I'm Back and Brought a New Project Car, 2700 miles and 7 States later Options

[Brett W]

I just got back from Denver where I drug home the new project. Its a 72 chassis with steel flares already installed. Its yellow with nice paint. Not perfect but its good driver paint. My plan is to use the car as is for the time being. I like the color and the wife is happy with it. I have a complete 3.3 Suby swap with a 2.5RS 5spd transmission. I want to get all the mechanicals sorted on the car, build all the chassis stiffening and get the wiring right, then in a couple of years pull it back apart and do a thorough paint job on the chassis.

I found a place down in Mississippi that can back, de-rust, and then e-coat a car so I would like to give them a shot to preserve the chassis for years. Anyway here are a few pics. BTW I didn't pay but a small bit of change and some beer for this car.

[sixnotfour]

Looks great, yabbadabbado option.

[sean_v8_914]

no shifter?

[stugray]

Nice find!

However, being in the denver area and having been looking for a roller......... You SUCK! ;-)

I have a white 71 with all really nice parts and still running 1.8L w/ FI.
The body is rotten and the PO tried to fix it with horrible welding skills. My parts would have had that car running in a weekend or two.

Take good care of it. Great start.

Stu

[Brett W]

I found some more parts while looking at it today. It has five lug rear hubs, already drilled, Bilstein rear shocks, sway bars front and brackets in the rear, and turbo tie rods. I need to check and see, I think I have some 911 studs in my stash somewhere.

Debating how I want to do the front five lug. I can drill out the front hubs, knock the rotors off the hubs and do a floating rotor conversion, or I could try to machine by own set of aluminum front hubs like the ones Brad used to make. Or I could build my own custom struts housing and use a more modern bearing setup.

[Brett W]

I had some questions about the body stripping, so I figured I would post the info here to help out the rest of ya'll.


http://www.metalfinishings.com/index.html

They first take your bare chassis and bake it in a sealed oven at 800 degrees. That will burn everything off the chassis, then they dip it in a phosphoric acid bath to wash off the soot and clean it out, then they can dip it in a de-rusting tank that has cathodes to pull the rust out of the body and it sits there for about a week. Once it is through that they dip it in acid again and wash the chassis out. Then they can send it over to Nissan's production facility and dip it in E-coat. That means you can get the modern level of protection throughout your car. It will last for many years after this kind of protection.

My goal is to sort out the mechanical bits of my swap and get the car fully functional, then strip the car back down do any body work that I need to and then have the car stripped and e-coated to protect it.

[skaufmann]

no shifter?

Saw that too but you were tricked by the photo. You see no shifter because you're looking at the concrete driveway.

[ellisor3]

When you sit in that, you can really call it a tail dragger.

[nathansnathan]

I had some questions about the body stripping, so I figured I would post the info here to help out the rest of ya'll.


http://www.metalfinishings.com/index.html

They first take your bare chassis and bake it in a sealed oven at 800 degrees. That will burn everything off the chassis, then they dip it in a phosphoric acid bath to wash off the soot and clean it out, then they can dip it in a de-rusting tank that has cathodes to pull the rust out of the body and it sits there for about a week. Once it is through that they dip it in acid again and wash the chassis out. Then they can send it over to Nissan's production facility and dip it in E-coat. That means you can get the modern level of protection throughout your car. It will last for many years after this kind of protection.

My goal is to sort out the mechanical bits of my swap and get the car fully functional, then strip the car back down do any body work that I need to and then have the car stripped and e-coated to protect it.

I thought about dipping my car. That there is no place around here to ecoat it was the deciding factor not to, but I'd also been boggled by how to deal with the heater tubes inside the longs getting dissolved?

[Brett W]

My goal is to remove them and weld the rockers back up. I don't need them and they get in the way of some of my reinforcements.

There is no rear floor pan section and no tunnel. I am probably going to build my own tunnel over replacement floor pans. I want a taller more narrow tunnel. I never liked how you are not centered on the wheels or pedals in a 914. SO I want to move the seats over closer to the middle of the car. Plus I want a taller center tunnel that will add more stiffness to the chassis. Another benefit is it gets the cable shifter up closer to the steering wheel. May even do a center tunnel mounted e-brake.

[zambezi]

I have used them twice now for the dipping and E-coating. One 1957 Porsche 356 speedster and one 1957 Austin Healey 100-6. Very pleased with the E-coating. These cars should last a long time with the E-coat.

[Brett W]

Great thanks for the heads up. You remember the time frame, I think they told me it would be a couple of weeks to do the job.

[pilothyer]

Brett.....Nice find....can't wait to see her...congrats........Jerry

[zambezi]

It was more like a month to a month and a half total. The E-coating is done off site so they are only allowed to bring a couple cars at a time for the e-coat process. Once the car is dipped and rinsed it will be in line for the next opening. If you are lucky they won't have many ahead of you when you are ready.
We are only 4 hours away so we had the luxury of dipping the car and picking it up, doing the rust repairs , and returning the car a few months later for re-dipping and final E-coating. This way everything is sealed in continuous E-coating after repairs.

Heres the Austin Healey after e-coating

[zambezi]

Heres the speedster prior to e-coating but after the first dip during some of the metal replacement.

[zambezi]

Heres the speedster after E-coating.

[zambezi]

And of course the final product once put back together.

[zambezi]

The Healey is not done yet this is how it sits now.

[Brett W]

Ok, that sounds pretty reasonable. They are about 5 hours away for me so having to not turn around and go back in a week would probably be nice. Probably going to be around 3K for me to do the whole thing, transport included. It will cost me around $300 in fuel, probably.

[BajaXJ92]

And of course the final product once put back together.

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