Returning Barn Find BB To The Road Options

[DBF]

Glad many of you enjoyed my "You know you own a 914 if..." post. In the spirit of the post, the 914 has sat quite a bit as I work on other projects, and my wife and I and friends took a trip south to get away from the Wisconsin winter. Also, in the spirit of the post, progress is in the opposite direction of getting the car on the road. You can continue reading or just scan down to see the photos to see where this story goes. I stripped the engine down to the long block to replace seals and clean it up, but "while I am at it", I decided to pull the heads and pistons/cylinders because, well it's just a few nuts that hold them on. The cylinders and pistons look good, and I have them soaking to get the carbon off so I can make more accurate measurements, but I'm optimistic they will be usable. I don't need a dial indicator however to tell me the valve guides are shot. Good news is I don't see any cracks in the heads, and the seats look like they will clean up. BUT the "while I am at it" syndrome raised its head as I now have 4 connecting rods just looking at me begging to get checked out. It's just two nuts to pull the number three connecting rod, and sure enough, there is some scoring. So that means I split the case, and it looks like someone dumped some pine needles and a pinecone in the engine judging by the remnants in the screen. Fortunately, even though the rod journal is scored, the crank doesn't look bad. I'll learn more when I get everything to the machinist, but it does go to show the "while I'm at it" that we all do very often is a blessing as that engine wouldn't have lasted with just a top end rebuild. The car is also earning its nickname "Some Assembly Required" even more so! BTW - anyone recommend a good machine shop in the upper mid-west? The shop I used years ago is no longer in business.