Intro from Montana: '73 2.0L rustoration thread Options

[bbrock]

My name is Brent and I’m new to 914 World but certainly not to 914s. My 1973 2.0L has being lying dormant and neglected for over thirty years now and is long overdue for a resurrection. The path to where I am now has been a long one so forgive me for the long introduction, but some of you might be able to relate.

History

I wasn’t much of a car guy as a kid growing up in NE Kansas. I liked cars, but I didn’t LOVE them. But when I saw my first 914, it spoke to me in a way that no other car had before… or since. My first ride in a teener didn’t come until my senior year in high school when a co-worker took me for a spin in a 914 he had borrowed from his dad’s used import car dealership. The car did not disappoint and I was hooked! I knew I had to have one.

The year was 1981. I was 19 and beginning my second year of college at Kansas State when I took out a small loan to buy my first car. I found a barely road-worthy 1970 1.7L in Missouri for $2,300 and was beaming with pride when I rolled up to the college dorm with my new, but rather shoddy looking, prize. But being as I was 19, and that organ that would eventually become a brain was not yet developed, I managed to shove the nose of my new Porsche under the tail end of a pickup truck at an intersection the very next day. Devastated; I had the car towed to a little one-man body shop at the edge of town. The front left corner was toast. I had enough money left from my loan to buy a partial front clip from AA. I got a call from the body shop the day the clip arrived and was told there was a problem. I went to inspect and saw that AA had sent a wrecked clip. The fender was smashed and the cost to hammer out the panels was 3X the cost of the part. I got in a heated argument over the phone with AA when I was told that sort of condition should be expected with used parts. What a bunch of BS! Surface rust and a few dings is one thing, but this part has been smacked hard enough the turn signal opening was half the width it should have been. Pointing out that their own advertising promised used parts would be collision free got me nowhere. In the end, I had to pay return freight and a restocking fee to get rid of the shitty part. That was the first and ONLY time I’ve done business with AA and I’m still pissed 36 years later. Luckily, a 914 had arrived at a junk yard 60 miles away and I picked up the parts, minus the lid, for a fraction of what AA had charged and hauled it myself.

But my woes of fixing my 914 were far from over. The body shop guy told me he found a trunk lid and that if I prepaid for parts and labor, he could put my car back together, shot with primer, for $400. Like an idiot, I believed him. I took out another small loan and wrote him a check. Every time I stopped by to check out the progress, there was a different excuse. The lid was at another shop getting MIG welded to repair minor rust… things like that. Then the guy just disappeared. I spent a few weeks stopping by almost daily to find an empty shop. Finally, one day a crusty looking old guy was there. “Are you looking for Joe?”, he asked. “Join the club.” Joe had been bilking lots of people out of money and had skipped out of the country. The guy telling me this had recently entered partnership with Joe and had lost thousands of dollars. We would both shortly receive a bankruptcy letter listing us as creditors and leaving us with little recourse to recoup our losses. It was my first hard lesson in trust. The silver lining was that the new guy had another shop and took pity on me and completed the work that was promised at a very reasonable price. I know he lost money on the deal.

My now patchwork-colored teener was back on the road but I wasn’t any smarter at 20 than I was at 19 so my car would again suffer the consequences. It was a cold, snowy, Kansas winter when I was home at my parents for Christmas holiday. I had learned from experience that if I put the 914 to bed in that weather without adding a bottle of drying agent to the gas, she was not going to start. But I wasn’t alone and shop after shop was sold out of HEET. On the fifth stop, I finally found a few bottles and was heading home to my parents when I hit a patch of black ice at low speed on possibly illegal balding tires and wrapped the front neatly around a fire hydrant. Well shit! Here we go again. I was done with body shops and con-men so decided it was time to learn to weld. I found donor parts at the same junk yard as before and set about cutting out the damage and replacing using my brother’s oxy-acetylene torch. Amazingly, I managed to get the car back together in drivable condition. I won’t pretend it was a good repair job, but adequate. I learned a lot about working on 914s because just about every week, something new broke – clutch, torsion bar, struts, and the constant battle with bad wiring in the FI and ignition. I’m sure there is a part on a 914 I haven’t removed and replaced, but I can’t think of what that would be.


About a year later, my then girlfriend and now wife of 30+ years needed to replace her aging Honda and a nice looking 914 appeared for sale. It was a ’73 1.7L and looked much prettier than mine. We shouldn’t have bought it because it had been wrecked and not put back together right. It had a barely detectable sideways crab as it rolled down the road that a 4-wheel alignment couldn’t fix. But it made a good daily driver and was nice enough that when Elizabeth and I were married, her cousin hid the car for us so my original patchwork 70 got the traditional “Just Married” treatment.





Around that time in 1984, I spied an ad in the college paper for a 914 for $500. Always needing parts, I thought this was my chance to get a big pile of parts at a bargain price. After talking with the owner, I discovered this was a 1973 2.0L. (my dream model and year). It had suffered the dreaded hell hole and the RR suspension console was dangling free. The PO (the car's second owner) couldn’t get a shop to even quote her a price on fixing it, and I was welcome to go have a look. I found the car in a parking lot next to the local import car parts shop. I couldn’t believe what I saw. Not only was it my dream ’73 2.0, but it was metallic silver with 4-spoke Fuchs, center console but not appearance group (black bumpers and no targa vinyl). This is exactly the car I would have ordered at the dealership. I knew that the wheels alone were worth the asking price. From 30 ft., the car looked gorgeous. From 10 feet, it looked really good but you could see it had been repainted, and not well. The interior was complete and clean. The only thing wrong with this car was a rotten battery tray and suspension console. And even that rot was limited and hadn’t spread to other bits of the hell hole. I finagled another small loan and didn’t quibble on the price. THIS would be my car.

Back at the junkyard I found a console from the same donor I had taken the front for my 70 from. I spent a weekend in my parent’s garage welding it in and spent the next several years enjoying the hell out of that car. In the meantime, I rebuilt the engine on the old 70 to donate it to a VW bus and sold the chassis for parts. My wife’s ’73 became my project car and I earned my label as a DAPO botching an outer long replacement by overheating the weld and using poorly placed door bracing. The result was an increase in the sideways crab and a passenger door that didn’t close as cleanly as it should. I continued my assault on the car by stripping it down to respray in black lacquer – a purposeful choice to reveal all of the flaws. It was a lot of work and there were many goofs to be redone, but the end result was actually quite stunning. It didn’t last long though since I didn’t have a garage at the time and black lacquer is no match for the Kansas sun. But it did convince me that I could prep and spray a car with respectable results; better than the job on my 2.0L anyway.

I don’t remember the exact catalyst that caused me to tear it apart, but as much as I loved driving the 2.0L, it didn’t always love me and I was frequently stranded – and this was pre-cell phone days. The problem was almost always some damn thing with the FI. Plus, the car was leaking oil badly and there were rust issues that needed repair. I convinced myself it was time for a complete tear down and rebuild, and I commenced to do just that. I was in my mid-twenties and Reagan was President.

Restoration Begins… and Stops… and Stops Again

I made a rookie mistake and started with the engine. I did a complete teardown and had all the bottom end parts machined and balanced at the local machine shop. Although I am kind of regretting it now, I decided to ditch the D-Jet that caused 95% of my reliability woes and opted for dual 40IDF Webers. Carb conversions were all the rage back then and I had lost patience with the FI. If I were to start this today, I’d probably keep the FI which I still have in storage. But to complement the carbs, I installed a “street grind” cam from Automotion. I’ve tossed my old Automotion catalogs and there are no other specs on the invoice. I only remember that the folks there recommended this grind to get the most from my carbs while staying close to the performance of the FI. The other mod I chose for the engine was a new set of OEM euro spec (8.0:1) Mahle pistons and jugs. I’ve always had this crazy idea that the euro spec cars were how Porsche intended and American spec was a compromise. As part of that rebuild, I stripped and repainted all of the tin with high temp paint and replaced the little hardware. Heads had not yet been touched, and Reagan was still the President.

Then life intervened. Elizabeth had put her college on hold while I finished mine, and it was while she was finishing her degree that I tore the car apart. Then it was my turn to go back for a graduate degree so the project went on hold. Time was in short supply. Clinton was President by the time I got my grad degree. Now neither time or money were as much of an obstacle, but having adequate shop space for the restoration was. All I had was an open carport that was not up to the task although I was able to turn it briefly into a makeshift plastic spray booth for the last car which we had since given to our nephew (kicking myself now). So, Elizabeth and I set about building a two-story barn with plenty of space for a large woodshop, mechanics shop, and spray booth. When I say build, I mean we picked up hammer and nails and built the thing. I must say; the thing was a work of beauty. All that was left was to install windows and then my restoration project could resume in earnest. And then I got offered a job in Bozeman, Montana which had been a long-time dream for this wildlife biologist. So without so much as ever rolling a car into the new shop, we packed up and headed to the mountains. That was 13 years ago and I’ve gotten a lot of grief for hauling my little project 1,200 miles across the continent. And she has weathered through many Montana blizzards sitting neglected in my driveway; waiting for me to come to my senses.

And Now…

Maybe I am having my mid-life crisis but the itch to get this car back on the road had gotten too strong to ignore. Over the years, I would periodically cruise the Web for 914 news, but would quickly put it aside with the resignation that I’m back where I was with no good space to work on the car. But then I read Darren Collins’ amazing odyssey on this forum. Not only is it inspirational, but it also gave me an epiphany. The bulk of the work in a restoration is in cleaning and refurbishing small parts. I don’t need a big-ass shop for that. In fact, we do have a 2-car garage but half of it is filled to the gills with woodworking tools and the other half has to remain open for the daily driver so we don’t have to scoop and scrape several inches of snow off every morning, and to protect the car at least a little from the horde of deer mice that plague every vehicle parked outdoors in the mountains. But I have a plan. I purchased a set of 10” pneumatic castors at HF and will build a rotisserie on them. That will allow me to roll my chassis over my gravel driveway and in and out of the garage as needed. That will still leave the challenge when it comes time to paint (I don’t have the means to farm out a $10K paint job). But it will get me through strip, patch, and primer. We have planned on building a detached garage since we built our house. Maybe I’ll figure out how to fund it.

Determined to make progress, it was time to take stock of what I have ahead of me. The car had been mostly stripped prior to our move, but many of the parts that had been carefully stored in sheds wound up strewn haphazardly in the trunks and cockpit during and after the move. The old pitted windshield had been removed long ago and donated to the other car. The plexi I had installed to seal out the rain had cracked to shards and only the tarp over the car kept out rain and snow. The old tires turned to dust years ago, leaving the belly of the car only a few inches above the damp earth. Not the treatment I intended to give my car but it is what it is. I was prepared for the worst last week when I began excavating to survey the damage of years of neglect. The car wreaked of weasel piss and I actually found a weasel skull in the front trunk. But that weasel piss probably accounts for the surprisingly low amount of rodent nests found in the car. Considering the abuse, things could be worse.













Thirty years ago, I had all kinds of plans to modernize this car. But history gains importance as we age so now I want to keep it mostly stock. That’s also the easier and cheaper route given that the car is disassembled, but nearly complete. My rule for mods is to do nothing that can’t easily be reversed to original stock. The biggest sacrifice is that I won’t be blanking out the side markers as originally planned even though I really hate them.
Mods planned are:
Engine: These have already been done. Otherwise I might rethink them.

• Euro 8.0:1 compression pistons
• Weber 40IDF carbs
• “Street” cam grind for carbs.
• Dizzy – I have an unused 050 on it now, but will probably replace with an SVDA 034. My carbs already have vacuum ports.

Chassis

• Euro lenses
• Black windshield and targa trim. I already sanded and painted my dinged-up trim when I tore down the car. I like the look so will keep it for now.
• Relocate fuel pump to front and replace fuel lines.
• 2-stage paint on exterior. Still not completely married to this but think it will be easier to do and less maintenance than 1-stage. Open to comments though.
• Modern radio or retro radio with modern BT module.
• Hand throttle lever to operate carb chokes.
  

Workplan

1. Stabilize engine – It has been stored in an unheated shed. Checked on it last week and was horrified to find the pistons stuck. Luckily a half hour soak of the pistons with PB blaster and some light taps with a softwood drift freed them up. Cylinders had a little rust crust at the bottom where the rings were sitting. I pulled the worst looking cylinder. Rings look fine. A few seconds with a hone and the bore was shiny like new again. Will do the same with the remaining cylinders and will refresh the assembly lube on cam lobes and lifters. I have a 3-arm engine yoke from VW Alley arriving Wednesday and will move the engine into my heated garage where I can keep a better eye on it. Once inside, I’ll clean it off and brush the case with tectyl, spray Stabil engine fog on the piston tops and cylinder bores, and bag it. I’ll turn the crank once a month to make sure it doesn’t seize again. Open to suggestions on how to protect it until it is ready to go back in the car. I’ll probably go ahead and get the heads rebuilt sooner rather than later so I can get the engine completely assembled and not have a bunch of loose parts laying around.
2. Build a rotisserie and start on rustoration. Here’s what I know I need to do:
   1. Replace front trunk tub.
   2. Repair rear trunk lid.
   3. Repair both door sills.
   4. Repair lower sail panels.
   5. Repair or replace RH engine tray in hell hole.
   6. Replace RH outer long. Won’t know about inner until outer is cut off.
   7. Misc body sheet metal patches, mostly lower edges.
3. Inventory and clean parts. I’ll develop a plan of attack after I have a better idea what I’m dealing with. But this will keep me busy for a while.

Thanks for reading.

[aggiezig]

Brent, you are killing it. Great work, man. I am very jealous as my project has all but stalled since moving to the west coast. I am really enjoying watching your progress!

[bbrock]

Let me dispel any myth that I know what I'm doing. Today was a perfect illustration. The main job on the agenda was respraying the front trunk to fix the stupid, stupid fuchup respraying the VIN stamp. But while having breakfast, I decided to pick up my steering wheel to caress the supple leather ad admire my fine craftsmanship. So satisfying! But wait... I noticed one of the ears of the rubber horn pad just barely lifting off the frame. Barely, barely. I was a bit conservative with the contact adhesive because I didn't want any to squeeze out of the edges and ruin the paint. A little too conservative on this one. I decided to grab an acid brush and adhesive bottle and just touch that up. Almost there, just a tiny touch out there at the tip. Then whoops, a tiny bit of adhesive touches the frame and I immediately wiped it off... and there went the paint. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/headbang.gif)

So off comes the rubber pad and out to the shop to strip off the adhesive, sand the frame, and recoat. It looked great again (hmm (IMG:style_emoticons/default/idea.gif) sounds like a political slogan). Then I had a great idea. I had such a great result baking a part with enamel paint, I figured what could go wrong here? Four minutes into the bake, I found out. The paint started to blister. Well THAT didn't work. Yanked it out, let it cool, then sanded and wire brushed the blistered areas and sprayed again. Looked pretty good except the paint inside the little ridges on the horn ring still looked rough. Nothing left to do but strip all the paint off again and start over. I'm a real genius. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/hissyfit.gif)



I set that aside to fix my even bigger fuch up. I didn't take any chances with overspray so tented the cockpit with masking plastic.



Wiped the frunk down with dewaxer, lightly scuffed with 400g, sanded down a few minor drips vacuumed, dewaxer again, then blew it out with compressed air. Same treatment on the longs except the drips to be sanded were more substantial. Then I resprayed. Turned out fantabulous. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cheer.gif)







I owe my success to @TravisNeff :



And here's the little turd what caused all the fuss. I should be able to sleep better tonight.

[TravisNeff]

Say whaaa? Whoop!! glad it helped! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smilie_pokal.gif)

[76-914]

Nice work. BTW, you'll want to change out the anode rod in that water heater every 3-4 years. That water softener will accelerate the wear rate by 50%. Also, I searched thru the paperwork that came with my red car but couldn't locate where that fiberglass "sound deadening pad" was purchased. You could pm @Bullitt and ask him. He was the PO and might remember. It was definitely made for a 914 as it has the same cut outs as the OEM pad. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

[bbrock]

Nice work. BTW, you'll want to change out the anode rod in that water heater every 3-4 years. That water softener will accelerate the wear rate by 50%. Also, I searched thru the paperwork that came with my red car but couldn't locate where that fiberglass "sound deadening pad" was purchased. You could pm @Bullitt and ask him. He was the PO and might remember. It was definitely made for a 914 as it has the same cut outs as the OEM pad. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

Thanks for the info!

The hot water tank is stainless steel. It's a fancy indirect fired jobbie that runs off our high efficiency mod/con boiler. No anode to replace (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

[mb911]

Looks like I have some catching up to do.. Plan to have my front trunk in paint by the end of the year. Great job..

[euro911]

... And here's the little turd what caused all the fuss. I should be able to sleep better tonight.

Looks great (silver is my favorite color on a 914) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

... but at some point, you'll have to shoot a smidgen of clear on that turd to keep it bright & shiny (IMG:style_emoticons/default/idea.gif)

[bbrock]

... And here's the little turd what caused all the fuss. I should be able to sleep better tonight.

Looks great (silver is my favorite color on a 914) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

... but at some point, you'll have to shoot a smidgen of clear on that turd to keep it bright & shiny (IMG:style_emoticons/default/idea.gif)

Yeah, at first I was going to leave it rusty, but then decided to polish the turd as best I could. Then realized I'll need to clear coat it if I want to keep it that way... or just watch it redevelop a patina over time for that authentic "New Porsche" experience. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

[bbrock]

Looks like I have some catching up to do.. Plan to have my front trunk in paint by the end of the year. Great job..

You have a running engine. You win!

[bbrock]

I've been working on some fun stuff before I get back to the grunt work. Strung the main harness into the front trunk. Amazing how just adding wire makes it start looking like a car again.





In a rare flash of forethought, I had secured washers and nuts on all the grounding studs on the chassis before painting.



Simply take them off and voila! a nice clean grounding point.



Ground cables temporarily in place. Nuts will be replace with new or replated and toothed washers added.



Also loose installed most of the pieces of a new set of OEM green brake lines from PMB. I have some guilt about these. I actually ordered a set of their economy lines that I planned to paint olive drab to look like OEM green lines, but there was a several months delay and a mixup in shipment from the European supplier. Long story short, I was given the choice of a set of SS or green lines. VERY generous of them and I'll try to make up by sending them more of my $$ as I work through brakes and suspension.





I thought it was strange, but the straight coupler fitting that goes here appears to be plated steel rather than brass like the rest of the fittings. It's in the bucket of hardware that will be sent out for replating.

[bbrock]

Another fun thing. I reattached the VIN plate and added the reproduction HO campaign sticker I had printed. Thanks to @VoPro914 for sharing his artwork files (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif) My original had the VIN written in black ball point pen and the H.O. and dealer ID in blue, so I replicated that.



I know these usually go up on the fender well next to the VIN stamp, but this is where mine was. Looking at the service bulletin for the campaign on Jeff Bowlsby's site, I think either location fits the instructions for decal placement. Regardless, this is the history of this car, so I preserved it.

(IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/uploads_offsite/bowlsby.net-20845-1543040890.1.jpg)

Finally, I reattached the original octane sticker. It cleaned up surprisingly well so I kept it.



Just a little improvement over the condition it was in when this madness began.

[Dion]

Brent your car & the process & progress is
absolutely brilliant!
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/smilie_pokal.gif)

[bbrock]

I decided to work on the dash frame today. That might seem a little random unless you've been in my storage shed lately and tripped over the bulky damn thing. For that reason alone, I wanted to get it out of the shed and back on the car. There were still a couple things on it to come off. The glove box lock looked like crap.



After a quick soak in mineral spirits, blowing it out with air, and a shot of lock cleaner and dry lubricant, it looks good as new.



Ever wonder what the guts of a cigarette lighter look like? I've never been a smoker, but having a working plug is important. The housing will be re-chromed.



Now to the frame itself. I forgot to take a before. This shot is after a scrub with Simple Green and a red Scotch brite pad. Just imagine this coated with a thick film of brown, sticky, waxy, mouse piss and you get the picture.







The factory only sprayed flat black on the top and front of the frame and I wanted to preserve the original random Olympic blue color and manufacturing marks, so I just sprayed the small rusty areas with phosphoric acid to convert the rust and left the phosphoric coating to add some protection. That area shouldn't be prone to rust but I might hit those spots with some clear before final installation. Here's how it looked after paint. You can also see the cable tie sleeves lined up there. Once the mouse piss was cleaned off of them, they were in great shape so will go back on.





Before it can go on the car, I had to repaint the blackout around the vent openings. First I made a mask from the trace I took before blasting off the paint.



Pretty simple.



I'll add new foam on top and, of course, vinyl later, but once the paint dries, I'll be able loose install it where it is out of the way.

[TravisNeff]

I am loving these details Brent!

[Tdskip]

Long overdue but great work and thanks for documenting.

[bbrock]

I had to do a little lock smithing on the glove box lock this morning. Before installng, I thought it wise to test it with the new keys cut to code I had made. This was one of 3 locks that matched one of my old keys so was what everything else got rekeyed to match, but when I tried the new key, I found it worked, but the action was rough with a hard catch. So I pulled it all apart for a more thorough cleaning and inspection.



I found one wafer sticking and not popping up when the key was removed. That wasn't the problem but I cleaned and smoothed the groove and replaced the spring to fix it. Two other wafers were remaining slightly protruded when the key was in place. Strange, because I couldn't see any wear or problems with them, but when I replaced them with wafers from my stash, they pulled down flush with the key in place. A thorough dose of dry lube and it was ready to reassemble and install. Here it is back where it belongs.



And a wider view of the dash frame in position. Just temporary. It needs new rubber cushions on the top mounting studs.

[trojanhorsepower]

So is that what a dash is supposed to look like before it gets hacked up..

[Milkman7286]

Wish I saw this thread before I moved from Missoula to Los Angeles in August...oh well. Awesome project and best of luck getting the final steps done and back on the road! If you ever saw a white one cruising around Missoula (or the rest of the state, i used to take it camping in Pipestone all the time) that was me. Oh, and Go Griz!

[bbrock]

So is that what a dash is supposed to look like before it gets hacked up..

That's what I'm claiming anyway! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

Wish I saw this thread before I moved from Missoula to Los Angeles in August...oh well. Awesome project and best of luck getting the final steps done and back on the road! If you ever saw a white one cruising around Missoula (or the rest of the state, i used to take it camping in Pipestone all the time) that was me. Oh, and Go Griz!

Bummer, it would have been fun to connect. I do recall seeing a 914 in Missoula once but couldn't say what color it was. Quite a few years ago. I only make it up that way once or twice a year usually. And... Go Cats! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/poke.gif)

Latest Update

I've spent most of my time sorting and cleaning hardware for plating. What a PITA job that is. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/barf.gif) But it needs to be done because not having fasteners is bottlenecking the works here. It took awhile to figure out a workflow. Here's my setup sans blasting cabinet.



Here is my half-assed organization. One bucket for rusty crap to be cleaned, a bucket of cleaned (first pass), a bucket for chrome, and a box of larger parts that will go to the blasting cabinet. Anything too small or with deep crevices to wire wheel get tossed in the tumbler or the blasting box. I'm just using crushed glass medial left over from blasting with a bit of pine-sol added for the tumbler. Works pretty well. After parts come out of the tumbler, they get a rinse in water and anything with threads gets a wire brushe to clean them out. I'll go through all these parts one more time to make sure threads are clean and ready for plating.



To break up the monotony, I've alsoe been working on refurbing a few parts that can go back on the car. Here's the blasting cabinet full of a batch of cruddy parts.



And here's a few of those parts painted and installed.



The cable and 2-1 cable pull that go under here are MIA. They must be around here somewhere.



That is the wrong bolt for this piece. The allen head bolt is in the plating bucket.



Speed nuts for these next two are in the plating bucket so they are just laying loose.

[bbrock]

More fun stuff... I repainted the metal plate for the ash tray bracket and sanded and sprayed cold galvanizer on some of the galanized metal that had rusted. Here it is back home.



I also refreshed the glove box. I went minimal on the door to preserve its history. On the front, I just resprayed the edges that might be visible but was careful not to cover of the splash of color (signal orange?) as it came from the factory.



The back got a full coat of satin trim black except the bottom edge where the vinyl will wrap around.



The box itself needed some work. It cleaned up pretty well considering more than a decade of mice nesting in it. After two rounds of soaking and scrubbing with Nature's Miracle, there is only a slight hint of "Ode to Rodentia" and a few rust stains remaining. I will burn a cone of incense inside the glove box with the door closed to eliminate the lingering odor. That's a trick I learned after buying this car from an apparent heavy smoker. After trying just about everything but an ozonizer, I found that fighting fire with fire worked when I sealed up the car and lit up 4 cones of incense and let it sit for a day. No more smoke odor after that.

Another issue with the box was that it had warped along the top edge. I fixed that by spraying the top inside and out with water to dampen it, then propping it open with a stick to so the bow was reversed while drying it with a heat gun. Then I clamped the top between wooden backers while it finished drying for a few hours. When finished, it was arrow straight.



I think I'll give this stuff a try to hide those stains.

(IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/uploads_offsite/images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com-20845-1543735416.1.jpg)

And here it is back in the dash. A nice splash of festive color I think.





And the lock works! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cheer.gif)