So I've been watching you guys for a little while now and decided to join the fun. On Saturday a friend and I will drag home a 1972 914 that I'm going to strip to it's nuts (I'll take them off too) and redo! I'm living in Germany so she's a euro with number 4722909638 which according to the data on this site makes her a 72. Interesting thing is it has a 2.0L engine which I imagine isn't the original motor (GB stamped in to the case) I didn't flip it over to get the serial number yet. The current owners started this project but just don't have the time to finish it as it turns out. They did another car, 1969 actually which turned out beautiful.

I've done one car before this that turned out nice. A 67 Austin Healey Sprite, but the autobahn is calling and the Sprite just isn't up to the task. She's got a wonderful exhaust note, and is a blast to drive. But the bug has bitten me, and I need another project.

So as I plan this project, I have a couple questions for the pros.

1. This 2.0 should do 100 HP with the stock set up, and the Bosch FI. I see that it's possible to change cranks, cams, and cylinder sizes. But I'm curious if I can keep the FI of do I need to go to carbs? I had a big DCOE on my Sprite (basically a side draft IDF) and hated tuning that thing. With an endless selection of jets and air tubes, one needs a dyno and CO2 analyzer to tune the thing correctly. So I'd really like to stick with the FI, but step up the horsepowers if I can. So I'm interested in recommendations.

2. The rust on the car is light. I can see that I'll need to make a patch for the drivers side long, and a couple other small patches. But stripping the car down will tell the true story. The door gap between the drivers door and front fender is a bit on the big side, maybe 8 to 10mm. As the fenders are welded on to this car, can you guys give me an indication of what might be going on here? I'll be measuring the whole car, and hopefully find it when I do so. I could probably just middle out the door, but I like things to be right. I know it's hard to say without seeing the car, but perhaps someone has something to say on this point.

I'm sure I'll have more questions, but it looks like I found the right place to go for the answers! I only have a few pics now, I'll see if I can get them up.

Jim Click to view attachment

Forgot to mention the Fuchs! I know you're only 4 lugs, but the previous owner had them re done in powder. Looking nice.

Here's the door gap I was talking about. Click to view attachment

And one of the Healey, in case any of you Porsche guys like little Brit cars.

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Welcome to the world of 914s Jimbot. Jake Raby makes a cam that is designed just for the d-jet. Coupled with 96mm p&c's It can make 120 hp. Thats about the best your gonna get from the djet.

Nice project!...and I love the Healey!

It's an addiction, there is no cure.

Good luck with the project and keep us posted!


Shoe

Welcome and terrific looking Healey. The Fuchs look very nice, nice start. I look forward to seeing the car progress to the level of perfection apparent on the Healey. Again, Welcome.

Hi and welcome to the site. Your car looks to be in good shape. Interesting color too. I also have a 72 model and have slowly been working on it and doing restoration work while making modifications to improve performance. I went with carbs and big four motor. You could talk to Jake Raby who sells complete engine kits to work with the stock injection.....and how about this shop in Germany ? I think there name was Anendorp or something like that. They sold new heads made from new castings and other parts too. They might be closer to you and save on shipping costs.

Here is my car and my friends bug eyed sprite, my Father had the same car too.

Thanks for the warm welcome. This truly is a a "world" forum. That is a really nice looking bug eye! And a nice shop as well.

The the info about the engine is just what I'm looking for. I see 96mm pistons on ebay all the time. Are there any brands to really stay away from? Any that you guys recommend?

What about injectors? Should I just throw away the ones that came with the car? I'm pretty sure this project stalled about 3 years ago, and the injectors (and everything else) has just been sitting out in a garage since. Is Bosch the only company producing these? Anyone have good success with another?

Okay, yesterday my buddy and I drug this car home. I had a better look at the car this time and found that there would indeed be more work involved than I thought.

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That is contact with the lower corner of the passenger door. I didn't take a picture, but the gap between the top back corner of the window is about 2cm. Hmmmm

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This is the passenger side long. Looks like it's been repaired, and the repairs have been repaired, and well, I think they just didn't know what they were doing and didn't support the car properly. The owner swears that the door just needs to be adjusted.

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And the repair done to the inside was pretty crappy too. The repair panel isn't flush with the original metal. I think it's just a weld over.

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The passenger side fender might need some patching as well. So I was starting to think that maybe I should just walk away, maybe with the longitudinal, the big door gap, the fender, and the engine sitting open to the world for years. Maybe it's too much..........

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Actually, that's all the fun stuff! So we loaded her up and began the drive back to Germany.

For the engine I think I'll go with the 96mm pistons and cylinders, redo the heads, have the crank re-ground, and a new cam. For ignition, I'll stick with the distributor, but get rid of the points.

Now I'll be getting my rotisserie ready and start stripping her down to see what else needs to go. But it will be a little time before I can really get going on it, work and all.

Sweet. Nice to see one being saved and fixed properly.

That's probably not good! I'm hoping someone can tell me an, "Oh I ran one like that for years never had a problem" story. Looks like something got loose inside the cylinder at one point. However, the cylinders seem to be newer, there's no damage to the piston and the seat on the intake seems to be in good shape too.

I've seen where people weld filler into a casting like this then machine it again. Is this a common practice with these heads as well?

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You can weld them. That's common practice on any aluminum head.
you can also run it as is unless the damage impacts head sealing or valve operation.

Does anybody have any experience with these pistons? Over here a set of pistons and cylinders will run about 500€. So even with the $100 shipping these are a bargin.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/170725154819?item=...003&vxp=mtr

I'm going to take the heads case and crank to a shop in Holland that did good work on my A-series sprite engine. I'll have them line bore the crank and cam journals.

I don't know if he's familiar with these heads though. Can anyone recommend some interference fit for the valve seats? I know that's a critical point on these heads. If I'm not too mistaken, the rest is just proper tolerances.

Also any opinions on the head gaskets? I've been reading that the best thing to do is lap the cylinders to the heads, and go without gaskets.

Also looking for cam references. I know of the one from Raby, any others out there for stock fuel injection?

I got this set from him and it's ready to go on my rebuilt engine. Check the link in my signature.
The quality of what I got was very good. I know that there were some complains in the past for AA cylinders but mine were just fine and very well packed for shipping.

Here is a link to the chassis diamensions.

http://www.914world.com/specs/914info.php

Thanks for the recommend on the AA pistons and cylinders. I was looking at your rebuild log, looks good so far! When do you think you'll fire it up? I'd like to hear about your final results and might just copy your build plan. Are you going to run the stock FI system?

Thanks for the dimensions link. That was actually how I found this site, and then was instantly not afraid to cut the car in half if it came down to it. Finding that stuff for the Austin was impossible. The chassis dimensions for that car are very limited. Only the basic frame positions. The rest is all just fit one piece, then the next and hope you don't end up with a stack up problem at the back of the car ;-)

As I would expect from the germans, everything is very well documented for this car.

I'm traveling quite a bit at the moment, so I don't have a lot of time to do much of anything. But I'm hoping I can start getting this thing stripped pretty soon!

Don't worry, I haven't given up, I've just been traveling A LOT for work lately, and with parts coming in for my Healey, which I had a minor accident with a little while back, I've got to get that fixed before I can really dive into the Porsche. How ever, I'm not without an update, and look forward to hearing the opinions of the world.

Engine:

So as I have plenty of time to do research lately, I have learned that there are two schools of thought on engine parts. Use the old stuff because it's better than the new stuff out there. And that the new stuff is okay, even if it comes from China. Well, I'm a fan of known good parts. So if I can, I'll stick with the stock stuff.

I tore the whole engine down and went to work measuring. The car has a stock size set of Mahle pistons and cylinders. I'm also pretty sure that someone had recently done a rebuild on this engine, as most of the stuff is well within tolerance. Infact, all of the cylinders measure 94.02mm and I don't know if I believe my inside micrometer to .02mm. However, the car did sit for 5 years with no consideration for the inside of the engine. So two of the cylinders have a very light surface rust on what was the low side of the cylinders. It's not really percievable with a finger nail, so I think it will hone out. Pistons are all looking good to. One has a very small mark where a valve touched it, and judging by the head that was mated up to it, I think this motor dropped a seat or something in the past. But it's a really small mark and when I heated up the piston to about 90C I didn't see any evidence of cracks or anything, so I think I'll run that one. So, if I do hone out the cylinders can I get a set of oversized rings for the pistons? Any recommends on this point.

The crank is still looking really good an measuring within tolerance too. There are some brown bands around the crank journals where the bearing wasn't contacting the journal, but again only a visual indication. I think I'm going to take it down to the first undersize just to clean it up, and start fresh.

The cam followers (tappets, lifters) all look dished in the middle, but uniformly. Are they supposed to be this way or flat? I'm thinking flat. Probably need a new set of those. Which brings me to the camshaft. I still need to measure this, but it looks.....okay. It's original, also haven't measured the backlash between the crank and cam gears yet. But before I get into that, I understand hydraulic lifters can be fitted to this motor, and that requires a smaller cam grind. As this is an original part, and I need lifters anyway, I'm thinking regrind the cam down to the hydro lifter specs. Can a new gear be fitted to these? Mine has rivets.

The case measures out as good on all points, glad about that. And I haven't yet torn into the heads. I'll probably take the heads some where and have the damage fixed and the rest redone. Anyone in the Kleve, Germany area that can recommend a good shop. I want to make sure the seats are installed correctly.

Body and rust:

Well, I had thought this was a pretty solid car, but turns out I was wrong. Just like the Healey, the PO was a real wannabe! The passenger side long has a huge rust hole in on the inner, and the outer is well a patch work of patch panels. The drivers side looks like someone actually did a repair some time ago, but the alignment of the panels isn't too great. A couple small issues with the floor, but I think I can fab up some small patches here, and don't need to rip the whole thing out.

This particular 914 is probably 15 kg heavier dues to all of the body filler! I think they skimmed the whole car! In some places they tried to build new car out of plastic. I think the garage will get pretty dusty when I go to strip this car. Seems to be three layers of paint on this thing too. It's like counting the rings on a tree.

So It looks like I'll be doing some of this then a little followed by a lot of and probably plenty of all so I can I just hope it doesn't turn out to be

Some pics for your viewing pleasure!

So I can't seem to get a photo up here. So have a look over on Flickr and I'll try to get them up here later.

These guys can help with that:
http://www.restoration-design.com/

Okay, now that I have my little Sprite sorted out and back on the road I can get started on this 914 again. I started stripping the car over the weekend. The PO had taken care of the heavy stuff already, engine and trans out.

As I've been stripping I've been finding more rust, than I had bargained for. Down by the pedals is an absolute mess!

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I'm going to get the dash out next and that should be the interior stripped. I just was reading posts about the 9 plastic bolts that hold that thing in, so I'm sure I'll get that sorted.

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I get the idea that this car is bent, and I'm trying to measure it to see if that's the case but I'm having a little trouble understanding exactly where to measure. This might sound strange but it seems to me that dimension "F" between the roll bar and flange has opened up a little. If it has opened up, then it's only a little, but knowing exactly where to measure is the hard part. Figure 4 isn't very clear, can anyone post a photo
of these measurement points?

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The sand blaster is on it's way, should arrive before the end of the week. However, my wife is on the phone with her parents and they say they'll be here tomorrow, and stay through the weekend, so I'm afraid this will put a damper on things this weekend.

I just now found this thread and will be following your adventures since I've got a 72 with similar issues that I'm hoping to get to someday.

I'm also a former Sprite owner so seeing your photos brings back some good memories from about 1973. Unfortunately, I didn't have a clue about car mechanicals back then so it wasn't as great an experience as it could have been.

It looks like you got the 914 in the Netherlands. Just out of curiosity, where did it come from?

I live in Germany and bought the car in Holland. Two Dutch guys we're going to try to restore it, but we're failing miserably with the welding work. To their credit they figured out they we're in over their heads, and gave up before they cut the car up too much. They did acquire a 2,0L and a side shift transmission before they got going.

Looks like most of the car is all here. It does have a 916 nose, and I haven't decided if I like that or not. A chrome bumper is really expensive so I might have the nose painted up, and convert it later to a chrome bumper. Right now the back bumper is painted black, but all of the chrome trim has been painted matt black. It's an interesting look, but I'll look into stripping the paint and probably having them re-chromed.

This looks like quite a project!

Would it not be easier (and less expensive) to import a "rust free" car from the USA?

Importing anything to Germany is never a cheep option. Just getting my Austin Healey to pass the Tüv (German Inspection) so that it could be imported cost almost 2K€. Then I was allowed to import it.

Besides for me it's more about the journey rather than the destination. I can improve my skills with sheet metal fabrication, welding and that's something I love to do.

Even if I fail at the sheet metal part. I can get rid of the rest of the car and make a fair amount of my money back. I an rebuild the engine and trans and get my 3K€ back. But the seats, gages and the rest of the goodies on ebay and even get some more.

"I don't do this because it is easy, I do this because it is hard!"

I've built my little Austin Healey twice now, and it's come out great both times. The first time I had to replace the floors, the longs, and basically anything in the lower 6 inches of the car. Knowing that just makes the smile on my face bigger when I drive it ;-)

I think this will end up being floors and longs. The hell holes are solid, and the engine was leaking enough that it protected the rear suspension.

Right now I need some time, and better explanation of some of these body measurements.

Well, I've been working on the car and much more than I've been working on updating this build log I have been updating my Facebook Group very regularly, my family and friends are really interested in these projects, and don't have world memberships

So here's where we are!

I've got the car stripped down to the body shell. The rotisserie will be done today, maybe I can even get the car up on it.

Go for it. Good project and sounds like you know what it takes to get it done right.