More progress from my body guy. He sends me about 20 pics every night at about 2:00am. The body of the message from these pics said he felt good about the drivers side now, and was going to work on the pass today. He'll have the whole thing in 2K primer by tomorrow and can start working on sanding/blocking everything again and again. "Looks like a lot in some pics, but after sanding it'll be nothing much thicker than a dime."

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That looks great! Almost time to guide coat and block it out!

Dude you're gonna hug it out with that guy when you get back. He's really diving in. Looks really good.

McMak thanks for the detailed shots. Doug that is looking super nice, how did you find your body guy? Looks like he's doing the work on the side.

Sounds good. I have a secret project to show you that I know you're gonna like.

No doubt!

He JUST called me as I was pulling in my drive in Palo Alto. He thought he needed to have it done by Thursday when I got home! I told him I wouldn't be able to take it until Monday or Tuesday. I've got to get the V8 I pulled out shipped first. It's taking up too much room in my garage! (...and, it'll be needed shortly.) He already has the whole car in primer, and will start blocking it out tomorrow afternoon and Thursday. Said he'd like to do 2-3 coats of primer to make sure it's tight before I get it back.



Funny enough...Craigslist!

He works as a pipe fitter or something like that, and does body work on the side. When I tell you all what he's charging me, you'll flip out. I want to make sure that's really the price before I get too excited.



Can't wait! I'm headed up there after my breakfast meeting in PA.

It's really coming together...

Here's his email from today. (He sends me about 20 pics every night.)



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Stopped by to check out McMark's setup over at Original Customs for an hour or so today. I didn't feel too trigger happy with the camera, but I really enjoyed looking at everything. I got to see some cool stuff...and we talked about my NEXT build a little bit.

Gotta get this one done first though!

I'll post pics of my car in the morning when I get a chance to check it out. Right now: It's "redeye" time.

Stopped by this morning on my way home from the airport to check in and see how it was going. Man...I'm a happy camper.

The driver's side will be blocked out after he's finished with the passenger side later today. He's going to shoot the whole car with 2K one more time before I get it back.

He's really doing great work. I can't imagine how I'd have done this good of a job on my own. All the welds on the inside of the flares were ground down and feel nice. Every little hole is patched and now smooth. It's exactly what I was looking for.

Here are a few pics I took with my phone. Hope to have it back in my garage Monday after someone comes to grab the engine I'm shipping. (I need the room...badly!)

love love love all that chrome look powder coated suspension parts

my compass, similar to your gauges.

I DID look at using real airplane gauges at one point, but bailed on it pretty quickly. Too much work!

It's really starting to come together on the body front.

He knocked out the lids and put a few more coats of 2K on the car yesterday with some additional blocking to knock it all down. I'm quite pleased. He's going to start on the doors today and I should be in good shape to bring it home on Monday so I can get the bottom, interior, and trunks sprayed with the base coat. I can start putting the wiring harness and interior in from there.

Just realized that I keep forgetting to take the clips for the rear sail trim off the car. I'll bet there is visible orange paint under them. lol...

I love it when a build goes FAST!. How did you find the new body guy? looks like he is working out of his garage? looks good, though! what color did you say you are going to? and you are trying to put it on the road for Hershey? insane! are you sure you want to drive it on all the salt riddled roads from ohio to hershey?

Working on the interior this weekend.

I printed all the plates I was going to have water-jetted out of 1/8" Aluminium. After I laminated them, I can mock everything up from here. Then I just need to make adjustments once and I should be in good shape.

Spent the night building the engine's wiring harness. I still have 3 sensors left to do, but I want to double-check the names and connections BEFORE I crimp them down. I started working on the dash plates like I mentioned in the previous post. There are a few changes I need to make to those before I have them water-jetted. Glad I played with paper first!

Stopped by to check on the progress today, and I'm loving what I found.

The body is primed, blocked, and ready to go! I was going to paint it at home, but he's doing such a great job, I have him some more work. He'll be replacing the rear trunk pan for me, and building the cutout for the Subaru stuff. I'll have the car back and painted by next Friday, just in time for my wife and kids to leave for the weekend.

I plan on cranking through the weekend and HOPEFULLY I can start the car at some point on Sunday.

We'll see...

Garrett also helped me swing by Slick Motorsports to work on the wiring harness. That's all done now too!

Burnout on Monday

Not a chance! I have a lot to do, and only 2 days "kid/wife" free to work without guilt. There is a lot to do, but I think I have everything. I'm spending this week getting everything mapped out and pre-assembled if I can. The hope is to get the brakes and suspension ready to bolt on so I can get it on the ground, and then put the engine/Trans in place so I can at least sit in it and make vroom-vroom sounds.

I couldn't sleep so I went to the garage to clean and get a few little things going.

Yanked the bearing pieces out of the rear arms and blasted the front signal buckets. I'm painting the insides white so they reflect the DRL lamps better. I'm going to add those in the morning and get that piece of the puzzle solved. One thing at a time.

I also noticed that the hub clamp nuts are different sizes. Gotta figure out the right one to order another of. (If I need to.)

Spent the day doing all the little things I won't have time to, or want to do later.

Yanked the bearings and blasted the front hubs, blasted and painted the targa latches, blasted and re-sprayed about 20 little nick-knacks and cleaned the windshield wiper assembly.

Also bought a parts vibrator today after seeing McMarks's last week. Holy shit is this thing useful.

Here's what an hour in the vibrating parts cleaner thingy can do to a tired greasy box of bolts.

What medium are you using in the vibrator? Liquid dish soap also? I have one just haven't used it yet.

The green glass pyramids, with some SuperClean and water.

I did a run with just water, and a dry run too. The mix I mentioned above worked the best. I ran it for about an hour each time.

And boy...if you thought stepping on a Lego in there feet was rough...this is WAY worse. You have no idea.

Engine bay mod is done. Used 1.5" tube across the shock towers, then boxed it in place. I'm going to use the flat panel to mount a plate for the ECU and the wiring block. (I REALLY hope I gave myself enough room for the turbo and starter to clear.

That's a cool way to box your trunk. The tube gives good strength and a nice round edge. Let's hope the motor fits

Thanks.

Yeah, I THINK I'll be OK. I used dbcooper's pic as a template for how far out I needed to go...then added a few inches. I'm going to use the flat panel for the ECU and Wiring. I left myself about 6' extra from every lead so I'd be OK in the "worst-case-scenerio" of ECU wiring. I should also have quite a bit more support between the rear towers.

The inside and bottom edges are also 1" square tubing between the points. The inside triangle was also braced and welded up.

I'm going over to measure tonight and will set up the board so I can just screw it on and add the wiring as needed. I'm going for a very clean install. Like I used to do with car stereo installs back in the 90s.

Stopped by the car last night to check the progress in the trunk.

He'd ground down all the welds in the "box" and removed the rear section of the pan. This is going to be covered by interior vinly later, so I just need it to be ground down "enough" so I can do my thing there later.

Since this is a 1975 car, and had the bumpers converted, the piece I bought needed modified to make way for the bumper bolts. Not a big deal, but put a kink in the progress. I'm going to take some stuff over later for painting, but wanted to post these so people could see.

Also finished the install of the Engman kit. The car was pushed out by an extra 1/8", and by the time the kit was complete, the measurements between the windshield and targa bar are perfect.

The inside of the box will get packed with seam sealer after epoxy and before primer and paint, so don't fret too much about that. This also shows a better look at the inside braces. He's also going to replace that section of metal where the distributor for the SB350 was.

Because I'm going to need to go pretty fast on my wiring harness once the car gets here, I figured I'd do some advanced work on what will be needed. Holy shit are the instructions bad. The only thing worse, was the PDF that the company sent me. I'm not even joking...this is an example of what they looked like.

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SO....I started hunting a little more. Lucky for me, someone else had the same issue and came up with a set of REAL instructions.

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In case anyone else is looking...here's a link to the good ones.

http://www.goindesign.com/w4r/EZ2Wire-Manual.pdf

I guess EZ2Wire buys them from the same place and spent a few hours putting together proper instructions. Boy, am I ever grateful!

Tonight is going to be a lot of pre-assembly. I have the brake calipers to get ready, so I'll be putting all the pistons together and trying to locate the banjo fittings so I can get the lines made up when I have them in the car. I ordered about $100 worth of $2 pieces/parts from Pelican today. That'll all be here on Friday.

The car lands in my garage on Saturday morning...ready or not! (Oh, I'll be ready...)

::: guess I forgot to add the pics :::

Thanks for the link, as I have the same harness. The drawings are just like the How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive

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Spent the evening working on more little things.

Replaced the bearings in the front hubs.

Re-built the pedal cluster...again.

Painted a bunch of random pieces.

Re-stenciled the "Porsche" on the calipers.

Dan is CRUSHING the body work. I'll be stopping by tomorrow to check it out, but he was prepping for paint when I stopped by earlier in the day. It's really starting to feel like everything is coming together.

Love that book!

Kept me from going crazy many times! Can't say the same about Suby wiring harnesses though. Took mine apart maaaaaaany times to get it right!

Car looks great!! You have learned from all the other Suby conversions to do it right the first time!

Cheers!
Z

Here are the pics I got last night from Dan. Yesterday he got the rear trunk-pan welded in, fabricated a piece for the dizzy, epoxy primed all the trunks and engine bay again, seam-sealed the areas that needed it, and ten put a coat of paint on the trunks/interior/engine bay/underside.

Today hell get a coat on the car and then start blocking and sanding for another coat and then do it again until the body is ready to come home on Sat.

He's working faster than I am!

Good progress.... keep his number... I need to get it from you at some point.

Just sent all my aluminium pieces off to be water-jetted this week. There's a local guy that's doing it for me. $160 for a 4X4 sheet of 1/8" 6061 Aluminium...and the jetting is included. :woot: I should have them on Monday!

It'll be a lot easier to build my console out and have all the switches in-line of I can do it this way. The ONLY thing I'm thinking about is a gated shifter. I may go back later for that one. I can have it cut out of plexi for $25 so I'm not wasting metal to do it.

I can't thank you enough for this post!

I took it all apart and forgot to take a pic first. Looking much better now!

I got a lot accomplished tonight.

Assembled one of the front struts tonight, just to see how it would all go together. I have some grinding to do! The powder on the area the caliper mounts is thick, so I don't have the right clearance. It sure looks good though!
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Then I got to work on the trailing arms. Ground down all the extra metal with a grinding flap-wheel thingy, then welded the tabs on. From there, it was pretty easy.
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Then I pressed the old bolts out of the spacers, so they're ready to be milled down (if needed) or just put over the other bolts I have now. (100mm)
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All the while, Dan is hard at work on the body. I'll head over in the morning and take a look. He had the insides/bottom painted yesterday. He was going to get a few coats on the body this evening so I should be able to see it coming together when I get there.

Ok...I'm pooped. Time for bed!

Just got a few pics from Dan. I'm real happy with the color. Very unique, and there certainly isn't another 914 out there in this color.

I'll take more when I go over later today.

Excited!!!

Almost like a Jag Dove grey... little lighter... like it

i do like it, i thought that was just a grey primer a first, is it a non-porsche color?

Looks pretty much just like you wanted it. You're gonna make it to the meet too aren't ya? That's crazy.

Chris: Unless it's snowing...or raining like hell, I'll be driving it there.

Todd: Yeah, that's exactly right. I wanted a deep grey that wasn't metallic at all.

Philip: It's not a Porsche color. There's a "Porsche Sport Grey" that I was going to go for, but it was a little too "brown" for me. I have this color matched up perfectly with a perforated vinyl and an Alcantara that should really make it look special.

I forgot to mention. Thanks to bdstone914 for getting me a set of hats in a hurry so I could get the rear arms together quickly. That made all the difference!

Upon further inspection, it looks like it's exactly Jaguar Dove Grey. JA004/JAG-25449 is SW 94905.

Looks great!

Love it! Thought it was going to be lime-green to match your parts...

Little darker than this

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That's the color I originally wanted, but bailed on it when I saw one in person. Looks amazing on a 911...would look like ass on a 914. (IMHO) There's a 'brown' hue to it that makes it look a little too old-fashioned for my taste.

Even though there is no such color, it looks like "gloss battleship grey".