And, so the story begins: In the beginning, I hated the looks of the 914. I had been a 911 guy for years, and was not very impressed when I first drove a new 73 914 belonging to a friend of mine. It was not a pretty car and it was pretty gutless in comparison to my 1966 911. So, I dismissed the 914 from mind and spent the next 40 years owning and driving all sorts of Porsche machinery. But, never a 914.

And, then one day, I met Brad Mayeur. Brad owns 914 LTD, a small independent shop located in East Peoria, Illinois. No big deal, until you begin talking to this quiet and humble man. Brad has forgotten more about Porsches than many of us will ever know. And, he is unique in that he has focused much of his life to the 914.

I would never have met Brad, had it not been for a visit to spend a weekend with my youngest son in the Fall of 2006 at Bradley University in Peoria. Of my three sons, Dave, in addition to being the youngest, is the only one who shares the love for machinery with his Dad. So, during that visit, we were looking for something to do, since Peoria is not the busiest of towns in the Midwest. I remembered reading a story about Brad Mayeur in a magazine, and remembered that he lived in Peoria. It did not take long to come up with Brad's phone number. I called and explained my situation and wondered if there was a way to meet him to talk Porsches. Brad said to come right over, which we did, with great enthusiasm.

We spent about an hour talking shop with Brad, learning very quickly that this guy was not only knowledgeable, but really truly loved the cars. Then Brad cast the hook.......he threw a set of keys to my son (belonging to Brad's personal 914) and said.....go ahead and take the car for a ride. That was in 2006, and the smile and memory of that first ride has never left my son. He wanted to immediately buy an "old 914" to fix up. I suggested that he first find a daily driver that had reliability. In the end, we found him a nice used Boxster S, which he still drives today. But, in his heart and mind, he still lusted for a 914.

Two years ago (7 years after meeting Brad) I ran across an ad for a guy in Salt Lake City, who advertised that he would fully restore a 914/4 steel flared GT for $15,000. On a fluke I called the guy and spent about an hour on the phone talking to him. Typical story. He was a hobbiest attempting to turn his hobby into a viable business. At that time, Gene Rice had about 15 cars at his disposal, and as we talked, I conveyed to him that I was looking for a "rust free 914" for him to restore. He said that he had one that was close to rust free. So, by the end of the call, I had enlisted him to build a car. His representation was that he could fully restore a 914 in 90 days for the price quoted. So, off he went. In the end, the car cost more than quoted and the 90 days turned out to be closer to 6 months; but, I am getting ahead of myself. In Gene's defense, I was an active participant in both the schedule stretch and the increased cost.

Unfortunately, the first photos I got were taken at the time the car was on a lift during the installation of the flares.



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In reality, the car was not rust free. But, most of the rust was minor surface rust. And, more importantly, the car did not have evidence of any collision repairs.

The builder, Gene Rice, had prior experience doing restoration work on Corvettes, but believed that the 914 was a niche segment that he could compete in once up to speed. Now, looking back on it, I can say with honesty that Gene is an able craftsman. His welding and assembly skills were fine. And, as I will detail as this story unfolds, Gene's main struggles were his lack of experience with 914's. Mine was "ok", but his next one will be better as Gene moves up the learning curve.

As you can now tell, my story telling is less technical than many of the threads on this forum. Though I intend to talk about the build, I believe that half the fun on one of these projects is the "journey" and the people you meet on that journey.

I would appreciate any comments, suggestions, and words of encouragement that would help me in telling my story.

I completely agree. Please tell us more and post more pictures!

This should be a good story.

John

Thanks for the comments and the requests for more pictures. I will attempt to provide them as the story unfolds.

As stated earlier, the fun to one of these projects is not only the creation of a car, but the journey in getting there. There was a PCA adage a couple of years ago that "its not only about the cars but about the people" is very true and exciting to me. One of my favorite sayings is:....."the fun is always in the hunt"! So, allow me to set the stage a little as the "hunt" got underway.

Inspiration for the project was my youngest son's desire to be able to drive a properly done 914. He and I saw it as a father/son opportunity to put together a project that both he and I would use for auto crossing. At the last PCA Parade he and I attended, we campaigned his Boxster. But, wanting to get back to a car in which you truly feel "connected", the 914 seemed to be the perfect platform. Particularly, if we could build a car with a little bit more horsepower.

We had talked to Brad Mayeur and had discussed such a car with Gene Rice, pictured below along with a shot of his garage.

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As you can see, Gene has just a few cars from which to choose. In addition to those shown, he had access to another dozen or so cars at that time.

The car chosen for our project was a 1976 914 with no options. The car's original color was Scarlet Red. As stated earlier, it was relatively rust free and had no evidence of any collision damage. It appears to have spent a number of years in the dry areas of Idaho, around Idaho Falls. I have not traced its history beyond Idaho, which is where Gene purchased the car. The car was originally fitted with a California legal 2.0, which meant less horsepower than an older 2.0. And, an exhaust system that was not as efficient as the earlier cars.

Which brings me to the next discussion I had with Gene. Having driven 914's with the 1.8 motor, I was slightly "underwhelmed" (being used to 911 power levels). So, we discussed the potential for Gene to do a /6 conversion on the car. Since he had no prior experience with conversions, Gene resisted since that type of project was uncharted territory for him. What he did offer was a big bore kit which would give me just shy of 2.1 liters and increased torque. The cost of the car included a rebuilt engine with the big bore kit and a refurbished transmission. So, we decided to move forward with the 2.1 and then to evaluate it for our needs.

Since we were to autocross the car, I wanted the suspension to be tweaked. By this time, I had been contacted by another long time teener, Rich Johnson, from Dallas. Rich had read several of my postings on Rennlist where I was discussing the pros and cons of doing a /6 conversion to my, soon to be delivered 914. Rich is another one of those folks that is a perfectionist! Those of you that do not know Rich, need to understand that he has hung around 914's forever, and managed to create a bit of a cottage industry developing and supplying various bits and pieces needed to do a /6 Porsche conversion to the 914. He has an incredible penchant for detail.

For my /6 conversion Rich supplied his design of a conversion engine mount, engine sheet metal, the proper oil tank and fittings, and other items. He also provided terrific council on suspension parts. I ended up having him prepare a big brake conversion which included the fitting of Boxster mono block front brakes fitted to a 911 front suspension which I was able to source off of Ebay. Rich sourced Koni Sport shocks for a 914. Since I have apparently reached my file size limit for this posting, I'll stop here and start another posting.

Picking up where I left off, below is a picture of Rich Johnson and me taken at our introduction meeting in Dallas last year. Rich is the good looking guy on the right.
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I need to apologize. My picture file sizes are large and I don't possess the skills needed to reduce their size so that I could do a posting with more than just 2 or 3 pictures.....which is what has been happening to me. Perhaps someone with more computer skills than I can offer some suggestions on ways to reduce file sizes?

Below are a few more pictures of areas of my car when we first saw it being worked on:
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Looks like two pictures maxed me out this time! Sorry about that.

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I am very interested in your story, and your writing is impeccable.

To help with your picture sizes, if you are using Windows, please go to the directory where you have stored your pictures. Right click on each one you intend to use in your posts, and click edit. This will open up Paint with your picture. You should see an option to resize. If you click that, you can specify a percentage of the current picture size. Go with 25% and you will vastly reduce the size of the files, and they will still be highly detailed for use here.

Thanks for sharing. You will find that this is a friendly bunch, and we LOVE pictures!

Thanks for your post. My photos are on my iMac, and are stored in iPhoto, rather than in Windows. So, though I understand you instructions on how to resize them in Windows, I'm still a bit lost on how to do that on my iMac.

So, on with the narrative. I looked at many after market suspension items such as various bushings made from plastics and/or steel. In discussing this with Rich, he advised against anything other than stock rubber bushings since a stock 914 suspension is rather stiff without modifications. Changing bushings out for materials like Delrin will add harshness to the ride with very little improvement in handling.....that was the council I got. So, I decided to go stock on all suspension isolation items such as bushings, ball joints, and trailing arm bushes. I did splurge on a set of Elephant Racing trailing arm bushes, but in rubber rather than in polymer. Now that I have driven my car for a couple of hundred miles, I think that the decision to stay stock was probably one of the best decisions I made on the car. The car tracks flawlessly, handles rough or uneven surfaces with no harshness. In short, the car feels very planted. The car actually rides less harsh than my 993!

My advice to anyone going down the restoration path I've just completed would be to resist the temptation of attempting to stiffen the ride to improve handling. IMHO, the tradeoff of improved handling for a harsher ride is just not worth the effort.

Another bag of worms involved correcting many things that had been done to the car over the years by folks who, apparently, had little idea of what they were doing. We found hardware that was either deleted or installed incorrectly. We found stripped nuts and bolts. We found mysterious wiring that was loose on both ends. Each item needed to be researched and then deleted from the build if it had not understandable purpose on the car!

I did attempt to stiffen up the trailing arms. After doing this, I began to second guess my decision to stiffen the arms. Stiffening the car oftentimes just transfers the loads to other suspension members. For instance, I was advised to not over stiffen the trailing arms, since the stiffer arms transfer the shock loading into the suspension consoles. So, I was asked if I thought that repairing or replacing a damaged suspension console would be easier or less costly than repairing a bent trailing arm? These philosophical points are still argued in different camps.

My philosophy in doing this car was to pay attention to function and looks rather than to originality of design. I guess that I believe in the "form follows function" philosophy that Porsche espouses. So, I elected to delete the wide Porsche reflector that was spread over the full width of the cars rear. The reflector, in my opinion, was not terribly functional and it added too much bling to the car. Likewise, since my car was a 76 model, it was equipped with the huge rubber bumpers that were fitted to those cars. I really liked the earlier chrome bumper cars, so decided to back date my car. And, since my 76 diid not have fog lights, I had Gene drill out the hole allowing installation of the lights. The wiring harness for the lights was actually already installed on the car, but not the mounting holes or the switch and relay needed to complete the install.
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Gene fits his "stock" package with 15"non-staggered Fuch replicas. Though I like the Fuch design, not so much the replicas. So, I sourced my own set of wheels moving up in diameter from the 15" Gene usually fits, to 16" wheels. I also wanted a staggered pattern to handle the bump in engine power I had planned for in the future.
After responding to a number of sellers who had wheels, I ended up with these:

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They are Fuchs 16" diameter in 7 and 8 inch widths with 911 offsets (as opposed to 944 offset wheels). I was able to fit 205/45/16 tires on the front and 225/45/16 tires on the rear. Though I have not yet autocrossed the car, they feel fairly predictable. And, the front wheels fit around the larger Boxster brake calipers I had fitted to the car.

Also, by this time, the rebuilt engine and tranny arrived at Gene's shop. It's interesting to note that in the Salt Lake area of Utah there are a covey of shops and individuals who are focused on producing, restoring, or modifying Porsche parts.

Great write up...I look forward to the rest of your restoration.
Is there any chance that you can share the contact info on the gentleman in Utah that is doing your bodywork?

I agree 100% with your premise re the suspension bushings for a street car.

I bought new Bilsteins for all 4 corners, new rubber bushings all the way around from Elephant Racing and stock 914 F&R sway bars with new 18mm torsion bars and 140 pound progressive rear springs. It is my hope the car rides very nice without being stiff.

I think that you will be fine with the torsion bars you are planning to use. I had wanted to upgrade from the stock bars to 19mm bars, but was unable to source any. In fact the smallest bar I could find was 23mm. Brad Mayeur thought they would work fine, and he was right. But, I think the biggest contribution on the suspension was to replace all the rubber parts with new rubber. The car is extremely compliant over all types of road surfaces, and feels really "planted". Stability control is excellent. Of course, I have not pushed the car to its limits yet. Our first AX is 4 or 5 weeks from now. But, I am looking forward to it! As it stands now, the car is perfect on the street.

Here's a picture of the refurbished tranny waiting for installation.
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Pretty.

Thanks for taking us along on your journey. The start of your story and the people you've worked with during your build is similar to what I'm considering myself so its very interesting to me.

Why such narrow wheels (6's ?) on a flared car?

Great write-up. Keep it (and the pics) coming!

Thanks George.

That is an excellent question. My answer is a little bit convoluted! Since I was putting a fairly powerful six in the car, I wanted to have plenty of rubber on the ground to transmit the power without wheel spin. So, larger rear tires dictated the flared car. And, that is what Gene was marketing at the time, though his cars were powered by an engine that was about 100+ hp. He went up in size on his wheels, but did not go staggered.

We tried to get 235 mm tires to fit the rear of my car, and felt that they were to close to the flares without rolling the fender lips (which I chose not to do). So, we test fitted 225's on the rear and they cleared the flares by about 1/2". So, that is what I went with. 225's on 8 inch rims.

For the front tires, though I wanted to go larger than stock, I was concerned about turn in effort if I went too wide on front tires. The car is fitted with 7 inch rims on the front. Low speed handling was a criteria. So, I fitted 205's to the front. Today I ran the car on an autocross track, and found that I could easily lock up the fronts. So, I need to investigate better tires or the possibility of going up on tire width. I could get 215's to easily fit in the front wheel wells. But, again, larger tires will increase the turn in effort, which is not what I want at this time.

The toughest decision for me on this project was color! Both exterior and interior. I spent hours researching it and thinking about it. Porsche purists would have insisted that I paint the car its original Scarlett Red. Except that I didn't like Scarlett Red! I have a 993 that is Arena Red, so wanted a different color. I struggled with this decision and narrowed it down to blue or green. But, really couldn't find a Porsche blue or green that knocked my socks off. Then one day, while at my local BMW dealer getting my car serviced I wandered into their showroom and there sat a new 2014 M3 with Estorill Blue on its exterior and Coral Red on its interior. I fell in love with the combo. It was bold and different. The blue is a metallic that changes color depending on lighting. I called Gene and told him about my decision before I had time to begin second guessing myself! And, that was that.

When my wife first saw the car on delivery, she liked the blue exterior but NOT the red interior. She told me that the car looked like a "clown's car"......hence the title for this thread: The Blue Clown Car.
Here are some photos of the car while under construction at Gene's shop.


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More pictures.
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Well, that was all the "eye candy" (for now) I had collected since almost all of the pictures were taken and supplied by Gene prior to delivery of the car.

Now, on with a more dismal part of my story on this car project.

When I originally contracted with Gene in October of 2013 to build the car, I created some expectations that I now realize were naive on my part. As mentioned earlier, I believed that the car could be built in 90 days as Gene had represented. And, that may be true for one of his "cookie cutter" cars. But, I complicated the car quite a bit. I wanted the suspension to be completely renewed and upgraded. I changed out the front brake calipers. I changed the suspension to a 5-bolt 911 arrangement. You get the idea. And, my nievity did not end there. My plans were to pick the car up in May of 2015 on the drive out to the PCA Parade in Monterey, California. Starting in October, Gene felt that he could easily meet my requirements for a May delivery. From that time onward, I complicated the design of the car, pushing Gene into some uncharted territory. And, at that time, Gene was experimenting with subcontracting some of the work out to others. He already had subbed out the engine and transmission work, but decided to sub out the painting of my car. Consequently, the car was not delivered back to Gene on schedule. And, when the car did come back to Gene, he was dissatisfied with some of the work. All of which added to delays.

And, with my drive out schedule fixed, I kept pushing Gene to hurry up his final work. In the end, that did not turn out well.

And, because of the distance between my home in Chicago and Gene's location in Salt Lake City, I was only able to schedule one trip out to take a look at his progress. I now realize that was a major mistake on my part. I should have allowed time in the schedule to have done a final inspection and acceptance trip before taking delivery of the car. That did not happen.

It's a long story, but family circumstances ended up having me cancel my trip to Monterey. So, when the car was "ready", I had Gene load it on a transport for delivery to me in Chicago.

Here are the photos of my car being offloaded at my home in Chicago.
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As I watched the car roll off the transport, I loved what I was seeing. But, then things started to materialize that took some fun out of my new car.

I immediately encountered starting issues with the engine. She would crank over easily but not start. It took me about a dozen tries before the engine finally fired off. And, when it did, the exhaust note was incredibly loud. The engine was equipped with an after market exhaust that created an annoying resonance. I asked Gene to replace it. Unfortunately, the exhaust flanges on the heat exchangers were of a different configuration than the early cars, for which Gene did have some stock mufflers. My car, being a 76 model had a triangular pattern on the flanges. To use an earlier muffler would have meant changing out the heat exchangers and all the ducting that was unique to them - work I did not want to do at the time.

Gene also had no idea what the starting problem issue was. He stated that the car had always started easily for him. Not a good thing for me to hear at the time.

Then I noticed that I could not actuate the pull handle to open the front trunk on the car. I pulled as hard as possible. Even looped a length of rope around the handle and then standing outside of the car, to gain mechanical advantage, attempted to pull the handle. It would not budge.

I concluded that Gene must have locked the handle. So, I tried the several keys that had been provided with the car. The only one that would fit the trunk latch handle was the ignition key. As soon as I put a little torque on the key while attempting to activate the lock......the key snapped off. And, I had no spare key. Called Gene, and he did not have a spare. So, you are beginning to see why my enthusiasm began to go into the toilet!

I was able to get a new key cut from the broken key remnant. Then, over the phone, Gene walked me through how to open the front trunk by removing the front bumper, which turned out to be an easy task.

When I finally got the front trunk open, it was not obvious to me why the latch mechanism did not work. With the lid open, I could fairly easily pull the latch handle under the dashboard. I disassembled the latch, lubed it, and then reinstalled and aligned the mechanism. No difference. So, I suspected that the issue might be the new rubber seals between the lid and the trunk I removed the rubber, and locked the trunk and again could not open it. I tried several other things that did not work and finally ended up replacing the pull cable and the plastic sheathe that houses it. On disassembly, the pull cable was rusted and had worn a hole through the sheathe creating enough friction to make it extremely difficult to actuate the cable. With the cable and sheathe replaced, that problem was fixed. On assembly I lubed the new cable with white grease.

As an aside, I've "learned" that many things on 914's at first glance appear to be difficult or impossible to do. Replacing the hood cable was a good example. I dreaded crawling under the dash to get the cable out of the car.....until someone on this forum pointed out how to get the old cable out by accessing two obscure small cap screws from the trunk area. Once I knew about those screws, it was an incredibly quick and painless task to pull the cable and its sheathe out of the car. Removal of the bumper was another example of an easy task. And, there are others that attest to the ingenuity of German design.

And, then I drove the car. The gear box was extremely difficult to shift. I had owned a 901 gearbox in my first 911, and knew how vague the shifter could be.....but, the one on my 914 was absolutely horrible. Gear changes were unpredictable.....at best.

And, for the short time I drove the car, there were many only "little" things, that each of and by themselves was not a big deal.......but, taken in totality, left me totally disheartened with the car. I blame myself for the outcome. I was not clear in my expectations to Gene Rice, and I pushed schedule. All of which created a large gap between my expectations and the delivered product. I would have saved myself all of this pain had I flown out and done an acceptance inspection on the car before taking delivery. Though I would have probably not caught some of the flaws, I would have not taken delivery until the car was in better shape. With the finished car in my possession and 1500 miles from the builder, I was in a dilemma that I had created. My bad!

Enter Brad Mayeur and his chief mechanic, Michael Hanson. When Gene had passed on doing the /6 conversion for me, I had contacted Brad (suggested to me by Rich Johnson) and initiated discussions with him about delivering the car to him for the six install. Brad's advice at the time had been to drive the car for a bit with the 2.1 liter motor in it. He felt that I might find that the smaller engine was adequate saving me the cost of doing a /6 conversion. I agreed at the time, but knew in my heart that I wanted to do the conversion project.

So, I called Brad and explained the issues I was having. I still wanted to do the conversion, but I wanted Brad to initially spend some time with the car resolving all the issues I had encountered and any others that I was certain would materialize. With Peoria 125 miles from my home while Salt Lake City is 1500 miles away, it was an easy decision for me to make. I trailered the car down to Brad and Michael in November, 2015.

Over the next two months, Brad and Michael spent over 40 hours going over the car making it right. I would get a call from Brad with emailed pictures detailing the issues and offering scenarios on how to fix the issue. My responses became fairly consistent: replace rather than fix. I wanted a no compromises car. Brad's experience with 914's is so extensive that he just "knows" all the idiosyncrasies of the design. He was fairly complimentary of much of Gene's work and chalked up most issues found to previous owner work, not corrected by Gene or to a lack of understanding of some of the 914 design items by Gene. In short, Gene's lack of experience with 914's was an issue that only time would cure. I did hook up Gene with Brad for several telephone calls, where Brad would describe his findings in order to help Gene move up his learning curve a little bit faster.

It took Brad very little time to diagnose that my starting issue was a bad ignition switch. He also found suspension issues where parts had been improperly installed or were missing.....probably the work of previous owners before Gene's ownership of the car. And, some of the new parts that had been installed were not correct. For instance, the new "turbo" tie rods that I had supplied to Gene for the build both had boots that had already failed by the time the car was delivered. Brad explained that the "turbo tie rods" I had purchased (off Ebay) were Chineese made and guaranteed to fail. He replaced them with the "correct" German part as a portion of his work. So the "experience" factor of which I speak has as an example the fact that the Chineese tie rods should have never gone on the car if Brad had seen them first. But, Gene, having little or no experience with poorly made Chineese parts did install them.....simply because I had supplied them.

When finally completed, Brad and Michael had identified and corrected over 20 issues with the car, suspension, accessories, and power train. They suggested that I take delivery on the car, and to drive it; but, by this time, I didn't see any merit in driving the car since by this time I had made a commitment to do the /6 conversion.

About a month after delivering the car to Brad I brought down the 3.2 liter engine I wanted installed. The engine was a used motor that I purchased from LA Dismantlers. It came out of a 1987 911 Carrera with about 75k miles on the car. Prior to delivery, I had had a 3rd party inspection done on the engine. They were not able to run the engine since it had been removed from the car. However, they were able to do a compression check as well as a visual inspection of the motor. They pulled the valve covers for a portion of the visual inspection. The engine had proper and even compression numbers. And, it appeared that an upper end refresh had been done. Now that the engine has run, I can say that the pre-purchase inspection was fairly accurate. The engine starts and runs flawlessly. I have experienced some oil leaks, but what 911 motor doesn't leak after 75k miles? More about the leaks later.

Rich Johnson supplied almost all of the conversion hardware, either fabricated by him, or from his suppliers. Brad has installed Rich's hardware on other cars, so there was no learning curve for him.

Since I was doing an engine conversion, Brad and I discussed how I was intending to use the car. He knew that I intended to use it as a street car with occasional use for auto crossing. He suggested that I beef up the tranny with a billet plate intermediate housing. And, he made the case for installing a frame strengthening system, which was a welded reinforcement for the car's longitudinals tied to the suspension consoles. So, we added both items to the list.

Brad also reinforced what Rich had advised.....which was to stay stock with rubber on all the bushings. On his inspection of the cars suspension, Brad found not only deteriorated bushings in some areas, but plastic bushings also installed in some places. On some of the rubber bushings, where the bushing was intact but collapsed on one side, he offered that we could just rotate the bushings 180 degrees to the non crushed side. That would have saved some cost, but was a compromise that I refused to accept. We changed out every bushing and either went back with OEM rubber, or some of Tangerine Racing rubber designs.

Then Brad installed the 3.2. We elected to leave it stock, which produces about 235 hp. I also elected to retain the stock injection system for reliability and drivability reasons (recommendations from both Brad and Rich).

The tranny is connected to the 3.2 using a Kennedy clutch system. My only concern with the arrangement is the fact that the shifting geometry was slightly affected when you mate the 901 tranny with the 3.2. Apparently, the pivot pin location for the clutch release arm is slightly displaced in the fore and aft plane relative to the position of the flywheel so that with the clutch correctly adjusted pedal position for complete disengagement is on the floor. Since my 993 encounters total clutch disengagement at about mid throw on the pedal, I have to adapt to the 914 configuration whenever I switch cars. This "fluke" is something that I will want to correct in the future. But, that is a project for another time!

Brad pulled all the instruments and I sent them off to Palo Alto Speedometer for refurbishing and modifications. The stock fuel gauge was replaced with a 911 oil temperature and pressure combo gauge. I provided a 911 turbo tachometer for modification to replace the boost gauge (housed with the tach) with a fuel quantity gauge and to relocate the red line on the tach for use with the /6. The speedometer was simply refurbished and calibrated to 150 mph.

Regarding gauges, I had initially gone to North Hollywood Speedometer, which was the firm that most folks had used; however, on my second call to them I learned that they had just been sold and that there were backorders on work in their shop. They quoted me 3 months to do my gauges! So, I turned to Palo Alto.

Be aware that refurbishing gauges is NOT cheap. The package containing 5 gauges priced out at a little over $1000 at both North Hollywood and Palo Alto. For that amount I got "new" gauges that were matched, with one additional gauge over the original 914 dash configuration.

A few photos of the car in Brad's shop in Peoria with the 3.2 installed.


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The end result:
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And, here is a short video of the first start of the new engine. This was on a very cold day in early February.
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I asked Brad to hold on to the car and to put some mileage on it since I "expected" other issues to develop related to all the work that had been performed. Over the next 6 weeks, Brad managed to put almost 200 miles on the car.

His report was that there had been some minor "tweaking" required, but the biggest issue he encountered were engine oil leaks. This kind of caught me by surprise since I had resealed the motor prior to taking it down to Brad for installation. Over the next couple of weeks, Brad and Michael were able to trace out most of the small leaks to leaking senders or items that had not been touched. However, there was still a "major" puddle maker left.

Murphy's Law dictated that the worst leak location be in the most difficult area to observe......the front of the engine that butts up against the front firewall of the car! And, Murphy is ALWAYS right! In fact, in discussing Murphy's Law with Brad, I asked him if he knew of McDoogle's Law, which he had not. McDoogles Law is simple and states that: "Murphy was an optimist!"

At any rate, dismissing Murphy and McDoogle, there appeared to be at least two leaks coming from the front pulley seal area. Since I had replaced the crank seals on both ends of the motor, the only seal in that area that I could think of was the #8 nose bearing. And, you guessed it.......Brad had to drop the engine to get a look at the leaker, and diagnosed it to be a leaking #8 bearing seal. Drat! Replacement of the #8 bearing seal, which is a large O-ring, can not be accomplished without splitting the case on a 911 engine. And, I didn't want to split the case on an engine that had only 75k miles on it.

So, I began to research #8 nose bearing "bandaides". Ran across the topic on the Pelican board, and ended up contacting Henry Schmidt who owns Supertech, a California located Porsche performance engine shop. Henry had developed a kit to plug off the leakers from the nose bearing on 911's. He uses an epoxy that he injects between a retaining ring and the engine case. The retaining ring is a slight press fit ring, so it has to be machined to be a custom fit on your engine. With the ring installed, and area rendered "super" clean, Henry injects an epoxy into the annulus between his ring and the engine case. The epoxy forms a dam that will plugs off this leak path. Hey qualified his kit as a "bandaid" since the right way to fix this leaker is to replace the O-ring on the #8 bearing (requiring case splitting). He has never installed one, but has many customers who have and has never heard that the kit failed.

In discussing this repair with Brad, he volunteered that he has done similar repairs in the past with a particular epoxy he uses. The repair is done in a similar fashion to Henry Schmidt's kit, but does not make use of a metal ring to press onto the nose bearing. Brad offered that he has had good success with his fix; so, I elected to go with Brad's approach, rather than to wait for a kit fabricated in California to get to us. It's been about a month and a little over 100 miles of driving, but the leak is, at this time, GONE!

The remaining leak on the motor is minor and appears to be coming from the rear of one of the chain boxes on the engine. This is a "typical" failure point on a 911 engine, and though it can be fixed without splitting the case, it still requires that you remove the cams and timing chains and related hardware in order to pull the chain box off the engine to replace the O-ring that seals the chain box to the cam carriers. So, I'll wait to see if that leaker gets worse. Right now, the leak simply manifests itself by "wetting" the area. No discernible drips or runs.

And, today, the car got christened at our PCA chapter's autocross school. With about 200 miles on the car since commissioning, I had not been able to safely push the car to find its limits. Today was really exciting.

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Nice. Congrats.

Great looking car, and with Brad's tweaking I'm sure it's a great runner as well.
Enjoy it in good health!

Very nice car and I love the blue

Any plans to bring it to this year's Parade in French Lick, IN?

Car looks very nice and sounds good too.

Welcome to the madness
Some blue painter's tape on the rear inside lip of your fender wells during racin will help protect that nice paint job. Folks with sticky slicks on during races tend to pull the rocks out of the road, then leave them on the track. Probably not an issue during your "school"

Have fun!

Thanks George. Brad is really the "go to guy" for projects like this one. The car has run flawlessly from the day I picked it up from Brad.

Thanks. You just don't know how much I agonized over the color choice. I wanted a color that made a statement. Now that I find that others like the color, even though it is not a Porsche color, I am feeling relieved!

Hi George. Yes, my son and I will be at French Licht and will have both the 914 and our 993. We'll both be auto crossing the car, and my son wants to put it in the concours, though I don't think the final product is concours quality.....but, it might be fun to give it a try.

We won't be down to the Parade until Monday. We have a conflict since my middle son is getting married in Jamaica on the Saturday the Parade starts. We'll be down there on Monday. Let me know if you'll be there, and we can get together.

Hi Chris. Thanks for the tip on protecting the fenders from rocks. And, blue tape will almost blend in with my color! We've autocross before, but in different cars. I wanted to take the car out to this "practice session" to learn the cars habits and my skills at being able to push it. It is so much more connected than my 993. When I AX the 993, I really have to work at it. When I ran the 914 this last weekend, it was more fun than work. I was able to reach the limits of the tires fairly easily and then I could control the car right on the edge. What a blast. Now, I just need to get better tires!

Make up a cool sounding name for the color just to mystify the Porsche CWs.

Nice car, glad it worked out for you.

I passed this car on a trailer the other day on I 55 outside Coal City--looks good, enjoy, quite envious of the results seen here.
I also have dealt with Brad on numerous occasions and happily recommend him as the "go to" guy.
Gary

I remember seeing your car in Gene's advertisements both here and on The Samba. Very interesting and cool to hear the whole story behind it!

One thing I noticed in his advertisements was that your driver and passenger seats are swapped. The angle on the back of the headrest should match the curve of the trunk. Did you ever get those switched back correctly?
http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?act...t&id=497716

Era,

Thanks for the comments. I'll have to look at the car tomorrow in daylight. I know that Brad Mayeur removed both seats to fix the seatbelt attachment points and did not mention to me that he had found them reversed. But, a good question. Another reason the seats had to come out was that neither one of the adjusters appeared to work. He removed the seats and lubed everything on the tracks and mechanism. They now move fore and aft with ease and can be tilted easily. None of that was possible when I first received the car.

While trailering the car back from Peoria, the wind was able to lift the windshield trim from the glass, and by the time that I noticed what was happening, I had lost one of the two upper sections of trim. The balance of the trim is slightly "sprung" though there is no visible bend in the pieces.

In attempting to get the remaining trim to snap down onto the clips that surround the windshield, none of the clips appears to latch onto the trim. So, what are my remedies short of removing the windshield to replace the clips? Can I safely bond the bright trim into place with something like RTV or weatherstrip adhesive?

Comments and suggestions for a DIY process to fix this item would be appreciated.

Hi Era,

You are the second one to comment on the apparently "reversed" seats. I confirmed that your observations are correct. The top of each head restraint appears to slope towards the center of the car, and not to the outside as apparently is the "correct" position.

In looking at my car and discussing the seat locations with Michael Hanson (from Brad Mayeur's shop), there are some interesting findings. The normal left side seat bottom bolster on 914's differs in width between the driver and passenger seats. On the driver's seat, the bolster is a little bit more narrow than on the other bolsters on both seats. The narrow bolster is required in order to provide clearance for the hand brake handle to the left of the driver's seat.

When I inspected my seats, I found that the seat bottoms are installed correctly; i.e. the bolster on the driver seat is more narrow than the other three bolsters in the car. So, the seats are installed correctly. However, it appears that the center sections of the two seats have been inadvertently reversed. In discussing how to fix it with Michael, it sounds like a winter project while the car is stored. So, the seat tops are not "technically" correct, but from a functional perspective, there is not an issue. This is another project that goes on the winter work schedule!