What say the MetalSurgeon? It doesn't look rusted.

Just thinking out loud, what do you water cooled guys due for cabin heat since some of you live north of Mason-Dixon?
Show off your solutions !!

Not rusted. Looks like it was used as a teething toy by this guy.

Cabin heat: No clue. I'm not adding anything yet. Next winter!

I was flipping thru the Summit Racing catalog and found this, if its heat only solution it might be interesting.

Summit Racing Part Number:SUM-991102-1

Heater Type:Dual front vent
Heater Material:Nylon
Heater Finish:Black
Heater Depth (in):8.625 in.
Heater Height (in):6.500 in.
Heater Width (in):9.500 in.
Heater Flow (cfm):260
Heater Output (btus):28,000
Fan Speed:3-speed
Uses Engine Coolant for Heat:Yes

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They also have slight larger one. My car usually goes in at the end of October, and back out late March early April. I am putting in Seat heaters. But I am thinking about adding something like this, or a mustang heater core to the fresh air blower. I have auto-xed in the rain and snow, some times its nice to take a little fog off a window, and kep your hands warm.

Though for me it adds to the weight, weight is bad. But seeing is good, rain-x anti-fog, is also good, just like rain-x is good for cars with out windshield wipers.

Heres my rant, its hard to find weights of any products out there. Summit doesn't even list shipping weights, so if your picking between three items, all with in a few dollars of each other, I will pick the lightest one every time. Yet a racing catalog doesn't list weights.

This thread and a few others linked in this thread will give you an idea what has been done. Bob BIGKAT_83 of course gets my pick for best street solution.

Doug you started that thread.

That's a very cool heater. I am at Summit about once a week, so I'll grab one next time. Great call! (I'll weigh it for you too.)

I have seat heat, but defrost is a safety issue now that I think of it.

Cool, that would be great.

Since it will be the highest point in the system if it is under the cowl, I would add an air bleed to help purge the system.

I would repair that. Take a propane torch and heat up the sealant that is wadded up in that pocket and scrap it out clean. The you can start to bump it back into shape. Wish I had the time to come help Doug but I won't be in Cleveland again until April.

I was thinking of adding the fill/resivour up there. To make it easier.

I know you would Rick. I think I can get it on my own. Just going to take some time and patience. I don't have much of either.

a couple of well placed ceramic heaters is the route I am going. light, electric and no hoses to plumb.

I was thinking about that too. If I can find the right ones, I'll go that direction. I like the idea of instant heat, but also need them to fit in with my theme.

Edit: On second thought, there don't seem to be any that are appropriate for an in-dash installation. The reviews are all pretty terrible too.

I'm bringing in some "backup" to help me out.

I met a guy this morning that's a recent graduate from the Ohio Technical College's Classic Car Restoration program. ( http://www.ohiotech.edu/programs/restoration/ ) He's looking for work...I'm looking to get this project done at some point...seems like a great deal!

I gave him the info for here, so if you see a new guy named Bill show up, be nice.

Hey guys, I am the aforementioned Bill. Been reading for about 5 hrs trying to get up to speed on the 914's and its pretty sweet stuff your cranking out. Hot rodding at its finest.
Just wanted to say "hey" and I may have some questions
Later on if I cant find them myself but right now im full!

Hey Bill, welcome aboard. Doug can use some help since his weekend release program was cancelled.

MUCH better. Bill's doing a great job.

oh, no! you are contributing to the deliquency of a minor! actually, thats a great idea, a "win-win" he can help you with the and more , maybe you could be reponsible for converting him over to the 914world of rust
-let me know if he needs another project to learn on- wait, thats yours- once he learns more i'll send mine up there - make sure he knows how to fix the longs and jackpoints though, ok?
and keep up the documentation- more pictures!!

Wow! That's really hard to do. Nice work Bill!

BTW: I think Bill is in his early 40s. Just decided he wanted to work on cars, so he moved to Cleveland from St. Louis to go to OTC.

He should be at the house working when I get home. (I'm on an airplane right now.) I'll take some more pics.

Bill got a bit done today. The front where the metal was all chewed up looks to be formed nicely now. Not perfect, but it is miles better and should clean up very nicely.

Next up is the flares. The welds were tightened up and ground a bit. I can see this coming together nicely too.

He thinks I'll be done and painted in about 3-4 weeks. He'll be on it 8h a day, so I'd expect we may be able to get through it a bit quicker.

With Bill working on the body over the next few weeks, I can concentrate on all the other stuff that needs done. Part of that, is to get a lot of little things cleaned up.

So....Garrett and I went out and bought a blasting cabinet today. It was on sale from $299 to $209...and I had a 25% off, so for $150 I took it home.

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I'd rebuild this cluster, but thought it would be a good idea to break it all down, glass-bead it, and get it out to powder coat after Kent is done with the hydraulic clutch build.

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On another note...

Switched to different interior materials. Originally, it was going to be Black vinyl with black Alcantara. Now I'm thinking Gray/Gray. I think the Gray looks better with the brushed Aluminum. Thoughts?

take a look at SocalAndy and plymouth37 build threads!

Blast cabinet is one of my next purchases. Harbor Freight?

+ 1 on the Gray.


Hey Chris, I found that my HF blast cab fits my HF lift table perfectly. Nice to pick a good working height + the mobility the table offers.

Yup! I got the "big one" this time. http://www.harborfreight.com/40-lb-capacit...inet-68893.html

There are a LOT of things in the HF catalog that can be considered "disposable" but the stuff with NO moving parts is normally a safe bet. This was a steal for $150. One thing I want to do is "Plastidip" all of the interior corners. Just to seal everything up so media isn't leaking out here and there. Wouldn't be hard and would help.

Here's a good coupon for you all. I always do a Google Images search in the checkout line for a coupon. They'll honor just about anything. This one is good until April 12th.

Nice, thanks for the info guys. Good idea on the plasti dip. I did hear you have to seal it up good if you're using soda. Saw a few complaints about it not sealing well with that but...it's SODA. Pretty small particles. It's gonna be messy.

Actually, the glass beads are small...and SLIPPERY!!!! Like 1,000,000 tiny ball bearings on the ground. They shimmer too.

Those things as slippery as greased Owl shit. Be careful walking.

While Bill makes progress out in the garage, I'm working nights on the interior pieces.

Stripped the seats to bare glass tonight. Hoping I can get them cleaned up enough to paint soon before the padding gets added back on.

After stripping everything, I found a SHIT TON of mold. Yuck!

Quick trip out to the garage for a meeting with "Mr. Soda Blaster" and I got the mold off. I need more soda, and will strip the rest of the glue and stuff off tomorrow.

Before:
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After:
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Now is a great time to add to the bolsters if you want a slightly grippier seat. A bit of fiberglass, some sewing and voila!

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Use the AllMetal as pinhole or small gap filler... it can span fairly large gaps but I would not use it as a primary source.

Great product... its all I use.

So, Bill bailed on me. That's a bummer, because he was a real nice guy and I was looking to do a lot more with him. Better I learn now than later I guess.

So...I'm looking for another shop that can crank through the car for me over the next few weeks. HUGE set-back, but I'll make it work. My goal is still April 15th. 50 days isn't' a lot of time from this stage, but I gotta push on and make it work.

The trailer I bought was a piece of shit. So, I put it in Craigslist and a few hours later it was on its way to be the next guy's problem. Cost me $80 to own a trailer for 3 weeks. O-well.

FINALLY found someone that can take the car out to the sandblaster. $80 and he'll be here at 9:00am.

So I spent the evening getting the tub ready for the 18mi trip.

They're going to etch prime it too, so I should get a nice fresh looking tub back.

Do I get an award for "Coldest 914" today?

I was concerned for 1min about the snow and then I realized it's going to be sand-blasted in a few hours and then etch primed.

Let it snow!

Don't All-Metal over gaps or pin holes. Although it is resin based it is not metal and will absorb moisture and bubble when it gets wet. Rust will form under it if moisture is allowed to get to it from the back side.

And she's off! Newbury Sandblasting is going to have it blasted inside/out, primed, cleaned and back to my house by Tuesday. They had a real cool Monte Carlo that they just finished yesterday. They spent a LOT of time going over everything with me to make sure it's as expected. I'm feeling good about this. Especially for $600.

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The body shop that I was going to use had a death or something, so now they can't take me until June. Grrrr! I need to find a new one close by so I can check-in from time to time.

Spent the evening working on the engine wiring harness. Since there is a lot of it that is no longer needed, I can re-make the entire thing to the exact right lengths. Ordered a pin puller kit from Amazon and it should be here tomorrow. So I dismantled the entire thing, and washed all the connections. I'll have a LOT of crimping and soldering tomorrow, but having a perfect harness will be worth it.

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Also worked on finishing up the seatbelt clips. I'm replacing the Orange with Green to match the rest of the theme. Stay tuned for the other cool part.
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Got one project completed today. Completely restored my seatbels...and changed "Press" to "Eject"

Spent the morning working on the ECU.

The Hydra EMS that I'll be using needed some extra wiring, so after getting the pin-map from the manufacturer, I started building out all the pins and organizing.

Figured the easiest way would be to build an Excel sheet to keep everything organized.
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The last part of the day was getting the transmission ready. I finally had all the parts to convert it to 2WD.

After opening it up, I was confused on how to get the 27mm nut off. A quick call to Ian and I was set straight.
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I needed to notch Ian's plate a little to get it aligned properly.

After that...it was all aces!Click to view attachment

ECU Success!

I had to run out and buy a Windows computer to run the Hydra software. Ultimately it was cheaper and easier to buy an IBM Thinkpad with Windows 7 than it would have been to buy a copy and get it set up. So now I have a dedicated ECU machine. (For $150, I'm not complaining!)

Hydra sent me a base map for the 2003 WRX, so I have a good starting point. The guy that had the ECU before me had a custom map. Maybe I'll load that up and see how it goes at some point.

So now I can see where all the different aux ports are and map them to things like "Launch Control" and other coolness. It'll be cool to have a dial like the Ferraris do for "Street / Race" modes.

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Doug, don't solder your joints, get high quality crimpers and crimps, crimp them, then adhesive heat shrink over the joint. They are less likely to break and also are repairable if need be, with out cutting out a section. The heat shrink also acts a strain relief. But you can do it how ever you want.

I come from the computer world where when I started we soldered everything. I now crimp everything using crimpers and adhesive heat shrink as my strain reliefs.

But thats just me. You still should use an adhesive heat shrink for strain relief.

I hear you loud and clear. I meant to type "de-soldering". Some of the Subaru connectors were soldered inside the connectors. I just ordered about 200 new female ends for all the different Delphi connectors. I'm also re-doing all the connections to the Hydra. In between, it'll be a using a termination block so I can move to other pins if I need to re-map something.

Carry on then good sir carry on.

BTW, you could have looked at my post, I showed how to convert to 2WD and well specifically that nut, it is a pain. Yet once you figure it out, its easy as pie.

I'd looked at a lot of posts, I just didn't remember any of them.

At that moment, I was in the garage...covered in grease...and had Ian's number.


Most of yesterday was spent cleaning...and cleaning...and cleaning. Things just got "out of hand" in the garage, and with the car out of there, it was now or never.

My Dad came over to help me build the Christmas present he and my Grandfather bought me. Took us 2 hours, but having drawers for ALL my tools is going to be awesome.

I spent the night tearing down all the connections for the engine harness. All new high-temp wiring has been ordered in about 20 different colors.

I expect I'll have the entire harness done by the weekend. I've got it all mapped out in an excel sheet, and printed shrink tubing for both ends of each wire. So the plan is to get everything terminated to the connector, and leave 10' at the end so I can take a lot of time to wire it through properly to the termination block.

Your pedal assembly is ready for shipping tomorrow. I'll pm you tomorrow. I made some rubber stop pads. Ugly but effective. Note the washer orientation, don't mix washers. The one on the accelerator shaft is unique in size. Do not omit any washers or interference is possible.

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Looks AWESOME!

A couple points of clarification:

1: Is the gap expected? I'd assume YES so there is play for the clevis.

2: Are these washers needed? I'd expect 1-2, and the rest you're showing are to simulate the thickness of the body.

Thanks for the awesome work. Can't wait to get it back and stripped before I send it off to powder.

#1- correctamundo.
#2- no, they are used just to set it up and simulate the floor area.
Your assumptions are correct.

This marks the first time in history this has happened!

Great work Kent. Thanks!


In other build news:

I sand-blasted and dropped off more pieces/parts to powder-coating. I'm having the PORSCHE and 914 lettering done in the neon green.

Nice, what colour is the car?