so about a month ago I bought/traded for a 72 914. a little rough here and there but a nice dry car.
the goal is to turn it into an improved car for auto-x and short track use (streets of willow) while still keeping it street legal and semi-tame.
for now I decided to stay with solid rotors to keep the budget under control.
so the brakes will be BMW in the front and stock ones in the rear.
I'm going with Koni sport shocks all around with a used Weltmeister front sway bar. I picked up a set of new 21mm front torsion cars and I have some 165lbs/in for the rear. yeah I could go higher spring rates in both the front and rear but the roads around here aren't too smooth and my fillings are loose.
here is some pictures of the work so far.

this is the new suspension next to the old stuff we took out.

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here is a detail showing the zerk fittings we put in the front control arm mounts.

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here is the rear suspension arm after boxing and with zerk fittings added along with new bearings and 5 lug conversion. I'll trim the studs after we get the rear wheels mounted and spaced to fit the GT flares.

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here is the new rear suspension installed in the car. we left off the brakes as I will be taking the car to have the chassis stiffening kit installed. less work for the metal guy to remove the rear arms.


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while the suspension work progresses I'm working on another engine for the car. right now the car has a stock 1.7 with FI. I bought a 2.0 off eBay that was local and ended up being reasonable. I also picked up a set of Weber 40IDF's for it.
the 2.0 won't go in the car until I get a side shifter trans sorted out for the car.
right now I need to get a set of front hubs cleaned and longer studs installed.
Cheers,
Kent

Wow, Looking good.
Your off to a good start and

it will be a blast to

do you mean idf carburetors?

bump so the guys can see the old front suspension I am selling.

Looks like a good start to a nice project! You might want to add the sale items to the classified section. Admins are lurking.....

Nice
what's the plan for wheels/tires?

I have a set of magnesium minilites that are powder coated silver. 7's for the front and 7.5's for the rear.
I just ordered a set of F/G flares for the car. My son and I like the pop-rivet look.
The car is dark metallic green right now. Originally it was silver. We both like orange 914 race cars.

finally got the front rotors and hubs cleaned and bolted together.
staying with solid rotors for now.
i have BMW calipers for the fronts.

progress:

lots of work is now done and the car is running again.
installed a Porsche ignition tumbler set from a parts car I picked up.
BMW calipers, adjustable front Koni's, poly graphite bushings all around, 21mm front springs, 165 rears, boxed arms, powder coated suspension, new master and flex lines, Koni rears, front sway bar still needs to be installed.

interior is gutted.

right now we are running 6.5 aluminum Minilites in the front and 7 inch Magnesium Minilites in the rear.

projects next up: Lexan rear window, brake bias valve, relocate the battery to the rear trunk.

oh yeah I'm picking up a fresh race motor and a side shifter.

forgot a picture of the aluminum door panels I made.
I'll top them off with the rails from some early door panels after I get them powder coated crinkle black.

Which front struts, hubs, rotors, and calipers do you have?

--DD

i did something kind of sneaky.
i had some 69 912 struts left over from my son's 912 after we put SC stuff on it.
so I used them with some 912 hubs. then i bolted stock 914 rotors on the 912 hubs. that combo puts the rotor in the correct position for the calipers. you have to use the hubs for non-vented rotor for it to work out. the calipers are 320i BMW that I got off the web.
the a-arms are 912 so i used 911 21mm springs and 911 spring adjusters since i used an SC aluminum suspension bar.

i was going to use 912 rotors but they are a little larger in diameter (i was going to cut them down) and a little thicker (used ones are the same thickness as fresh 914) but i ran out of time to turn down the OD and went with the 914 rotors.


just tried to use parts i had laying around the place.

I wondered about that. Some early 911s had solid rotors as well.

Very cool, using what you had on hand.

--DD

time to do a heart-lung transplant.

here is the old and the new.

If you are tracking the car I'd suggest plugging/blocking the head vents, enlarging the case vent, and using a better breather (I never liked the CB one when I ran it in my drag bug).

My car "ran out of oil" when it was "full of oil". I pumped everything I had in to the heads and starved the bearings. Doesn't happen often, but it does happen...

-Aaron

Nice job on the trailing arms. You will love the bearings!

Think about throwing an oil cooler up front for track work. Really makes a big difference in temps and engine life.

Rivet flares are good.

the engine came with a nice cooler and remote filter but they were mounted to the engine. I'm going to move the filter to the bulkhead and put the cooler up front. I'm also going to run a deep sump and an Accusump to make sure the engine has OP all the time. I used to vintage race a 356 so I know about oil starvation.


been looking for a good exhaust system, didn't think finding a good one at a reasonable cost would be so hard.

I think your best bet bang for $ is http://www.kerryhunterenterprise.com/914-4.htm

been a while since i posted any work.
here is my oil cooler setup under construction.
i mounted it in the back with 2 fans, using a large cooler i had sitting around.
i also mounted a catch tank.
i have a gel battery that will be mounted in the trunk, it isn't shown as i was working on the oil filter mount that is under it.
you'll see what what is going on when i get everything mounted in place.
as you can see i found an exhaust system. 1 3/4 as my engine is 'large'.
the little bracket is for the brake bias valve.
i should have some finished photos this weekend or next on most of these projects.

Kent,

Give us a heads-up when you plan on going out to Streets of Willow. I'm 50 minutes away; it's my home track.

Andys

Phase one is almost complete:

fresh brakes with BMW calipers and SS flex lines as well as new master and Bias valve.

rebuilt suspension with new bushings and bearings, boxed arms, new ball joints, new Koni's, front sway installed, stiffer springs all around.

tranny is now a fresh side shifter.

engine is a fresh motor that i picked up from this site.

interior is mostly gutted. aluminum door panels and dash panels.

remote oil cooler and filter.

relocated battery and cutoff switch installed.

fuel system gets new lines and electric pump with a pressure regulator for carbs.

once the car is back up and running I will start Phase two.


Phase two:

GT flares

chassis stiffeners and a roll bar.

a few more lights in front.

well I was able to get the shock tower seams welded up.
now I can install the oil system and finish up the relocated battery work.

moving the battery to the rear trunk is the opposite direction of balancing the car
you want to strip all weight out of the trunk for ideal handling.

Thanks for the tip.
All cars are a compromise and certainly this one is. Moving the battery around isn't too hard. Using a gel battery drops a lot of weight. If it seems the car could use the battery moved forward I'll go there later.

you probably won't be able to tell the difference.
but its the little details that add up to a bigger pictrure

we micromanaged little details on our racer and were able to strip 400 or more pounds from it and still keep it all metal. So managing the little details can really pay off in the end.

I just took the car to the body shop to have steel GT flares added.

going to strip the body and repaint it also.

I need to buy F/G lids for it now.....


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time for an update.

been busy with other stuff but still making sloooow progress.

the first guy i tried to use for the flare install turned out to be a huge jerk-off. finally got them installed by an R-Gruppe friend, thanks Bob.

got the front wheels finished.
and mounted a few lights. the Cibie is just a place holder. i have a set of Marchal driving lights like the one on the right, i was just waiting for the second clear bulb to arrive.

waiting for some headlight adjuster parts to come and then fresh headlights will go on.

the plan is to restore all the little stuff on the car before i tear it down for paint. so she will be ugly for some time to come.

i did score a nice chrome front bumper that sat outside in a local junkyard for some 15 years that I know of before I checked it out and bought it. $75 bucks, couldn't pass it up, backside was totally solid. i'll run the chrome on the street and a F/G one on the track.

next up buy some bumper rubbers and get the race exhaust installed.

Added 245-50 15's in the rear on 9x15 ARE's.

Moving right along I have the exhaust installed (roughly).

Not sure how you're supporting the exhaust back aft, but you'll need to accomidate thermal expansion as the system will grow more than the tranny housing

OK you have my attention!!!!!!




When building our auto-x BMW 320-6 I had the nick name of - "have sawzall will travel".

Will be taking notes.

I LOVE the steel flairs!!!

By the way.

Thermal expansion?
Say what?
I used a muffler hanger.

The angle iron is from an old bed frame. The hanger was left over from a C10 project.

I need to see if I have a picture of the oil cooler box finished.

Here are more things I’ve done.

This one didn’t load.

Guess I missed two others

Here is a learning experience. I wanted to make aluminum struts.
So I bought some tubing from Home Depot.
The top piece is where I just crushed it in a vise. As you can see it cracked.
So I used a butane torch to heat it up on the second attempt shown in the middle. The bump is from a hole in the face I used to crush it.
The problem now is to make a smooth transition from the round tube to the flat end. So I took a piece of aluminum and put a radius on the edge. I used it as a jaw when I crushed the bottom piece.

I was at a swap meet and found that rear valance. Which the trained eye will notice is from a 914-6. It came off an old GT that was raced back in the day. The cool thing about it is they flared it in metal.

I need to spend some time fitting it to the car but this gives you an idea. It was not show car quality but it works for me. I had it powder coated in a semi flat black. BTW the Americans are late wheels I had made up. The inner is cast but the outer is spun. They are very lightweight and you can get them in various widths and offsets. The rears are 9’s with 5.75 or 6 inch backspace. I can’t remember but I they were 6..

Oh yeah I forgot to mention. They ran a sport muffler on the 914-6GT race car and cut two mouse holes in it for the tips. They did not do a great job on cutting the holes so instead of filling them I had a piece of aluminum louvered and covered them. What can I say I’m lazy.

One more thing I added to the build. I have a spare roof so I thought I would play with this one and try to add some ventilation.

how old those Dunlops ??,,,, I had a nos pair I put on the front...Are those rear wheels PS Engineering ?

The rears are American Racing.
They will build them with custom backspace and bolt pattern.

I’m going to bump this so it will be easy to find and update.

You could have just used the 912 calipers and 912 rotors...calipers are the same bore size as the BMW 320 and rotors are tad larger.