebook Marketplace near me about a month later. I went to see it the next day, and despite knowing it was going to be a big project (especially for someone whose experience was basically oil changes and light maintenance), I decided to go for it.

Now I’m in it, learning as I go, trying to do things the right way, and excited to lean on this community for guidance as I bring this car back to life. I have already gotten a ton of help from some members in the community and can feel the passion everyone has for these cars.

This is definitely going outside of my comfort zone but looking forward to being challenged in a lot of areas: engine building, welding, metal repair work, interior work, etc... I’m fairly handy and detail oriented, and I really want to do the car justice but I also know how much I don’t know yet. Any feedback, advice or "dont do this" stories are also welcome.

I will do my best to keep this thread updated with the repairs I am doing to it. I am also starting an Instagram page to keep me accountable and documenting the journey. (@our914journey)

Some pictures as I picked up the car. (Has not run since 96'! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wacko.gif) Was sitting under a cover for a long time then moved out here for space according to the owner. Have a lot of receipts from 75' - 96'.)






And after a quick wash and back on 4 tires.




Thank you for reading!
-Andres.

[Aayala]

A small update finally!
I got the engine case split and got all of the components out of the engine. With the help of members here I got to cleaning the engine case on an initial pass to get it clean enough to go to the machine shop to drill out all of the oil galley plugs. Finding out that my case has WELDED oil galley plugs. (They ain't comin' out). Called a local machine shop with experience in these engines and they said they have seen it in the past and that they can machine the weld off and get the oil galley plug out. I have been loving the process of learning as I go as I go deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole!


I went ahead and got some micrometer readings of the existing crank and determined I have a grounded crank by .010. The bearings inside the engine were corresponding to that measurement. I also tested the crank for roundness and it is basically perfectly round which was great to see. I was curious to see what the oil clearance was with the existing bearings so i put the case back together and torqued it to about 20 LBs just to get a rough measurement. Because I had the engine in the engine stand I only got to measure the middle bearing which to my surprise seems to be within spec! I will of course repeat this process with everything cleaned up after machining, I was just curious! Picture below of my measurements.



One question I had if anyone has an answer is the following. When do you take off the engine case studs for the cylinder heads? Should I take off to clean the bolts if they are a bit rusty? If I go ahead and do that, is there a spec i need to follow for the correct depth they need to be at or do they bottom out so there is no guessing? I have the haynes manual and not sure I have found this spec. I have not taken them off for this specific reason.