I have loved those flares since I first saw them. If my car had gone the flared route, those would be the ones. Subtle but bitchin'.

Well folks, it's been a helluva long time again, but my car is coming along and will be back home again Friday/Saturday! This pic is from one of the last times I drove it, around a year ago -




Here's some of what's been completed since my last updates. (This work I farmed-out.)

- Comprehensive transmission, diff, and axle rebuild
- New flywheel and clutch
- Refreshed Patrick/Fuelsafe cell with new bladder
- Line-lock for parking brake (has vented 911 brakes w/o e-brake)
- New stainless headers
- Regular service oil/plugs/valves
- Additional de-buggering of wiring/lighting

And here's some of what is on my to-do list for the next few months:

- New seats (Recaro Profi SPG)
- New fire system (Lifeline)
- New harness belts (Schroth 6pt)
- New stainless RSR 2-in/2-out muffler
- New lexan rear window from 914Rubber
- Drilled and plated hinges from Oscar
- Add third brake light
- Repair/fab rear tow hook (long story)
- Improve mounting/routing of brake cooling ducts
- Cleanup/detail interior and underside surfaces cosmetically
- Fix body and paint battle scars
- New decals or partial wrap/livery (TBD)

Under consideration:
- New windshield (again)

I love this car Chris...thanks for keeping the thread (and the car) going.

It is the quintansential (sp?) 914's ever, or at least IMHO>

Chris, The car is awesome. Keep sending new pics....

Good to see it's still evolving.

Tell me more about the line-lock for an e-brake!
My brother's car is like yours and needs an e-brake solution for his vented 911 rears.

Thanks all - I will be posting more updates and pics next few days.

Here was the status of the interior as it was before the drivetrain came apart - I plan to either completely redo or at least touch-up the paint which is actually POR-15 in grey. My seat side-mounts and hardware all needs cleanup or replacement also.



Here are the seats, old (Cobra Suzuka) and new (Recaro Profi SPG). I was hoping to find Recaros that were extremely close to the size/shape of my old Cobra Suzukas and these seem to be. These are the standard narrow versions which gives me added motivation to stay in shape lol. (Plus lucky for me the large version model just got recalled.) Worst case I believe the Suzukas and other options are still available if these don't work out well.

Love this car, happy to see it evolving again!

Antoine

Super cool street legal track monster! What trans are you running? I am still on a 901 wondering if I should go 915 someday (carbed 3.2).

Thank you! Trans is still a 901/914 which previously had been rebuilt & upgraded for track use a long time ago but was completely done. Now it has a boatload of new parts and is happy again. I'll probably install a trans cooler if I start doing longer/hotter track events or longer street drives at any point. Typically the car never ran really hard before for more than 20 mins or so at a time.

The car is indeed home from the shop again as of yesterday. Planning for a shakedown drive to terrorize the neighborhood a bit later.

This is the part, which is surprisingly cheap (~$30) and apparently works well per what I heard.
https://www.jegs.com/i/JEGS/555/63028/10002/-1

It's installed in the rear tunnel access area which is where my proportioning valve was before - I'm going to see how the brake balance is without that and if needed it would have to be installed on the backside of the firewall out of the cabin. Not super ideal but in many years of having it I never actually needed to mess with it anyway, just ran it full open (max pressure to rears). I had mainly installed it in case of racing in the rain or whatnot, which I only have done once and don't really plan again.

If you set a line-lock when the brakes are hot, it can easily let go once the brakes have cooled. We have seen more than one 914 damaged due to it rolling away down-hill after this happened.

Don't trust a line-lock as a parking brake. Mechanical is still the best way to go. It also gives you a little bit of braking even if your hydraulic system has a catastrophic problem.

--DD

Thank you Dave! I'm a fairly paranoid type and will continue using wheel chocks whenever there is any sort of slope which unfortunately includes my own driveway & street!

Well I have my car back from the shop - again - and have done a couple of successful test drive blasts around the neighborhood. It's been a long time and I'd somewhat forgotten how loud, stiff and raw this puppy is.

Yesterday I finally installed this crest from our friends at 914rubber, and now I'm making good progress on the new Recaro seat and Schroth harness installs.



I decided to defer repainting the floors/interior as most of the ugliness will be covered-up and not visible, and it's a painful nasty job. I may tackle the fire system this coming weekend and will try to take the car over to Porsche Marque Day at Supercar Sunday (Pierce College) on Sunday.

I'm so lame at keeping this thread updated. Anyway, the car has now survived about 5 local test drives so that's great news. It's only gone a few hundred miles total in the last few years...

The new seats and harnesses are in and working well.



Last weekend's project was installing this gorgeous 2-in/2-out RSR style Dansk from PMS:



which sounds similar to my old 70mm 'sport' 1-out Dansk, which is a good thing, but a little 'throatier'. I'm sure it's a bit louder from the outside but from inside the car it sounds nearly identical to me. The carbs and fan still really drown out all else from inside the car.

Next I still have a bunch of electrical and cosmetic stuff to knock-out, but my current puzzle is adapting or redoing my fire bottle mount to fit the new canister which is way smaller. Hopefully I can tackle that this weekend, then move on to debuggerizing the turn signals and license lights.

The 914R is looking fantastic as usual. I do like the sound of the Dansk you were running. I’m sure the dual outlet will be quite the broadcast.
Loud pipes save lives :-)
Keep it coming Chris.

Very tasteful upgrade. I just updated to a 2 in 2 out Dansk from PMS too. Love the deeper exhuast note. Running sans rear valance for now.

Your 914 rocks

O

Hey Chris, What are you running for chassis stiffening on this monster?

Do you remember what you painted the floors with? I'm trying to decide if I paint grey like yours, black or try and get color match...as I stripped the tar off my seats to do chassis stiffening and make sure there was no rust.

I'll put down some new style sound insulation, so I'm not sure if the color match makes sense..

It's actually grey POR-15 which is very old now, and I think I did put a clearcoat/topcoat over it but not positive. There is zero tar or deadening mat in the car and the POR-15 over bare metal has held up well overall. For track use I prefer the lighter color over black for a couple reasons.

It's got a 10-point welded-in cage plus the GT-style kit and boxed arms in the back, repairs/reinforcements around the "ears" and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting. It's pretty darn solid but I do worry about all the stress from running slicks and very stiff suspension.

Well I found the car was running really rough and boggy at low/mid RPMs so I cleaned-out the idle jets and voila! Way smoother and stronger now. Also found the throttle cable and pedal stop adjustments were slightly off so I fixed it so now hopefully the Webers are at WOT right at the pedal stop. Will try to post up some test drive video soon. (Have a few short ones on my insta @cjcam930)

Thanks. What are you running for torsion bars and rear spring rates?

Every time I come back to this thread…. I have the same thought…
Beautiful car Chris!

Here's the gist of the suspension - practically all stock

Sway-A-Way 22mm tubular front torsion bars
Bilstein 911SC front struts, raised spindles, decambered, custom valving
Custom monoball front strut tops/camber plates (fabbed by Werks II)
Smart Racing Products No. 27 front swaybar
Meuller Engineering front A-arm needle bearings
Elephant Racing polybronze rear bushings
Hypercoil 350lb 2.5x10” rear springs and Coleman threaded coil-over collars
Bilstein Sport rear shocks (F4-B46-0179-H003) with custom valving
Factory 16mm rear swaybar; restored, new bushings
GT chassis stiffening kit
Boxed rear trailing arms
H&R wheel spacers
Titanium lug nuts
Two sets 15x8 Fuchs + 15x9 Braid wheels

Sounds plush and cozy.

-Steve

Love this car, and love that it is USED.

Just a quick status update. Having a muffler on the car obviously makes interior and road noise way more noticeable/annoying.

The other day I first noticed the left side rocker cover was rattling like crazy at the rear attachment point - tightened down, easy fix. Then I finally found the source of the most obnoxious noise which is not what I thought and actually was an additional culprit. The metal dash frame is/was touching against the rollcage slightly, causing a horrible buzzy rattle. I think fixed now but need another test drive.

The remaining NVH challenges are the aluminum skin door panels and the QRS fiberglass skin top (dzus fasteners), which I'll tackle soon. I may put a little sound deadening in the doors and floors but TBD and probably not.

Also I just got a NOS turn signal switch to hopefully fix my weird blinker issue... not sure when I want to tear back into that nightmare though.

@campbellcj Are your seats mounted directly to the floor? I was thinking about re-using the seat rails if I went race seats but I think they can get much lower if you take off the sliders?

Btw your car is a great blend of street legal and track monster, keeps the value high as well if you still keep it street legal.

Thanks! Yes, they are bolted to the floor but with some steel strips sandwiched in between for reinforcing and leveling purposes. I'm not even very tall (5'9" ish) but the extra headroom and lower driving position really makes a difference.

Years ago I remember debates about structural integrity lost from cutting out the floor cross-beams but this car has a full welded cage so I wasn't worried about that much. With an uncaged car (or rusty floors?!?!) it may be more a consideration but I dunno.

Woohoo, I've been chipping away at my long to-do list and the car is running well (again) now. One challenge since the trans rebuild has been gunk in the fuel system from the old fuel cell that had pretty well disintegrated and from the car sitting too long. I think I finally got that cleared up. Had been thinking it was running horribly due to the new exhaust, but that didn't totally make sense since it should not be much different in flow/backpressure vs what I ran before. Sure enough it was mainly or entirely the Weber jets being clogged and possibly some inferior/fouled gas.

Some fresh pics! I just put some new decals on, and brought it out to the PCA unStock show a couple weekends ago. I plan to bring it to Motor4Toys at Pierce College this Sunday as well.

Nice update Chris.

One thing I've noticed and particulary on your car along with a few other with the blacked out bumpers:

Normally I don't like the sail vinyl delete on a 914, but with the blacked out bumpers and the wide rubber it really draws the line of the car out and lengthwise....looks really cool. Others might have commented before but with those pics...you really notice it.

Nice car and quite a change from the years posting here.

Thanks! The painter suggested leaving off the sail vinyl but keeping the bright trim to be a little "different" so we went with that, knowing it could always be added back later.

I may actually go back to the front spoiler/dam being body color and/or put some other color on the bumpers vs solid black (possibly a GT style 50/50 highlight color). I think it would be fun to not have it all orange & black. TBD.

One of my local favorites...tasteful touches

O

Click to view attachment

Thanks @valcooscar - appreciate your help & parts!

Made it to Motor4Toys on Sunday - the car is running extremely well now but alas the engine will need to come apart again someday for an oil leak.

I need to finish the new fire system installation soon and aim to potentially get out to Streets of Willow in January, which would be my first track event since late 2018. I "just" need some new race tires and trailer tires too... merry xmas to me lol

....back again! This year has been kinda sucky so far and my 914 has still mostly been sitting in the garage; but, I did just get several major issues resolved (farmed out).

A few months ago the charging system went intermittent for a bit and then totally stopped charging. Turns out that wasn't the alternator as I suspected/feared but was a double-whammy of a failed LED inside the custom quad gauge, and then once that was fixed the old Bosch regulator died.

My right front brake caliper had a seal go out and leaked quite a bit, ruining the pads and rotor. So now I've got fresh rebuilt calipers w/ new rotors and pads up front. Rear brakes were fine.

And, the speedo drive on the trans had also failed.

Always more to do but the car is driving really well again and I think is finally ready to hit the track again. (Whether I'm ready is the bigger question.)

Quite a build. Such a nice job on the massaging of the fenders, the whole car so nicely sorted out, it’s like the one factory prototype 914-R that escaped the crusher. Have fun dude

Thanks! Been a bad summer for cars. Just had to rebuild the AC on my truck, the trans and rear brakes on my son's Land Cruiser, fix rodent damage and other crap on my 997, and now this!

Here's a film shot from last year's PCA ünStock show. I signed up my 997 this year as it's way too far to drive my 914...

914R at PCA ünStock Show 2022 by Chris Campbell, on Flickr

Man, Chris, I have always loved your car. Still do, still drooling on mahself when I see pics of it!