Purchased my first 914 a few weeks ago. I found some rust while looking it over but after taking off the soundproofing and really getting a better look, i found a good deal more rust than I expected. Looking for suggestions how to attack this. I have a mig and can weld a little. Was planning on building a rotisserie to do the work. If I had a better idea of how much rust I was looking at I probably would have passed on the car.
Would appreciate your suggestions as to how to plan and go about the work. How tough is it to do the entire rear floorpan on a unibody? The driver's long has a patch that is solid but I'm not sure what it is covering up. I can guess it's not too good. On the positive side I found over six dollars in change, mostly undre the e-brake. Thanks in advance.

another pic

another

driver's side firewall

driver's floor

left long

Larry, it does not look good. Mine needed a lot of rust repairs requiring a lot of work, but yours looks much more severe. If you're going to attempt this yourself, what I would do first is strip the car down to the tub and take it to be media blasted. Then start cutting out the rusted areas, or better would be to cut the spot welds and replace complete sections with new (or from a donor car). Smaller areas it's possible to cut out the rust and replace with 18 or 20 gauge cold-rolled steel. But with the amount of work required maybe it would be a lot easier and cheaper just to buy a roller in good condition. Whatever you decide to do, good luck.

if you make a rotisserie, make sure you make braces to hold the car in place, nothing worse than welding up the car and then the doors etc. dont fit.

Replacing the pans isn't too hard really, just drill out all the spot welds and remove the pieces. Some pieces you will have to reuse or make so save them. The pans are readily available from Restoration Designs.
The Long should be repaired at the same time but how are the trunks? If they are rusty then I would strip the car. If not then just replace the pans and repair the longs.

Geoff

Alas, one of the cardinal rules of buying old cars is rust is always worse than it first appears. This one looks pretty bad. In California, that would be considered a parts car, and would probably end up being sawzall'd (for panels to send to East Coasters with cars like yours...).

oh my.... gawd.... i'm gonna....



I need to turn off graphics... I can't handle rust anymore..



M

The trunks appear to be pretty solid. Just a little surface brown. I'm up in the air about what direction to go. Appreciate your thoughts.
Larry

my thoughts, too, for what it's worth.

i'd be putting that $6 towards a roller! i think you'd be better off money/time wise in the long-run (no pun intended).

How is the rest of the car? Is it a 2.0l? I see its a sideshifter atleast soo if the rest of the car is solid and has a good interior go for it.

Otherwise its just a parts car and like others have said ship out a solid roller.

Geoff

I'm going to agree with the left coast guys. Buy a nicer roller, tidy it up, swap the engine/trans and other useful and/or nice parts over the winter.

I can throw in some details about my own delima if you are interested a bout being bored with the details.

Rick

Kinda hard to find a roller on the east coast. Shipping car bodies aint cheap either.
I'd fix it. My car was worse than that.

My car has similar damage, I'm going the distance. I want to learn to weld though . . .

Here is the link to my progress thread:

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?act...=2&t=12639&st=0

May not look as bad as yours, but there is still a bunch of hidden rusty metal that has to be cut out. Start digging into it to really see how bad it is before making any finaly decisions, just about every piece that you and I need to replace is available.

-Chris