My Street car thread, 38 years of ownership, the old black car Options

[brant]

I felt like starting this thread to document some of the "fixer upper" work I'm getting done.

This car has a lot of sentimental history for me as dad and I bought it back around 1985 as a father son project.

Like most 914's it was an endless project, but we color changed it and restored it... It didn't really hit the road until 1988

It was about that time that I started doing Drivers Education and got pretty much hooked on that. Dad started doing it with me and the car morphed more and more into a track car. Eventually it turned into a trailered only -4 race car with PCA club racing.

modifications evolved over and over. For example the chassis has seen 5 different rear spring rates, 2 different 4 bolt suspensions and 2 different 5 bolt suspensions, 4 different brake systems, not to mention 5 different black paint jobs......

When we decided to build the vintage chassis this 1974 chassis was too new to be legal for colorado vintage rules so it was decommissioned at that point from its life as a race car in 9/2002 (the weekend after setting my personal record, on my favorite track)

Street suspension went back on, interior went back on, race motor out - street motor in, roll cage went out... On and on...

basically it was on jackstands for over a year while race parts (motor/tranny) were unbolted and put onto the orange car... And stock parts were dug up from the stash or other club members to be put onto the shell.

It briefly debued on the street back in the summer of 2004 with a 1.7/4 that was a spare parts motor.

Fuel injection issues hounded the project all summer and finally the motor let go billowing a HUGE cloud of smoke down interstate 25. At that point the tranny was bad and the motor was blown, so it was parked again to cease being a distraction from finishing the vintage car.

During its hibernation, a roof brace fell on the front fender and smashed it pretty well. Also, for a while it was on a driveway and got backed into.... leaving the headlight crooked and the front hood a tiny bit twisted...

This brings us about up to the current time.
I started the body work on the car a month ago and hope to shoot primer or even some paint on it this weekend. The driveline currently is a unknown mileage 2.0/4 out of washington with a trannsmission from the ever helpful Ron Meier. The paint is going to remain black, and in order to meet the time frame of the upcoming Colorado 914 track event, I will only paint the front half now and shoot the back half in June-ish or after the track event has passed.

More pictures will follow, but for now here is the car on the road in the summer of 2004: