Pulled the engine and trans out of my project last weekend and found a little surprise waiting for me. FWIW the longitudinals (sp?) have no rust issues, the battery tray was replaced with aluminum some time ago but it doesn't show much damage under that either and it's all factory paint in the engine bay, except...


Now I'm no Porsche expert, but this looks pretty wrong to me. It looks like it was cut (rust removal?) and slathered in rust inhibitor. I'm guessing it's supposed to look more like the other side.


Well, one more item on the project list! Anyone dealt with this? Ideas? Opinions? (Other than I might be smart to part out this car and find another one... )

Well,,,,you do some welding.....

The Rocket had a smilar problem and I welded a scab plate on it.....the battery appeared to have leaked acid and it got INSIDE the two pieces of the suspension ear and rotted it from the inside out....

It's fixable....

This is repairable. I think Brad posted some repair pictures a while back.. but it's not for the feint (sp?) of heart. Hard to tell until you grind away the POR-15 on the top pic, but both sides need repair.

-Rusty

Alrighty then, a scab plate I can do - replacing the whole mount would suck. The inhibitor is on there very thick, are those two "ridges" there from the factory or should it look like the drivers side? I ask because it feels like someone welded on a couple of small round bars to keep it from collapsing on this half-assed repair.

P.S. what do you mean by both sides needing repair?

Thanks for the input!

-Andy

Both sides of the "ear"....inside and outside.....

I used scab plates on both sides with the one on the fender well side extennding up as far it would go.....the one on the engine bay side crled up and over the sill....It was uglee but worked.

Better than cutting out the whole console and welding with the car in a jig.....

I replaced the whole thing, you don't need a jig. It is alot of work, but now I don't have to worry about it...

The bottom pic... on the lower right of the ear... if that's rust (looks like it on my lame monitor) - it needs to be repaired. If not... my monitor sucks worse than I thought.

-Rusty

Here it is removed...

I think the driver's side is OK, it's still very grimey and has a bit of overspray from some red primer (That matches quite well with rust so I have no idea why they ever made it, it looks like it's there from some inside-the-engine-compartment cooling tin touch up ) - but it's not really rusty over there... That and I nicked it while dropping the motor. Whoops.

Well it looks like another project within the project but hopefully won't be too bad, I think I need to look closer at it on the inside of the ear. Thanks for all the help!

-Andy

Andy, a can of Aircraft stripper should save u some time and effort on removing the por.

It takes more time, but it not really "harder" to replace the whole mount. With a scab plate you're not really stopping the rust. It's still back there. You can see that I'm in favor of doing the whole mount. It's really not that hard to align correctly.

Glad to see others weld like me.

Andy, i know you don't want to hear this,
but PLEASE don't just put a piece of scrap metal over this!!!!

do it the right way, replace the whole crappola with a new one.
you can buy the replacement brand new.

search this BBS for a thread from brad showing exactly how to do this (with pics).

why not do it right while you're in there?

btw. Thomas, nice work ...

Andy

It hasn't been driven yet, so we don't know yet how my welds will hold! I was considering doing the scab plate idea, but was talked out of it. The whole ordeal was alot of work, but I am glad I did it, at least now I have confidence in the car's integrity. As far as Andy's car is concerned, putting a scrap plate of metal over it really isn't going to do much for you other than keep water out of the whole, since yours was already fixed with those rods. Look at the photo of how mine cracked. Basically, the metal rusted from the inside, getting thiner and thiner unitl it cracked. The crack started on the forward part, near the longitudinal. That piece was very thin right there.

I am not planning on ever selling my car, it will hopefully stay in the family for many generations. That is why I decided to fix it right.

Boy, I am with Andy on this one. Replace it with a new piece! A crappy repair could fail in the future.

Geoff

I do have a replacement part available. Bought it for a car that turned out to have far too many "issues", so it got scrapped. If that is the worst of it, then I'd fix the car. I think back to several of the cars that I parted out and now realize that I should have restored them.

If Mike Z put a scab plate on the rocket and said it worked... I am telling you it worked. That car had Euro 6 with 200+ HP and Mike drove the the tires off that thing for years on the street and track and then sold the car about 4 years ago to a guy that lives about a mile from my house and there is no issue that I know of. I saw a torsion bar break on the car though... a manufactured product that was installed... of course the scab plate might fail some day.. or it may be the scab plate, if put in correctly, is stronger than the original. Believe it or not, that is possible too. I have done some non-factory weld repairs on 914s that I have no doubt are stronger than the factory original set up. It doesn't look as pretty, it may not be as light, but it is stonger, it is not going to fail and it was cheaper and it was faster.

If you have to have the original look and you have the time and money, go for it. If you don't care about factory look, you can come up with something even stronger and cheaper. It ain't rocket science. Perhaps something more than a scab plate and you could build in some additional bracing to the suspension ear that would make it stonger. Or you could do both, go with the factory piece and bracing if that is what will give you the most confidence.

By the way Mike, I saw the rocket about 2 weeks ago. Tom has still has not fixed a fuel pump problem he has had for a numer of months... just a waste watching that car sit around. Hopefully I will get him to 914 run in the next few months and motivate him to get it back on the road. That car is still the most fun 914 car I have ever ridden in ... still love it.

- Dave

the original "ear" is not weak.
it does not need bracing. unless it's rusted.
in which case you're bracing a rusted piece that holds your suspension.

from looking at his picture, there is no way of telling if the PO got the alignement right with his first "bracing".
it'll be even more difficult to get it aligned right now, because you would have to remove his old bracing, grind it down, then add new plates to box it.
all the while trying to make it straight.
do we know the PO got all of the rust out? would be a bummer to find out later he didn't.

i'm not saying it can't be done. anything can be done given time money experience and attention to detail.
and if you have all that handy, why not use the factory replacement and do it right?

Andy