75 914 Laguna Blue Project Options

[Cairo94507]

Duane you are making great progress. I would ask you to consider "outing" the Austrian seller of the oil cooler by screen name so others will not fall prey to his deceitful practices. I am glad you recovered most of your money from that experience. This is a small community and we need to look out for each other. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

[Graydingo]

Appreciate that. This was the for sale thread on the Pelican parts 914 board: His user name says Switzerland, but the mailing address was Austria.

I have no idea, but it just felt like Mario C. was a guy who inherited a lot of his dad's old rare parts and isn't really IN the Porsche community. I have no proof of that, but the whole experience makes me feel like he is not an enthusiast, and he acts very immature. I pictured a young man who has never had to deal with stuff until they are forced to deal with it the hard way.

Most of the stuff he was selling on pelican is good rare stuff, but he probably never had a problem because a lot of it was collectable stuff that didn't need to perform a function. I guess maybe he thought I was going to put the cooler on a pedestal and set it in my office. He's kind of known for selling "illegal" copies of rare workshop manuals for RS and RSR 911 cars. I have seen one complaint regarding these manuals in the past. I should sic Porsche legal on him, but I'm not a vindictive person.

He sent me a nasty email after ghosting me for like 3 months and that's when I finally escalated to Paypal. I loved seeing that $ back in my account, not because I needed it, but because he had to pay me.

Sadly, the cooler is back in his hands and looks brand new thanks to Pacific. I have no doubt he will try to sell it again, if he hasn't already. It's also in a pretty vacuumed formed package from Pacific. So anyone looking to buy a 914-6 cooler, just buy one from CSF. I would have done that if the CSF coolers were ready when I first went down this path.

[Graydingo]

I traded out some work on a friends 911 for some 15 X 7 and 8 Fuchs. While I was originally planning on staying narrowbody, the allure of GT flares cannot be denied.

I really like the look of RSR on a GT tribute, so I sent my wheels off to Fuchs Restoration.

This was how they looked before.


And After:



I had some issues with the refinishing, but Ed at Fuchs Restorations made it right, so Kudos to him for taking care of some minor problems in the finish.

There were some dimples in one of the 8s that I didn't think where there before, but tough to see in my before pics, so not sure, Ed said he would take care of it.



There was also some residue on the inner sealing surface for the tire and he offered to clean that up too.

[mgp4591]

I've never seen those indentations before...could they be die marks from the forgings? Jeff Hines would be the one to answer this. And a lap wheel on a drill will make short work of the paint on the sealing edge of the wheels without harming them. Start with a more gentle grit for best results, and again, Jeff is the expert.

[Graydingo]

Yeah, I think the indents were from the painting process unfortunately. Not sure what happened.

I decided to bite the bullet on flares and ordered from PMB. Knowing that metal prices seemed to be going up, now seemed like the best time to and PMB had the best price.



While PMB is fairly close to me here in Southern Nevada, I was surprised to see that the flares were originating out of Murietta, GA.



I thought to myself "I bet they drop ship them from Auto Atlanta"

Definitely the case and makes no difference to me where they came from but I found that interesting.



Autoatlanta also charges something like $200 more for the flares.

I think they all get made in Canada by Restoration Design.



I put my 345/35 tire under it just for giggles. I'll be using the 15X8s from the previous post with these.

[Graydingo]

Well I learned a very interesting fact about 1972 model year 914/6s. I know a lot of you are going to say "duh" but I just found out that they had the ignition on the right!

I've been looking around for a column and ignition to do the swap to left hand ignition but it's obviously a lot of money and time to do the conversion.

Then I found out that for the 72 MY they were winding down the 914 6 due to low sales and the few (I've read only 150) that were built have a later ignition on the right.

It's not that I'm getting caught up on trying to make a 914/6 clone or GT clone, I just thought it would be cool to be different than a base 914.

Sure enough if you look in the restorers guide to authenticity, they show the 72 ignition on the right.

Anyway, just thought that was a fun fact that was new to me and that seems like there's little info about out there.

I guess knowing that the 72 MY sixers had them on the right means I can justify leaving it, even though I do think having it on the left is more trick.

Here's a 72 914/6 posted on FB:



I asked the owner for a pic of the ignition but he hasn't responed.


The other thing I was debating was Restoration Design is raising prices for metal March 4th.

How important do you think their outer long strengthening panels are for a six project?

[Graydingo]

The other thing I was debating was Restoration Design is raising prices for metal March 4th.

How important do you think their outer long strengthening panels are for a six project?

I ended up buying the outer long reinforcements from Restoration Design about a month ago. Figured Canadian steel was going to be a lot more expensive and I wanted a stiff feel to the chassis.

I also considered the inside reinforcement kit, but opted to not go with that for worry that it might upset the interior fitment of the carpet and rear backer pad.

I sourced main bearings for the 10/10 crank that I had done at Ollies for the 2.7 flat six motor that is going in this project. I think they send grinds out somewhere else, but I was a little worried that it would be hard to find 2.7 main bearings that were oversized to fit the grind.

As luck would have it, my local friend is restoring a 76 911 Targa and had been sent the wrong bearings and they were the right oversized bearings for my crank.

The same friend had a set of Gillette 993 heat exchangers and I reached out to Ben about trying them for the 914/6 solution. Ben had built some sets based on the Bischoff version of the 993 heat exchangers, but not the Gillette. I sent Ben a message and asked if he wanted to try them and he agreed.

A few weeks later Ben completed the job and sent me the finished Heat Exchangers. The 993 design is compact, stainless steel, and quite good when it comes to performance. Ben said the Gillette version requires a little different technique on the flange portion as compared to the Bischoff version.

Ben has to move some things around on the heat boxes to accommodate the 914/6 design as well as attach the leads to the muffler.

Now to determine if I polish or maybe ceramic coat grey or even white to be different.

What do you think?