This is my 10,000 post on the world forum and the start of a new build thread.

As some may know I purchased a project car for Sandy. She has been wanting a 914 of her own for awhile now. In order to qualify the car had to be an unusual color and not rusted in half. Oh, and it had to be low priced. I have two kids in college and Sandy's working on her Masters.

I purchased a car that was used as a parts donor for Bryanf' car. The color is Revenna. This met the first qualification. The photos show the car is pretty nice as far as 914 rust goes and Bryan allowed me to buy the car right.

I'm traveling to Half Moon Bay to recover the car. My oldest son Aric will be with me. We are leaving March 9th and plan to drive straight through. As part of the trip we want to put our feet on the ocean, maybe check out Chris Julian's Ultima and maybe turn a wrench or two on Rob Ways Dad's car.

Here's a couple of photos of the car. I think there are a few more parts missing than are displayed. I will be hunting for used stuff after I have a chance to see what I have.


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The hell hole has light surface rust!!! No hole!

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Here's the bad... Hit in the front which is the reason it became a parts car.

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Hereis a photo of the new parts that started to arrive today! Sandy was excited enough to go on ebay and make an offer on a set of 2.0 euro P&C's. She offer $ 169.00 and the seller accepted!

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We have been discussing names for her new car. Lots of funny and cool names have been suggested. Sandy was thinkin maybe "Abby" It's kind of a play on words and came from a discussion we were having. It won't happen until the time is right.

It started out as "Alien Baby".


So, Here's the start of a new chapter. Follow along if you want.

Looks like a good starting point, but don't you think she is 4 P/Cs short?

T.C.

Cool projet. Sandy has excellent taste in cars!

Awesome!! Say HI to Chris for me!!

looks like a GREAT starting point! great color rust free minor front end damage. Thank you for taking it upon yourself to save it.

Hey, I got one just like that.

Mine says Matchbox on the bottom....

Awesome. A stock-ish Ravenna car with steelies is what I was going to build for my wife ex when she decided that she wanted a teener.

I wasn't here when you did the Alien - though I've read through that thread . . . a few times. Looking forward to this one! Love those '70s colours colors.

One of my favorite colors.

I would go through it carefully though... looks like it was hit so hard that the transmission ended up in the front trunk!

So how many cars are you building right now Rick ? Benz, Healy, 914. Do you EVER sleep ?? You and Jake would make one hell of a build team.


BTW what ever happens to Britts car ? Pinky

Still have them all. My job has been kicking my ass for the last 3 years. I'm just wrapping up a reconsiliation of a pile of invioces totaling $ 780,000.00. This is only part of the project. The loss will be 4mil. Makes my head spin. I predict a slowing trend for the kind of work I do. (at least I hope so)

The Benz, Driver side of the chassis is welded, all new Benz body panels test fit, Right side is stripped, frame rail is removed.

The Shealey is all wired except the F.I. harness. I mean dash to tail lights. The injection harness section is stripped of all dead end wiring within the injection harness and ready to install. Lots of little things to do. Disc brakes conversion, drive shaft, body work on the front clip and paint, etc. It's a long term full on resto/mod with everything being either repaired, replaced or modified. No hurry on completion. It was supposed to be the quick and dirty driver. But not anymore.

My 914 is and will always be a work in progress.

and the Raspberry car is so bad I can't decide whether to buid it or scrap it.

Entire the Revenna car. Sure it's tapped in the front but I plan on pulling the damage, painting what I have to and freshening the engine. I mean the heads go to the chevy machine shop for the low buck valve job, AA P&C's, crack the case for new bearings and seals, and get it running. No frills.

Ya, and I'll sleep when I'm dead.

Ooooh... I have my own car now.

Here it is Eric!

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Up date already. As part of the journey to recover Sandy's car my son Aric and I may take a detour on the way back to Area51Werks. The Route 66 Classic is the same weekend as we are traveling home. We may steer the "Mothership" south east and pass by the event. Part of our journey will be through Witchita. Mike Moorman invited us to stop over and pick up a much needed front clip. As with anything, were in flux.

I was wondering how long Rick could stay at 10,000 posts! I think he showed great restraint to stay long enough to make me wonder if there was some admin trickery involved!

I think it was something like 23.5 hrs. I couldn't restrain myself any longer.

Cool!

A couple of comments:

You needed another project?

Have you thought about naming it Matchbox?

Shall we start expecting you to drive 2 cars tho the next WCR?

10,000 posts? Blabbermouth.

Time to update this. I hope to be able to spend a little more time on this car over the next 2 months. If my work flow cooperates... We shall see.

Here's where I started. I forgot to take a shot of the car before I started the work. So here's the best photo of the damage.

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Here's a shot of the right side

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Right side.

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Left side.

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Check the kink in the inner panel

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Check the hood to fender gap

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Here's the donor front clip after partial trimming. This was a gift from Mike Moorman. Thanks Mike!

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Ok, Here's the fender I repaired this weekend. Seriously deformed light opening. It took about 12 hours to bring this back inline.

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Here's what I'm talking about. The whole fender was twisted outward as shown on the earlier photos of the hood to fender gap.

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After some serious twisting and hammering this is the end result.

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Damn your making me want a spot welder again

I'm not ready to reattach the front panel yet but this is the spot welder I'm really stoked to fire up!

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Is that Lenco one of the older " green box" units? I know of one in the back of a local shop I might try to get if I can get the attatchments like you have for it

Yep, A green 3000A. I snagged it off Ebay cheap. The attachment I have is a L-950. It requires an adaptor kit to work with the older welder but it's totally worth it. I think L-950 was around 650.00 including the kit.

I started sand blsting the surface rust in the engine bay yesterday but it was so hot and humid my moisture filter was soaked through in about 20 minutes. But here is the reason I wanted this car.

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The only holes are in the battery tray and the base of the rear bulkhead where the sound deadening pad was glued to it.

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We have all seen this bulkhead rust before but not usually so little. There is a hole in each lower side of the bulk head in the usuall place that is the size of the end of an ink pen.

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Spot welders and clean hell holes rule!

(even "I" can use a spot welder!)

Finshed blasting. I removed the battery tray. I wasn't satified with the results I was getting with tray in place. I still need to condition/convert the metal before priming.

I went to the paint store today. I use DuPont and have used it all the years I have been working on cars. L65K is only available in Imron which is an old finish mostly used for fleet trucks. I brought the bent hood in with me to have it scanned. I'm having the paint mixed in Chroma One which is a very durable, workable, buffable and repairable finish. I asked for a pint to see how well the color will match once sprayed. The scanned formula didn't look right. I will need to correct it for a proper match.

Are you sitting down? $ 140.00 a pint

Not surprising. The L80E for Jims car was 115.00 a pint for base. The only formulas the paint shop had for it was either Spies or Glasurit. I'm going to get it scanned so next time I can get it in Chromabase. That should save about 100.00

Decent tub there Rick! Git er dunn !

I was sitting down. It didn't help.

Now figure that at 4-5 QUARTS of paint for an entire car. Taint cheap

Started getting things in order for next weekend. With any luck I will have this enigne back together and ready to install when the North Star Crew come to the Bolts and BBQ event here at Area51Werks.

Did a leak down but I couldn't get better than 40 on #4. Funny cause when I pulled the heads and cleaned them up I tested the seats with solvent and no valves were leaking.

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Here's the block all cleaned up ready to do cylinder heights.

Here's the heads. Looks like no cracks and I solvent tested them and the valves and seats weren't leaking.

These heads are off to the chevy guys machines shop. I have been wanting to test these guys on price. The work will be fine I'm sure. They do all kinds of aluminum head repairs these days.

I hope to drive this car out to the RRC!

Second head.

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Man, seeing that engine like that really makes me want to come up here and help!

Is that my old engine? If so it looks pretty good. I thought for sure the heads would look worse than that.

Yep, The other engine I have must have a dropped seat because I cant turn it over a full rotation.

The engine was likely usable as is but For some reason I couldn't get a good leak down. Probably me using the tool wrong more than the engine. But anyway I have a new set of P&C's I'm sticking on so she should be good to go!

Progress photos, My son Aric and I have been trying to clean the garage to make some room to work. Part of that involves emptying boxes by assembling things. Here's what we have been up to.

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Made a tool to refinish cylinders without having the fly cut at the machine shop. These heads were really nice. I had new guides installed and they were ready to go.

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Lapped the cylinders to the heads as instructed by Jake. No head gaskets like the type I engines now.

We were able to reduce the volume of boxes a little by bolting these parts on. Notice the lightened flywheel.

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We started pulling stuff the firewall to get it ready to paint before the engine goes in and discovered this clutch tube repair. Very poor quality repair hidden under wades of red silicon . So we get to do some Notice how clean the metal is. Zero Rust!

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lottsa work to reduce the number of boxes in the garage.