Detroit Barn Find Project, Rebuilding a '72 1.7L Options

[BananaTroll]

Howdy all!

Longtime lurker, first-time poster.

This past weekend I picked up my first 914, a '72 1.7L thats been parked since ~1982. It "ran when parked" but since then the owner pulled most things off it and put them in boxes in his garage. The jack receiver plates have rusted away on both sides along with the door sill triangles and there a little rust on left long in the front. The hell hole looks great though and overall the chassis is pretty clean.

Over the last 43 years, the owner parted out 2 scrap-destined 914s to have some spares for this car. So a lot of extra goodies to work with to get this car running and looking good!

I have a question however, I intend to use this winter to get it ready mechanically but what do you all think would be the best course of action to do so? I want to get the car back on the road, but I also don't want to accidently bite off more than I can chew.

Looking foward to keeping y'all updated!

[BananaTroll]

Long time no post! I figured I would drop an update now that we're ~2/3 through 2026.



I brought the car back to NY in december of last year and worked on cleaning 43 years of dirt off the car. A lot of steam and a lot of scrubbing was involved.



The car shifted to the backburner till roughly July. I got some time around the 4th to work on it. We were able to work on sail panel areas and getting the engine and transmission back into the car. The goal was to get the side-shift transmission on there with all the accompanying hardware before I had to head back to MI. I did get a bit distracted dealing with the bondo on the sail panels, but the car came with the repair sheet metal so it was still productive. We only got the right side panel fitted before I had to head back but the fitment on the right side came out really nice! Still need to repair the inner reinforcement panels before the exterior panels can go on for good.





I neglected to take any photos of the door gaps during all that work but I was pretty worried about stuff shifting. Luckily though, they stayed pretty consistent which was a big relief.

Being back in MI, I've pivoted to sourcing parts so I'm ready to attack it once I'm back out there. Hopefully I'll have more updates soon!