You're really making some progress! Can't wait to see the firewall finished! Awesome job so far

Me too. ...Riveting!

I'll be referring to this when I do mine.

Thanks fellas. Again, the only thing I can stress if you're going to refer to this one is to buy as much of the hard to form stuff as possible. You won't save all that much money forming them yourself and you will be much more likely to get everything to line up the way its 'sposed to in the end. However, there are some parts that can't be bought. Don't quote me on this, but I don't think Restoration Design has the inner side of the longitudinals, either the inner skin or the outer skin. If your car is as bad off as mine (which most people in their right minds never would have bothered with in the first place!) then you would have to resort to doing things this way. In this case, I guess I'm glad I bought pieces cut out of other cars (thanks Bruce and Mark) because it helped me see what I needed to do and what was missing in the first place.

Another point to mention I suppose. Even as far gone as this car was, its surprising how well it drove when I last took it around the street. Granted, I don't think it should have been on the road because it was a ticking time bomb. But, I think it says something about the engineering that went into it. Even with the suspension console and motor mount just about rusted through, there was enough metal where it counted to keep it together. Can't wait to see what its like now!

This is probably going to piss a bunch of you off, since I have not updated in some while, but guess what? IT RUNS! I busted ass over my Spring Break, desperately trying to get the car ready to make it to Sebring. Unfortunately that was not to be. However, when I got back all it took was a little tweaking here and there to get it to run. The following posts will be a little recap of what I've done since I last posted.

The last post I made was showing the work on the firewall. This is a pic of it nearly finished. I primed it prematurely as there were still plenty of pinholes to finish welding up. Eventually I just gave up and used a little filler, lol.

Doh! Since I guess I still haven't reached enough posts to be able to post pictures back to back, you guys will have to refer to my previous posts to see how back the pedal area was. This picture is the area welded up and POR'd. This actually was one of the easier pieces to fabricate! Cut it out, and basically just hammered with a ball peen and a piece of wood with a valley in it till I got the shape right. Don't skimp in this area - use good heavy gauge steel. One, to give some wiggle room in case it rusts in the future (doubtful). But also because there is PLENTY of flex in the floor in this area when under threshold braking. Even though I thought I did a pretty good job here, when we were bleeding the brakes I could see quite a bit of deflection. I'm planning on putting in something similar to Chris' Tangerine Racing MC brace to help cure this.

Floorboards with POR. BTW - as if using POR could be anymore of a pain in the ass, doing it outside sucks. There is nearly no way to keep stuff from getting stuck in it. But then again, I'm not going for perfection.

Seat brackets and the sliders installed. I actually bolted the brackets to the sliders first to help me locate where they needed to be welded.

Seats!

Once I was satisfied I had everything pretty well in place, I made the repairs to the outer portion of the long and welded it up. It had a few holes in it initially, but I'm pretty happy with the end result. I still have no idea why I get the flash rust after treating with Metal Prep/Ready.

Click to view attachment

Also, I swear I thought I was going nuts. I had a dream that I welded that sucker back together and forgot to put the heater tube back inside, lol. Since I won't be hooking the heat up for awhile, I'm just praying that I got it right (trust me, I would be the person to have found a way to install it wrong).

Final priming and prep the night before painting.Click to view attachment

And...... PAINT! No, its not a factory Porsche color, I know. Again, in my defense there is nothing original left about this car and its a 1.7 anyway. However, I'm curious if anyone can guess the color? Hint: its domestic. Some might hate it or wonder why I chose this color, but it'll make sense later. I only did the interior and windshield areas for now using a Preval Sprayer just to get it back together. I'll go back to some of these areas later when I spray the whole car.

Click to view attachment

Engine bay and the breather bottle

My buddy and I pulled several long nights trying to get the car to Sebring, as I mentioned previously. We ran into some issues, as expected. Most of it was due to fitting the dual carbs and wishful thinking that the bits of linkage I had would all match up, since the car had a progressive on it originally. Again, wishful thinking.

Here is something else we noticed. I ordered new intake gaskets from Pelican, which had three holes. Unfortunately this car has four studs? Did I miss something here? Ended up re-using the old ones.

So here she is on all fours, just the way I like I do have an issue with the door gap, but not to fear. I think. This door is in dire need of new hinge pins so I can't get it aligned right currently. Even though its really close at the top near the door handle, there is a significant gap at the upper front part part of the door. This tells me that once I get new hinge pins we should be able to correct this.

On that note - does anyone have a set of decent used pins? Or at least know where to get new ones?

Also, as we really rushed to get the car back together I didn't do a good job taking pictures. I did weld the lower rear quarter panel back on with minimal flex in the metal. This was accomplished with low heat, really taking my time spacing the spot welds out and using a damp cloth to cool after each weld. I never expected it to be flush and nowhere near the quality of the work of people like Scotty B. However, I ended up with a very thin coat of Evercoat over the top, which I can live with. One day I'd like to learn how to do this without any filler at all.

And to finish for now, the last picture I have currently is one of my very rednecked linkage setup. For what its worth, the way I have it has allowed me to drive the car to and from campus every day this week! I even took the plunge and drove it over the bridge to Tampa (about 30 miles away) and the car ran great. The carbs are about as synched as I could imagine they could be. However, there is a spot at about 1/3rd throttle where they get out of synch. The good news is they're synched again at full throttle! This makes for some interesting looks and some very spirited driving, lol. I've ordered a new linkage kit which I hope to receive any day now.

Once I got the motor in, I also went ahead and adjusted all the valves, replaced all pushrod tube seals, valve cover gaskets, etc. This motor is, from what I can tell, original in every way and doesn't leak a DROP of oil. What a freakin blast!

Another quick note. I'm learning all kinds of things from this. I rebuilt both carbs prior to installing them with the Redline kit. However, I guess I didn't clean them out adequately. I started the car and got it running, but for the life of me couldn't synch them. I drove it around the block a few times, assuming it was the linkage. After driving it hard I brought it back into the driveway and realized I had one exhaust pipe that was darn near cool to the touch. Turns out I had one mixture screw that didn't seem to do anything at all. I then came off the 30 bucks and bought a gallon of B-12 Chemtool. I disassembled the carb once again and dipped it for a couple hours. Slapped it back on and immediately the car ran better. I can only assume there was some dried gas within the idle circuit of the carb, but the B-12 seems like it got it. I would recommend that anyone rebuilding old carbs go ahead and buy a can of it. Its well worth the investment and you can use it again and again.

As far as posting more pictures, try resizing them down to about 900x600, then you will be able to Post more.

The Intake Gaskets look like you got the ones for a different size motor.

You're doing such a good job, you want to come over & put an engine in with me?

go George!

Thanks fellas! T.C., sure thing bud. You name the day!

Looks like the Blue on New Mustangs ( and since you DD a Mustang) so that's my guess




I'm getting a Motor delivered tonight

Yep, Grabber Blue. Again, not original and some would say stupid, but I'm hoping the eventual result will be fun. Will explain later.

You're getting a motor tonight? I'll assume this isn't for the GT, since that one has a great motor sitting there ready to go. I'll be out of town till Sunday afternoon, but could come over after that. PM me and I'll send you my number again if you don't have it.

One more shot of my redneckery. Just to get it down to 2 colors rather than 4. Click to view attachment

And carpet!

That has to be one of the fastest driveway restorations I have ever seen!

Great work!

Keep posting pictures so those of us who need to can work on our cars vicariously though you.

Peter

No wonder you haven posted in a while... you've been workin' your off! Looks great! So glad to hear you're drivin it.

Keep up the inspiring work!

Yep for the Steel roof

Click to view attachment

Wow what a quick turnaround!

driving it already! awesome! keep up the good work!

Thanks for the support all. It has been a lot of work and I know I've made mistakes along the way, but at least now I get to have a little fun. Driven it over 100 miles to and from campus this week and saved a bunch of gas over the Mustang. I'll slowly start tackling the body work once the semester is over. Right now I've got to buckle down on research statistics and my thesis.

A question though, and maybe you can help with this one T.C. Where is a good place in the Tampa Bay area to get the windshield re-installed? We boogered it up when trying to put the 914rubber trim on it. I would rather just get it done right.

Also, T.C. - I hate you on principle alone. That motor looks great!

Don't know any Windshield Installers - Sorry

I like the two tone look it really makes that blue pop. Even though its not a typical 914 color.

Well, thanks Its just rattle can black primer though. Eventually it'll be all blue. Until I add the green. You'll see.

Update: Aircooled.net is FINALLY sending the linkage kit I ordered about a month ago. I talked to John on the phone and explained I was ordering it through him because CB Performance took so long before and charged outrageous shipping. AC.net took just as long and the shipping was just as bad. Wish we had better vendors for this stuff.

I promise it won't be awful

updates?

George drove it to my house on Saturday, we drank Beer - End of Update

Dam cant belive you pulled that off! What part of St Pete are you from. I grew up in shore acres and lived in Tampa working in Ybor.

holly cow george!! i had never seen this thread before and had no idea of the condition of the car you started with. good work. the pict in post #110 with all the automotive supplies surrounding the car is a classic.

k

Hello again,
I do have some updates, but my camera is currently stuck in the car while it rains. I'll work on getting some progress pics up soon. Mostly little things and getting the carbs tuned, but bodywork will come soon as the Fall rolls in.

Vw, I grew up on the south side of St. Pete, near the Albert Whitted Airport. After college, I moved to Tampa in the Carrollwood area and was working there for awhile till I decided to go back to school. If you're ever in this neck of the woods, let me/us folks know.

Kevin, thanks again for the kind words. Still a work in progress, obviously, but I have yet to work on the car and not learn something.

More pics/progress soon. I promise.

8/14/12 Update:

Had a very cool, albeit frustrating weekend. Walter Olin (walterolin) was down to visit his daughter and family from Missouri and was gracious enough to stop by with Johnathan, his son-in-law. We talked about all kinds of stuff in the short time he was here, and he filled me in on a few things that I was wondering. Great fun. Walter also graciously brought me the original heat exchangers from his early 1.7 so I would have something to replace the ones that were falling apart on mine.

With that I decided it was finally time to replace my exhaust and fix some issues I had with the exhaust studs. Soon after he left on Saturday, I began dropping the exhaust. This was a chore because the whole system was welded together by the PO. As in the HEs and the Monza-style exhaust were one unit that had to be unbolted all at once. I had inspected it previously and noted this, but also that the nuts were butted right up against the manifolts on several studs. I was able to pry and get a wrench on all of them finally and removed the exhaust. Needless to say, it almost fell apart in my hands, the welds were so bad. I also then discovered the reason why the nuts were so hard to remove. It appears that the PO had installed chevy 3/8 in studs after the orignals must have stripped out.

I spent the rest of the weekend first trying to find stepdown studs from M10-M8 as they were the only ones that would ostensibly fit the hole size in the head after they had been drilled out. No luck. So then I moved to plan B, which was to install Time Serts and the original style M8 studs. Installing the Serts was quite easy, and unfortuantely I only had 4 on hand. But the remaining 4 were on the side of the exhaust that I could still reach with a crow-foot extension, so I was okay with leaving them for now. This left me with two problems though. The holes in the HEs that Walter brought me would only fit over a M8 stud and would not clear the remaining 3/8 inch studs. On top of that, I could not find the appropriate length M8x1.25 studs at any local source. I settled for a "universal" stud kit that had M8 studs in it for the time being, but I still had to do something about the HEs. I remembered that I bought some later style manifolds with cherry-bombs welded to them. In the interest of getting the car back together and off jackstands until I could come up with a better option, I decided to put them on, knowing they would be ungodly loud.

I annealed the copper washers and started bolting things up, only to realize that despite my best efforts, I still had clearance issues. The PO had obviously drilled/tapped the studs at an angle such that when I put the Time Serts in, the studs still ended up too close to the manifold, and even with the correct 12mm nuts, I was not able to get a wrench fully on them.

By this point it was nearly dark, so I tightened things up the best I could and started it up. Yup, sounds like a tractor at idle, but what happens when I rev it? Well, its really loud and to my utter surprise, throws about a 1 1/2 foot flame out the back along with a satifying "POP". I gotta take a video of this.

I'm not really sure what to do next. Driving it on the street probably wouldn't be a great idea and would just get me pulled over. I can't hook the original style HEs back up due to the studs. I also think that I discovered a hole under one of the studs into the combustion chamber from the PO drilling too far. It looks like a head rebuild is inevitable. Unfortuantely I have way too many things going on and never enough money, so I think it will be prudent for me to let it sit for awhile until I get things figured out. The only other solution I can think of is to find a used engine for cheap (<$300) somewhere in Florida that hasn't been totally abused like this one.

I promised pics, and I will have more up soon.

On a positive note, I did get my headlight situation figured out and installed the JWEST kit. Very, very cool! I can now turn on the fogs independently and flash with them without the headlights popping up. I'd recommend this to anyone, it was a very simple install and a great reward for little work.

And you did all this while on your back! I am impressed!

I guess the PO has enter witness protection to prevent a real ass whupping!

Yeah, wait till you see the pics. Its bad. I honestly never knew a car could be so neglected. Scratch that, if all he did was neglect it, I would be fine. Instead, this owner or owners made it worse with redneck engineering. I'm learning a real appreciation for doing things the right way the first time!

Out of curiousity, since we don't really have anyone in Florida that I know of who does good machine work, do any of you think it would be reasonable/remotely cost effective to ship heads to one of the many shops you guys have out in California?

It seems to me like rebuilding those heads would be WAY more trouble than it is worth. I would think that finding some 1.7 heads off a core engine wouldn't be too hard...

I think I have some heads if you need them. I'll look this weekend.

Paul,
That would be fantastic! Let me know what you're looking to get for them. Either way, it would be nice to finally get over to your place to check out your car, even though it'll stay boxed up till it cools off a little more.

Also, I forgot to mention this. Guess how many copper sealing rings were under the manifolds? I pulled out 7 of them. No wonder why it wasn't sealing right and one side of the exhaust was higher than the other.

Sorry you are having so much trouble with the exhaust.

A better set of heads and sealed up exhaust will make your engine run much
better, maybe fixing some of the carb/ignition problems you were having.

John

Right now I have nothing schduled for Sat. if you want to come over and play 914's.

What is it that attracts redneck engineering to finely engineered German vehicles like the 914?

Been awhile, but as I cleaned out out my camera/sd card in preparation for my race on Saturday, I figured I'd post some of the madness I've had over the past month and half.

Below are pictures of the broken door hinge debacle. Note: it would have been easy to drive the pin out.... if it hadn't been broken in two different places! Not sure how that is possible, but I finally ended up cutting in in half. Found another half from the parts car at the end of the street and drove in two new pins from PP.

... Then moved onto the exhaust. Think its pretty obvious how messed up this is, but what you're seeing are the he's welded straight to the muffler, then cut/patched poorly. When I pulled the exhaust off, it cracked right in half.