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]

Well progress has started back up with the 914/6 GT Tribute. I only have a one bay garage and I spent the last 3 years building my friend John's 85 911. It turned out beautiful and I learned a lot on the project, especially about modern EFI setups on our classic cars.

The car came to me after being at 2 other shops and major project creep of over 7 years. Part of that was covid and part was distance. The owner and I are friends and he liked my attention to detail even though I'm not a professional shop, we both felt I could take the project to the end (I guess I have grit!) When I first saw the car I thought I could do it in less than a year. The reality was it needed a whole lot more. I have a full family life and 2 companies but I still was able to dedicate about 15- 20 hours a week on average toward the project.



Some of the project highlights:
1. Complete fuel system install (new tunnel, custom gas tank and vent system, custom fuel system in the engine bay using Radium and AN/ PTFE fuel hoses.
2. Full electrical / wiring install, new modern fuse panel, Technica Racewire harness and a lot of trouble shooting to get everything to work with custom gauges and EFI engine setup using analog gauges etc.
3. Full suspension overhaul. When I got the car, all the suspension was just hanging on the car. The torsion bars were sticking out in the back because there was sand in the inside splines.
4. A lot of interior work. custom fabrication on seat rails to make the Corbeau seats mount in a comfortable way and use sliders. Modify das sport roll bar to clear seats and install seatbelts. Full custom dash, fit custom dash pad. A lot of little custom metal bits I made to cover firewall holes and clean everything up.
5. Full glass / seal replacement. All the seals had issues so I had to redo all the glass.
6. Full engine rebuild with J. Doring. He did the longblock I did the rest. A lot of time was spent getting the engine right and installing custom SV auto headers and the AT Power throttle bodies.
7. countless other details including major paint fixes.



I'll hopefully have a cool video of the project that I can share soon because the car is absolutely spectacular. I'm really proud of how I've grown as a builder. I think that will really help on this 914 project going forward.



Anyway, I thought it was important to share that as I've been actively building a cool Porsche project for someone else and now I'm excited to get back on the 914/6 GT tribute!

So it felt really good to roll this puppy into the shop and restart the project!



The first thing I wanted to do was to mock up the 5 lug conversion. I have 3" Boge struts off my 75 911 (I had upgraded to 3.5 RSR struts from Elephant on that car) so naturally I popped those onto the existing ball joints as the idea was to mock up the wheels and tires for the GT so I could begin the GT flare welding project.

Of course the back end needs a lot more work than I had remembered so the plan is to send the rear control arms off to PMS (i'm traveling there anyway) for the full refresh and boxing. I had already bought the boxing kit but I think I just have them do the full core exchange as it's a lot of press work, powdercoating and welding.

Another easy choice was getting Sergio's GT decklid. I reached out and I have to say Sergio is awesome!

Talk about fast. By the time I ordered I had his GT decklid 2 days later. I sort of wanted to keep the original but I realized that it would probably be a dusty relic that my kids would have to clean out of a storage unit 30 years from now and I didn't want that, so I boxed it up and sent it to him as part of his core exchange program.



I didn't realize it, but i guess it takes two stock decklids to make one GT, so hopefully, the next person to order a Sergio lid will get part of mine (It's really nice and dry!) :-)

Thanks Sergio! The GT Decklid is really nice. I hung it on my other wall as It will be a few years until it's ready to bolt on probably.

I just realized I didn't get a pic, but I had posted it on my IG. I'll be posting a lot of the build there if you want to follow along @duanewik on IG.

Another easy thing to start with was to lose the 75 rubber rear bumper. I also pulled all 4 impact shocks.



Lastly I test fit the Restoration design outter long reinforcements. In their tutorial, the show the install minus the rear quarter. I don't want to cut off my rear quarter to install these.



The trouble is that they wont slide over the jack point with the rear quarter lip in the way. I would either need to notch the RD piece in that area to put it on or cut my quarter panel for access. What do you all think?