914-6 GT oil breather set up, mini project DIY thread Options

[Retroracer]

So my GT tribute is on the road, but in my rush to get behind the wheel (and to get the project off axle stands!), one or two items were "delayed until later". One of the these was to figure out a GT style oil breather/catch tank solution.

Looking through the excellent PBASE photo stash of all things 914-6 GT (thx Mr Serrano!), the oil breather seems to be one of those areas in which the various factory cars differed a little from each other. An old 911 washer bottle seemed to be the preferred receptacle (but not always); The Sonauto cars seemed to place it on the trunk bulkhead, while the Monte and Nurburgring cars favored the LHS rear trunk placement:



After looking at the options, I decided to go for a mounting similar to the Nurburgring cars, which meant two key items would be needed:

- an early 911 washer bottle
- a bracket made up to imitate the factory mount

So I scored a copy of an early 911 washer bottle via eBay from a vendor in Seattle. I cannot condone the pricing on these items, but where else are you going to get one? Original ones look like hell and still go for over $100. There is a Mercedes VDO one which has similar dimensions but has subtle differences to the Porsche version. And it's still $90. Anyway, I grumbled a bit and then ordered one.

So having obtained the receptacle, now a bracket would be needed:



Looking closely at the pictures and scaling to the washer bottle, I figured out some 1" strip could be bent up to suit. The factory ones looked to be of steel (?), and spot welded at the end to a vertical to attach it to the frame. I decided - mostly as I don't have access to a spot welder - to make up one in aluminum and epoxy it together (I don't see this structure having to withstand heavy lateral loading).

I happened to have some aluminum bar in my stash, so got right to forming it. I used a 1" diameter former to do the corner bends, to roughly match the contours of the washer bottle, and the material was soft enough to be able to hand formed (no hammers needed):





The tab at the end was then drilled on the outside so that when clamped and epoxied, the goop would partially fill the holes, so after painting it would resemble the factory spot weld: