Intro from Montana: '73 2.0L rustoration thread Options

[KELTY360]

Hey Brent, did you know you’ve got a little piece of wire showing? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[bbrock]

Hey Brent, did you know you’ve got a little piece of wire showing? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Finally! There were three clowns I knew for sure would have to say something and thank goodness you all have! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/lol-2.gif)

[KELTY360]

Hey Brent, did you know you’ve got a little piece of wire showing? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Finally! There were three clowns I knew for sure would have to say something and thank goodness you all have! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/lol-2.gif)

Damn, I just can't shake that clown designation (IMG:style_emoticons/default/clown.gif)...you always threaten with that nasty name but you never come thru. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/slap.gif)

BTW, way to firm up that tit. What a stud.

[bbrock]

Hey Brent, did you know you’ve got a little piece of wire showing? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Finally! There were three clowns I knew for sure would have to say something and thank goodness you all have! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/lol-2.gif)

Damn, I just can't shake that clown designation (IMG:style_emoticons/default/clown.gif)...you always threaten with that nasty name but you never come thru. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/slap.gif)

BTW, way to firm up that tit. What a stud.

Jeez, do you have to be such a dick about it?

... better? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/happy11.gif)

[KELTY360]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[raynekat]

Blue protective wrap????

I thought that was just Brent's 1st attempt at doing a custom "wrap" job on his car.
He's outside the box on a lot of things as we know....
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[dr.tim]

I made a decision about a month and a half ago to not even try to get it on the road this year.

I'm looking forward to it. We just got this creature buttoned up and road worthy.. the carbs tuned in well after finally sorting the timing.


My car needed some work too; Road America tore it up: The fan belt gave up, which took out some plug wires, and while it was cooling down I heard the rotor split. Good thing was it was on the out-lap of the last session.

[bbrock]

Time for an update. I can't say it's been boring here. It's nothing like what California and Oregon are dealing with, but last weekend we had a 7,000 acre wildfire burning nearby. We were just outside the evacuation zone so weren't affected too much other than keeping a watch on the situation in case it jumped the Interstate to our side. However, we have several friends who evacuated, one who lost her home, and another who had a backfire burn right to her doorstep while her neighbor's homes burned to the ground.

(IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/uploads_offsite/nbcmontana.com-20845-1600056065.1.jpg)

Then on Monday, we had this which quickly changed the fire situation.



That fire is still active and 68% contained but the weather has returned to seasonable temps so it could flare again. It doesn't pose much threats to homes now though.

Yesterday I finally got the bumpers, rocker covers, and valences ready for paint. I did the best I could with the mangled front valence but it still needed a lot of filler (nothing thicker than 1/8" though).



I ended yesterday with two coats of epoxy primer on all the pieces followed by a bit of glazing putty to fill a few sand scratches I had missed before calling it a night.

This morning I got an early start and put two more coats of primer on.



As I finished spraying, smoke filled the valley and all hell broke loose with sirens. Then a black plume of smoke rose from the other side of the ridge less than a mile from our house. By the smell I knew it was a house fire. I told the wife we might have to leave and set about prepping. Soon after, we got the call from the sheriff's dept. telling us to "be prepared" to evacuate. We were very careful to design and landscape our house so a fire could sweep through and leave it unscathed. Truth be told, our property would really benefit from a fire ecologically and as a fire ecologist in a former job, I'm a stickler for having a home resilient to fire.

Unfortunately, I've let a lot of piles of combustible shit pile up around the house as a side effect of the Porsche project. Doing that cleanup I've been putting off for too long became mandatory so that occupied our time. I watched a helicopter repeatedly fill buckets from the beaver ponds just a few hundred yards down the road. That made me happy because years ago when some people wanted to whack the beaver because they worried they would damage the road, I pointed out that the beavers had built a free fire pond and we may be glad to have it some day. Today was that day. As I worked, I watched the smoke plume and it seemed to be clearing so I was pretty sure we wouldn't have to flee but kept cleaning up anyway. It needed to be done. Then we got the all clear. The house that caught fire burned to the ground but the fire fighters were quick to get a perimeter around it to contain it.

Time to get back to work so I sprayed color on all the parts. I used SEM satin black chip guard on the valences and rocker covers. I probably wouldn't do that again. I love the armored texture but it seemed to react with the epoxy and got severe solvent pop in many places. If I did it again, I would let the epoxy fully cure for a few days and then sand. The tech sheet said one hour to top coat and I gave it 4 in the hot, dry sun but ... After letting the first two coats of chip guard dry, I sanded it down with 400 grit to smooth out the pop. The original finish is a heavy orange peel texture with sags so I wasn't going for perfect. The end result looks good, but is not a match to the original texture. i think it will wear like iron though. Very tough stuff.



The bumpers got several coats of SEM Trim Black (sorry Marc - @Kelty360 ). I've sprayed a lot of this from rattle cans but this was the first time spraying from a gun. Man, this stuff is pure pleasure to spray. A nice contrast from the PITA chip guard.



Last, I installed the front and rear valences. They look pretty good.





Thanks to the excitement today, I didn't have time to finish the bumpers or rocker covers but will try to get them done during the week.

[KELTY360]

No need to apologize Brent, you're the one that has to look at them. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Your fire story is really scary. I remember you pointing out that beaver pond. I can't imagine what a three mile evacuation trip down your road would be like. Especially if there were flames on the sides of the canyon. I wonder how the bears at that exhibit by the interstate react to the fire and smoke. Stay safe my friend.

[914_7T3]

Glad you’re safe and no property damage. Bumpers and valences look great especially having to work under those conditions.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/blink.gif)

[Dion]

Damn Brent, that is quite the situation there. So glad to see you guys are safe.
Valances look good. Hope you get to keep at it and the fire incidents settle down. Oh & Happy 914 day :-)
Stay safe buddy.

[Cairo94507]

Talk about working under stress... Looking good. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/popcorn[1].gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

[bbrock]

Okay. Big doin's out here in the sticks. Bumpers and rocker covers on the car!

The rocker covers were a triple Bee-otch to install! Despite having "dry fit" them several times, they were still a PITA to fit. I tried riveting the tops first and then screwing in the bottoms. That didn't work. I could not get the screw holes to line up. Reversing that by screwing in the bottoms first and then snapping them on to the thresholds to line up the rivet holes worked, but scraped paint off my pristine threshold edges. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/headbang.gif) It won't show, but I need I'll need to revisit to make sure bare metal isn't exposed. I think the problem is they are used rocker covers that have been on another car and didn't quite have a custom fit for mine. Anyway, they are on and look great.

The rear bumper went on with only one small mystery. The PET shows a spacer washers on all of the mounting studs of the bumper top. 914Rubber sells them so I bought a set for both ends and installed before mounting the bumper top to the bumper. When I installed the bumper on the car, the bumper top was too high. I pulled it off. Removed the spacers, and reinstalled. Looks great.



I'm starting to think the spacers in the PET are the hard plastic spacers that fit into recesses at the base of the mounting studs. You can see the disc I'm talking about at the top of this pic and a couple more pics further down.



Oh, I did have a small tear in the rear bumper top that needed repair as well as a couple mounting studs to replace. I want to give a shout out to @gereed75 for this excellent post on repairing bumper tops with 3M 5200 Marine Adhesive Sealant. This stuff creates a perfect repair! Stud repair in progress.






Here's a pic after the sealant cured and before sanding. I haven't snapped a close up of the final result, but what's the point? It is invisible.



Now for the front bumper. The top had a large tear in the front middle that I repaired with the 5200 which is what is happening with the clamp in the earlier pic. After the sealant cured, I sanded the repair down with 80 grit and it was looking great but every time I moved the piece, I heard the completely disintegrated subframe crunch and there was a mushed in place right at the nose that was never coming out. Then I remembered the date was 9/14 and thought, "hey! sale!" So I went to my computer, found bumper tops at 914Rubber on sale for $50 off, and clicked the order button.

This is where the mystery of the bumper top spacers reappears. I mounted the new bumper top to the bumper with single spacers and mounted the bumper to the car. Even with the spacers, the bumper top sat low to the front trunk lid edge. Those spacers are squishy so I could have loosened the nuts on the bumper top to raise the height but didn't feel like the top would be securely fastened. First, I did a little investigation and found that the height of the 914Rubber top from mounting surface to rear top edge was 4mm shorter than my OE piece.



I'm not sure why as everything else looked spot on but now the spacers they sell started to make more sense (BTW, I could find no instructions for installing these on the web site). However, single spacers weren't cutting it so I grabbed the set I didn't use on the rear and doubled up spacers on all 5 studs. That let me snug up the nuts better while maintaining the height needed. I did add blue loctite to the studs just to help prevent the nuts from vibrating loose.



The bumper went back on the car and I was very happy with the alignment.



Note the missing horn grill. That became an issue. I had a NOS grill I bought decades ago plus the original on the passenger side.



I discovered the original (at least original to me) was painted black over chrome. That is a mystery since the only chrome bumper 914 I've had was an appearance group car with fogs. I don't remember those grills ever being chrome. Whatever, the chrome was starting to peel and needs to come off. Blasting didn't work so I tried all kinds of solutions suggested on the interwebs to strip that stuff off. Nothing worked. I think these were chromed with a much different process than modern chromed plastic. It looks like they were sprayed with a conductive paint, then copper plated, then chrome plated over the copper. At any rate, I give up and will bite the bullet and buy an overpriced replacement.



I have hardware for the license tag frames en-route so should get those on this week. Will get the horn grill ordered ASAP. Then the windshield is the last bit of body work to do. Only thing left for now is admire.



Marc's D-cup has served her well but...





Now she's a free-swinging hippy!!! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/shocked[1].gif)

Nice ass too.



Of course the most important thing with bumpers is how well they look after dark.



Oh! Now that's interesting.... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/blink.gif)

[Dion]

Whoa! UFO!!!
That’s pretty cool man. Nice idea. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/very_first_smiley[1].gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/clap56.gif) That surpasses those damn warts any day.

[FlacaProductions]

oh, come ON!
that's brilliant (so to speak)

[horizontally-opposed]

Man, the car looks really good. Loving the silver/black simplicity and stock finishes on the Fuchs. Also a lot of brilliant touches, like those corner LEDs. Nearly invisible, and then can't be missed when it counts. Nice work.

Glad you dodged some bullets on the fires, too... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

[Superhawk996]

Looking really good. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) Love the hidden side markers.

[914_7T3]

That’s a bright idea! She’s looking really good!

[bbrock]

Thanks all. The camera is kind to those Fuchs. They are a bit rough and will be sent out for professional reconditioning at some point. They will definitely remain original finish though. I think Porsche got those exactly right.

I will admit that I"m feeling pretty smug about those stealth markers. I do share Phil's ( @Superhawk996 ) dislike for adding LED bars and such to a nice vintage car like this but not as much as I dislike being smashed by a monster truck that didn't see me. I've never understood the saying "can't have your cake and eat it too." I see no point in having if you don't eat it. In this case, I believe I have managed a full on European look and light setup while also remaining 100% US DOT compliant. Here are a couple more tricks on this car.

First, if anyone is interested, here is the light bar I bought. Basically the same as the brake light only I went with a 4.5" bar with clear covering to blend most closely with the silver of the car. https://www.customdynamics.com/amber-led-truflex?cat=430



Of course, I had to color match the harness to the OEM wiring for the side markers. The connector here is only temporary. I'm going to order a couple double connectors like are used for the console wiring and elsewhere. I found I can easily stuff neoprene foam into the ends to make them water resistant. These will do for now though.



The bar fits nicely in the recess on the body behind the bumper.



Because of the recess, I found that another driver positioned just behind the door of my car can't see the marker unless they are about 6 ft away to the side. The solution was this 3M black reflector tape.



I stuck a 1/2" wide strip on the rear edge of the bumper. If you get at just the right angle in daylight, you see a bit of sparkle but otherwise the tape just melts out of view.



At night with the light on, it is a different story. The marker is now visible to about 18" from the side of my car. This pic is showing nothing but reflected light.



The DOT standard calls for front side markers to be amber, placed as close to the front of the car as practical, and at least 15" above the road surface. I measured and half of the bar is above 15" so I think this qualifies. I haven't adjusted the front suspension height yet but don't think it will move that much. I'm going to go ahead and claim this is a side wart delete that is still US DOT compliant.

But there's more. DOT also calls for rear side markers to be red. I think they give American drivers too much credit in thinking that different colors front and rear will help other drivers know which direction your car is traveling, but that's their justification for the wacky rule. Regardless, I swapped all of the bulbs for LED lights from Super Bright LED. Fabulous decision! The front signals and running lights are MUCH brighter as are the rear signals and brake lights. I couldn't see any difference between the LED and incandescent tail lights which I think is good since you don't want to blind people following you. But here's the fun part. I used red LED bulbs for the rear side marker lights. The result is near magic. When the lights are on, the rear tail light fixtures look like they are completely red. You can't tell the difference from a full red US style lens.



I'm really bummed the camera can't pick this up but when the signal comes on, it flashes BRIGHT amber with a stark contrast to the running lights. Even my wife was impressed. The camera just doesn't do it justice.



And we'll finish with one shot of the headlights up. This is the first time I got to see what they really look like.

[andrewb]

Beautiful work Brent - not just the lights though. The whole car looks very 'clean' and stylish.

Only just seen your weather pics from earlier in the month. I can't understand how you can go from the fires of hell, to knee deep snow and then bright sunshine all in the space of a week. We often joke that we get all four seasons in one day but we don't get those extremes. Very odd.

Just one thing - I don't want to nitpick - did I miss the bit where you put the engine in ? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)