BUILD OF THE BLUE CLOWN CAR, Rebirth of a 914 and its conversion to a /6. Options

[earossi]

The toughest decision for me on this project was color! Both exterior and interior. I spent hours researching it and thinking about it. Porsche purists would have insisted that I paint the car its original Scarlett Red. Except that I didn't like Scarlett Red! I have a 993 that is Arena Red, so wanted a different color. I struggled with this decision and narrowed it down to blue or green. But, really couldn't find a Porsche blue or green that knocked my socks off. Then one day, while at my local BMW dealer getting my car serviced I wandered into their showroom and there sat a new 2014 M3 with Estorill Blue on its exterior and Coral Red on its interior. I fell in love with the combo. It was bold and different. The blue is a metallic that changes color depending on lighting. I called Gene and told him about my decision before I had time to begin second guessing myself! And, that was that.

When my wife first saw the car on delivery, she liked the blue exterior but NOT the red interior. She told me that the car looked like a "clown's car"......hence the title for this thread: The Blue Clown Car.
Here are some photos of the car while under construction at Gene's shop.

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More pictures.

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Well, that was all the "eye candy" (for now) I had collected since almost all of the pictures were taken and supplied by Gene prior to delivery of the car.

Now, on with a more dismal part of my story on this car project.

When I originally contracted with Gene in October of 2013 to build the car, I created some expectations that I now realize were naive on my part. As mentioned earlier, I believed that the car could be built in 90 days as Gene had represented. And, that may be true for one of his "cookie cutter" cars. But, I complicated the car quite a bit. I wanted the suspension to be completely renewed and upgraded. I changed out the front brake calipers. I changed the suspension to a 5-bolt 911 arrangement. You get the idea. And, my nievity did not end there. My plans were to pick the car up in May of 2015 on the drive out to the PCA Parade in Monterey, California. Starting in October, Gene felt that he could easily meet my requirements for a May delivery. From that time onward, I complicated the design of the car, pushing Gene into some uncharted territory. And, at that time, Gene was experimenting with subcontracting some of the work out to others. He already had subbed out the engine and transmission work, but decided to sub out the painting of my car. Consequently, the car was not delivered back to Gene on schedule. And, when the car did come back to Gene, he was dissatisfied with some of the work. All of which added to delays.

And, with my drive out schedule fixed, I kept pushing Gene to hurry up his final work. In the end, that did not turn out well.

And, because of the distance between my home in Chicago and Gene's location in Salt Lake City, I was only able to schedule one trip out to take a look at his progress. I now realize that was a major mistake on my part. I should have allowed time in the schedule to have done a final inspection and acceptance trip before taking delivery of the car. That did not happen.

It's a long story, but family circumstances ended up having me cancel my trip to Monterey. So, when the car was "ready", I had Gene load it on a transport for delivery to me in Chicago.

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Here are the photos of my car being offloaded at my home in Chicago.

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As I watched the car roll off the transport, I loved what I was seeing. But, then things started to materialize that took some fun out of my new car.

I immediately encountered starting issues with the engine. She would crank over easily but not start. It took me about a dozen tries before the engine finally fired off. And, when it did, the exhaust note was incredibly loud. The engine was equipped with an after market exhaust that created an annoying resonance. I asked Gene to replace it. Unfortunately, the exhaust flanges on the heat exchangers were of a different configuration than the early cars, for which Gene did have some stock mufflers. My car, being a 76 model had a triangular pattern on the flanges. To use an earlier muffler would have meant changing out the heat exchangers and all the ducting that was unique to them - work I did not want to do at the time.

Gene also had no idea what the starting problem issue was. He stated that the car had always started easily for him. Not a good thing for me to hear at the time.

Then I noticed that I could not actuate the pull handle to open the front trunk on the car. I pulled as hard as possible. Even looped a length of rope around the handle and then standing outside of the car, to gain mechanical advantage, attempted to pull the handle. It would not budge.

I concluded that Gene must have locked the handle. So, I tried the several keys that had been provided with the car. The only one that would fit the trunk latch handle was the ignition key. As soon as I put a little torque on the key while attempting to activate the lock......the key snapped off. And, I had no spare key. Called Gene, and he did not have a spare. So, you are beginning to see why my enthusiasm began to go into the toilet!

I was able to get a new key cut from the broken key remnant. Then, over the phone, Gene walked me through how to open the front trunk by removing the front bumper, which turned out to be an easy task.

When I finally got the front trunk open, it was not obvious to me why the latch mechanism did not work. With the lid open, I could fairly easily pull the latch handle under the dashboard. I disassembled the latch, lubed it, and then reinstalled and aligned the mechanism. No difference. So, I suspected that the issue might be the new rubber seals between the lid and the trunk I removed the rubber, and locked the trunk and again could not open it. I tried several other things that did not work and finally ended up replacing the pull cable and the plastic sheathe that houses it. On disassembly, the pull cable was rusted and had worn a hole through the sheathe creating enough friction to make it extremely difficult to actuate the cable. With the cable and sheathe replaced, that problem was fixed. On assembly I lubed the new cable with white grease.

As an aside, I've "learned" that many things on 914's at first glance appear to be difficult or impossible to do. Replacing the hood cable was a good example. I dreaded crawling under the dash to get the cable out of the car.....until someone on this forum pointed out how to get the old cable out by accessing two obscure small cap screws from the trunk area. Once I knew about those screws, it was an incredibly quick and painless task to pull the cable and its sheathe out of the car. Removal of the bumper was another example of an easy task. And, there are others that attest to the ingenuity of German design.

And, then I drove the car. The gear box was extremely difficult to shift. I had owned a 901 gearbox in my first 911, and knew how vague the shifter could be.....but, the one on my 914 was absolutely horrible. Gear changes were unpredictable.....at best.

And, for the short time I drove the car, there were many only "little" things, that each of and by themselves was not a big deal.......but, taken in totality, left me totally disheartened with the car. I blame myself for the outcome. I was not clear in my expectations to Gene Rice, and I pushed schedule. All of which created a large gap between my expectations and the delivered product. I would have saved myself all of this pain had I flown out and done an acceptance inspection on the car before taking delivery. Though I would have probably not caught some of the flaws, I would have not taken delivery until the car was in better shape. With the finished car in my possession and 1500 miles from the builder, I was in a dilemma that I had created. My bad!

Enter Brad Mayeur and his chief mechanic, Michael Hanson. When Gene had passed on doing the /6 conversion for me, I had contacted Brad (suggested to me by Rich Johnson) and initiated discussions with him about delivering the car to him for the six install. Brad's advice at the time had been to drive the car for a bit with the 2.1 liter motor in it. He felt that I might find that the smaller engine was adequate saving me the cost of doing a /6 conversion. I agreed at the time, but knew in my heart that I wanted to do the conversion project.

So, I called Brad and explained the issues I was having. I still wanted to do the conversion, but I wanted Brad to initially spend some time with the car resolving all the issues I had encountered and any others that I was certain would materialize. With Peoria 125 miles from my home while Salt Lake City is 1500 miles away, it was an easy decision for me to make. I trailered the car down to Brad and Michael in November, 2015.

Over the next two months, Brad and Michael spent over 40 hours going over the car making it right. I would get a call from Brad with emailed pictures detailing the issues and offering scenarios on how to fix the issue. My responses became fairly consistent: replace rather than fix. I wanted a no compromises car. Brad's experience with 914's is so extensive that he just "knows" all the idiosyncrasies of the design. He was fairly complimentary of much of Gene's work and chalked up most issues found to previous owner work, not corrected by Gene or to a lack of understanding of some of the 914 design items by Gene. In short, Gene's lack of experience with 914's was an issue that only time would cure. I did hook up Gene with Brad for several telephone calls, where Brad would describe his findings in order to help Gene move up his learning curve a little bit faster.

It took Brad very little time to diagnose that my starting issue was a bad ignition switch. He also found suspension issues where parts had been improperly installed or were missing.....probably the work of previous owners before Gene's ownership of the car. And, some of the new parts that had been installed were not correct. For instance, the new "turbo" tie rods that I had supplied to Gene for the build both had boots that had already failed by the time the car was delivered. Brad explained that the "turbo tie rods" I had purchased (off Ebay) were Chineese made and guaranteed to fail. He replaced them with the "correct" German part as a portion of his work. So the "experience" factor of which I speak has as an example the fact that the Chineese tie rods should have never gone on the car if Brad had seen them first. But, Gene, having little or no experience with poorly made Chineese parts did install them.....simply because I had supplied them.

When finally completed, Brad and Michael had identified and corrected over 20 issues with the car, suspension, accessories, and power train. They suggested that I take delivery on the car, and to drive it; but, by this time, I didn't see any merit in driving the car since by this time I had made a commitment to do the /6 conversion.

About a month after delivering the car to Brad I brought down the 3.2 liter engine I wanted installed. The engine was a used motor that I purchased from LA Dismantlers. It came out of a 1987 911 Carrera with about 75k miles on the car. Prior to delivery, I had had a 3rd party inspection done on the engine. They were not able to run the engine since it had been removed from the car. However, they were able to do a compression check as well as a visual inspection of the motor. They pulled the valve covers for a portion of the visual inspection. The engine had proper and even compression numbers. And, it appeared that an upper end refresh had been done. Now that the engine has run, I can say that the pre-purchase inspection was fairly accurate. The engine starts and runs flawlessly. I have experienced some oil leaks, but what 911 motor doesn't leak after 75k miles? More about the leaks later.

Rich Johnson supplied almost all of the conversion hardware, either fabricated by him, or from his suppliers. Brad has installed Rich's hardware on other cars, so there was no learning curve for him.

Since I was doing an engine conversion, Brad and I discussed how I was intending to use the car. He knew that I intended to use it as a street car with occasional use for auto crossing. He suggested that I beef up the tranny with a billet plate intermediate housing. And, he made the case for installing a frame strengthening system, which was a welded reinforcement for the car's longitudinals tied to the suspension consoles. So, we added both items to the list.

Brad also reinforced what Rich had advised.....which was to stay stock with rubber on all the bushings. On his inspection of the cars suspension, Brad found not only deteriorated bushings in some areas, but plastic bushings also installed in some places. On some of the rubber bushings, where the bushing was intact but collapsed on one side, he offered that we could just rotate the bushings 180 degrees to the non crushed side. That would have saved some cost, but was a compromise that I refused to accept. We changed out every bushing and either went back with OEM rubber, or some of Tangerine Racing rubber designs.

Then Brad installed the 3.2. We elected to leave it stock, which produces about 235 hp. I also elected to retain the stock injection system for reliability and drivability reasons (recommendations from both Brad and Rich).

The tranny is connected to the 3.2 using a Kennedy clutch system. My only concern with the arrangement is the fact that the shifting geometry was slightly affected when you mate the 901 tranny with the 3.2. Apparently, the pivot pin location for the clutch release arm is slightly displaced in the fore and aft plane relative to the position of the flywheel so that with the clutch correctly adjusted pedal position for complete disengagement is on the floor. Since my 993 encounters total clutch disengagement at about mid throw on the pedal, I have to adapt to the 914 configuration whenever I switch cars. This "fluke" is something that I will want to correct in the future. But, that is a project for another time!

Brad pulled all the instruments and I sent them off to Palo Alto Speedometer for refurbishing and modifications. The stock fuel gauge was replaced with a 911 oil temperature and pressure combo gauge. I provided a 911 turbo tachometer for modification to replace the boost gauge (housed with the tach) with a fuel quantity gauge and to relocate the red line on the tach for use with the /6. The speedometer was simply refurbished and calibrated to 150 mph.

Regarding gauges, I had initially gone to North Hollywood Speedometer, which was the firm that most folks had used; however, on my second call to them I learned that they had just been sold and that there were backorders on work in their shop. They quoted me 3 months to do my gauges! So, I turned to Palo Alto.

Be aware that refurbishing gauges is NOT cheap. The package containing 5 gauges priced out at a little over $1000 at both North Hollywood and Palo Alto. For that amount I got "new" gauges that were matched, with one additional gauge over the original 914 dash configuration.

A few photos of the car in Brad's shop in Peoria with the 3.2 installed.

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The end result:


And, here is a short video of the first start of the new engine. This was on a very cold day in early February.
 IMG_1438.MOV ( 3mb ) Number of downloads: 93


I asked Brad to hold on to the car and to put some mileage on it since I "expected" other issues to develop related to all the work that had been performed. Over the next 6 weeks, Brad managed to put almost 200 miles on the car.

His report was that there had been some minor "tweaking" required, but the biggest issue he encountered were engine oil leaks. This kind of caught me by surprise since I had resealed the motor prior to taking it down to Brad for installation. Over the next couple of weeks, Brad and Michael were able to trace out most of the small leaks to leaking senders or items that had not been touched. However, there was still a "major" puddle maker left.

Murphy's Law dictated that the worst leak location be in the most difficult area to observe......the front of the engine that butts up against the front firewall of the car! And, Murphy is ALWAYS right! In fact, in discussing Murphy's Law with Brad, I asked him if he knew of McDoogle's Law, which he had not. McDoogles Law is simple and states that: "Murphy was an optimist!"

At any rate, dismissing Murphy and McDoogle, there appeared to be at least two leaks coming from the front pulley seal area. Since I had replaced the crank seals on both ends of the motor, the only seal in that area that I could think of was the #8 nose bearing. And, you guessed it.......Brad had to drop the engine to get a look at the leaker, and diagnosed it to be a leaking #8 bearing seal. Drat! Replacement of the #8 bearing seal, which is a large O-ring, can not be accomplished without splitting the case on a 911 engine. And, I didn't want to split the case on an engine that had only 75k miles on it.

So, I began to research #8 nose bearing "bandaides". Ran across the topic on the Pelican board, and ended up contacting Henry Schmidt who owns Supertech, a California located Porsche performance engine shop. Henry had developed a kit to plug off the leakers from the nose bearing on 911's. He uses an epoxy that he injects between a retaining ring and the engine case. The retaining ring is a slight press fit ring, so it has to be machined to be a custom fit on your engine. With the ring installed, and area rendered "super" clean, Henry injects an epoxy into the annulus between his ring and the engine case. The epoxy forms a dam that will plugs off this leak path. Hey qualified his kit as a "bandaid" since the right way to fix this leaker is to replace the O-ring on the #8 bearing (requiring case splitting). He has never installed one, but has many customers who have and has never heard that the kit failed.

In discussing this repair with Brad, he volunteered that he has done similar repairs in the past with a particular epoxy he uses. The repair is done in a similar fashion to Henry Schmidt's kit, but does not make use of a metal ring to press onto the nose bearing. Brad offered that he has had good success with his fix; so, I elected to go with Brad's approach, rather than to wait for a kit fabricated in California to get to us. It's been about a month and a little over 100 miles of driving, but the leak is, at this time, GONE!

The remaining leak on the motor is minor and appears to be coming from the rear of one of the chain boxes on the engine. This is a "typical" failure point on a 911 engine, and though it can be fixed without splitting the case, it still requires that you remove the cams and timing chains and related hardware in order to pull the chain box off the engine to replace the O-ring that seals the chain box to the cam carriers. So, I'll wait to see if that leaker gets worse. Right now, the leak simply manifests itself by "wetting" the area. No discernible drips or runs.

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And, today, the car got christened at our PCA chapter's autocross school. With about 200 miles on the car since commissioning, I had not been able to safely push the car to find its limits. Today was really exciting.

[mepstein]

Nice. Congrats. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

[GeorgeRud]

Great looking car, and with Brad's tweaking I'm sure it's a great runner as well.
Enjoy it in good health!

[Harpo]

Very nice car and I love the blue

[GeorgeRud]

Any plans to bring it to this year's Parade in French Lick, IN?

[Cairo94507]

Car looks very nice and sounds good too. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Chris Pincetich]

Welcome to the madness (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
Some blue painter's tape on the rear inside lip of your fender wells during racin will help protect that nice paint job. Folks with sticky slicks on during races tend to pull the rocks out of the road, then leave them on the track. Probably not an issue during your "school"

Have fun! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

[francar]

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