I'm not good with following rules so I'm out.

Olympic Blue build.

I am considering throwing my hat into the ring for this one.

But everyone won't have the same starting point, or amount / complexity of work that needs to be accomplished. Some of us have already gotten far along in the process. And others will farm out work such as engine building, body work and paint. And there are many routes that can be taken and job A is not always followed by Job B and job C may not even be necessary in all cases.
Will there be a set deadline for all participants or a self-imposed deadline or goal?

Anyways here is my story:
Purchased my 914 in 1979. I’m the second owner. Drove it for 10 years with only minor problems until the clutch went out 1989 and the engine had 137K on it. Then I was faced with low funds and engine that when removed will need rebuilding. So I put it in storage in a limestone mine in PA and left it there for 20+ years, never forgetting about it.
Fast forward to 2010 and I bring it home to a new 14 X20 SHED I had built just to work on the car.
Since that time I have had the extensive rust issues taken care of by Chris at Tangerine and also had the fenders flared for the 5 bolt Fuchs I will be running.
I have completed the engine rebuild myself going from 1.7 into a 2056 with heads by HAM and a Raby 9590 cam, I am keeping the D-jet FI.
I am now working on the body doing body work and paint. I AM NOT A BODY MAN. I really don’t even like body work but think I am capable.
This is the hardest part for me. I would rather build engines.
Along the way I am learning to weld, machine small parts and paint and acquiring many new tools.
My own self-imposed goal is to drive it to 2016 Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix. Not sure if it will happen but without a goal it definitely WON’T happen.
Now a few of the requisite pictures.

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20+ years of dust. Not a barn find cause it was never lost.

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Pulling the engine..
Don't let its good looks fool you. On the west coast this would have been parted out.


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137K and still some crosshatch in the cylinders.

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Engine Done. Real purty now...

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Sandblasting on dolly. I have some paint done, but enough pictures for now.

Steve, let me know if I am a candidate...

I actually don't name my cars. That might be weird, since my bother names his cars. I call my Six, "The Six". So, that can be the name????

I name them:
Big red
Little red
Suby red
Ugly red
Smelly red
Gas burner red
Redrum

All the others were called - not red

I don't really name mine either, when referring to the 914 I usually just called it the "little blue car"

and the motorcycles were

1948 Harley = the Rigid

1977 FXE = the Orange bike

2001 Flhtc touring = the Dresser.

I might be up for the challenge since I still have enough work to complete from this point forward to consume a year. The project stalled for many years due to my job and raising kids but I have been working on it a lot the last few months and I hope to continue.

This is my build so far: http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...19197&st=40

Jeff B

I agree. A full, bare-metal teardown resto would take longer than a year in all but the very rare case. But, to pull the engine, rebuild it, do some rust repair, paint, etc. and get it back on the road can be done in a year.

Love it.

Everyone will start from different points. That is ok. That can be taken into consideration in the end. Yes, there will be a deadline. Maybe September 1st? What year is your car?

Do engine conversions count? I'd be game.

I don't see why not. Are you doing rust repair or paint and body work?

As builder of a number of prior 914s I can tell you that any successful project requires cash, a solid plan, cash, detailed parts lists, cash, time, cash, skills, cash, motivation, cash, and cash.

You may want to prequalify any entrant with such ability. We've all seen where magic has been made in a home garage. That's special to me because I've been building dream 914s in my mind since I was 6 and appreciate those with the gifts and means.

My point is most builds you see and in fact all that I have seen have had one if not two of the build components on your list already done, probably already a year into the build.

If you want to find builds that are going to be completed in a year you need to be looking at projects that are right in the middle of their progress (Or are shop builds). This will actually give you a couple of months of fantastic coverage to give you lots of material to report on.


As mentioned previously your welcome to use anything in my progress thread (signature). This has a full paint and body start to finish and is in the process of the engine conversion and interior build. However its probably to complex of a build for your magazine.

I agree.

So how do we "prequalify" them? At some level it is incumbent upon the builder to make sure they are ready to do a serious build in a year. I am open to suggestions as to how to handle it, though.

How do you figure?

Early 73 build date 9/72.

I am now painting sections at a time mostly working on the areas no one will see. inner fenders, inside and under the trunks, interior, engine compartment etc.

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Steve,
Mine is a track rat and missing most of the interior. But I do have some more rust to take care of and potentially re-paint. It's getting a 3.3 SVX engine and I plan to document the progress. Again, not traditional, but if you need candidate, the timeline is perfect. It needs to be done by this time next year.

-George

I hear everybody that the projects can't be matched exactly in terms of amount of work. And a full bare-metal restoration takes 2 to 3 years, not 1 year. But, no one is winning a million dollars here. The idea is a friendly competition to make it interesting and motivate people get those cars back on the road (it is always nice to have others cheering you on when you hit a bump in the road). I think this can be really cool to follow.

If anyone has any suggestions how to "prequalify" the projects to roughly match them in terms of work, I'd love to hear them. I figured that requiring an engine pull and rust/paint work roughly did that. But, I admit those are crude measures of the true amount of work (But, isn't finding new issues to deal with during the build, part of the fun of doing a 914?).

Ideas?

The other idea is to go back to just 4 or 6 builds (rather than letting anybody participate), and hand-pick them based on the amount of work planned.

all great ideas, may I suggest overall cost be included in the final equation, not including participants labor.

I don't recall you ever asking me to link any of your threads there ...

Can we include my build? Will it matter that I have a 10 year head start if I didn't get much done in most of them?

Steve,
I may be interested in participating in the build off. Please let me know what I have to do to submit my car to be considered.

seems like a really tight deadline for an engine-out paint and rust repair +engine work build

especially if you have a job and kids and parents and dogs and a house and all of life's other responsibilities

don't get me wrong I like the idea a lot and would love to put my hat in the ring but I just don't see how it would happen in a year

i was gonna say maybe break it down into categories like:
engine builds/refurbs
interior resto mods
body work/rust repair/exterior
but even as I am typing I realize how unwieldy that could be

I will continue to work on mine this year and hopefully drive it too
my plans hope for this year is to get the underside clean, find/fix oil leak(s) & clean up the paint a bit - clay or color sand not a repaint
good luck to all the entrants I will follow along

cjl

Pick your candidates and pair them with one (or a few) of the pros on the board. The pros talk to the candidate, evaluate the car and the candidates skills/resources, then help come up with a realistic timeline and some milestones. So then you have a sort of team... The mentors can provide moral support, and maybe help keep the candidate on track.

I know it's a lot to ask of someone who's got a full time job plus their own projects, but it would help with the problem of hobbyists not knowing what each task is going to take until they get there. Maybe the magazine can provide advertising benefits to the mentors.

Then schedule a meetup at the final date. Each candidate has to drive the car that they worked on to the meet!

I've been meaning to do a build thread on my Nissan swap. Depends on how many years ago you want the story to start. Built in 01, parked in 05, almost had it cleaned up and running again for WRC15. Didn't get much done over the hellish summer.

I've done/doing a ton of custom stuff. 5-lug swap, Maxima engine, J30 gauges, hydraulic clutch, modern interior, HID lowpro headlights, and a possible upgrade to the VQ35 with a cable shifter. Undercowl A/C unit of course. Drive it a while, then on a rotisserie for a bit of rust repair and paint.

The only catch... I suck with deadlines. By suck I mean God laughs whenever I make plans.

Get the restoration design guys to participate and do a 914.

I have been thinking about this approach - mentor/team. But, it is a lot to ask of them. I also like the idea of finishing at an event - like Okteenerfest. But, there aren't many centrally located events. We are going to talk about it this weekend at Okteenerfest and try to figure it out.

I may be up for this challenge. I have an Irish Green '72 1.7 that has seen better days. It was running up till about a year ago. I have some collision damage on the passenger side door jam and quarter panel. The damage was buried under a ton of Bondo that I removed with a wire wheel. I have another nice quarter panel that I'll be using to replace the damaged portions of the quarter panel and jam. I also will be replacing the rear trunk pan that is rusted, some hell hole repairs, battery tray replacement and engine shelf and inner fender panel. I am also replacing the engine, transmission, suspension, brakes, and adding an oil cooler. I also have a completely new interior and dash from 914 Rubber that will be going into this car. The engine will be a 2258cc stroker. I have 90% of the parts needed for all of this. I had intended to get most of this done this summer but got bit on my foot by a Brown Recluse spider, had to get major surgery and after three months I am about a month away from being able to start working on my car again. It has been a long rehabilitation. I'll be removing all undercoating in search of rust. I know I have a section of passenger side floor pan to repair or possibly to replace. I'll be getting the car painted by a shop most likely but doing the rest myself. A year is quite ambitious to get it done but certainly possible and this would be a great motivation to stay at it!

Lets have an east coast / midwest / west coast build contest. Finished cars do a 50 state tour.

You tell me one person that has the time to do a year long FULL build AND a 50 state tour....

50 state tour? How about a rally from Alaska to Florida?

Santa Claus. Only works 1 day a year. Appears to have the skills to build toys.

I'd be interested in adding my car as an option. 70, flares, mitsubishi 4g63 transplant with a BoxS 6 speed, fat tires, custom stereo and interior... I'll slow down on it and work on it over the winter.

While it is a lot to ask, i am going to need a mentor or just the general help of this community. I found a few people in the denver area from a recent post so ideally one of them. Brakes and oil is the only automobile work that i have done thusfar. Unfortunately driving to okteener fest would be out of the question for me as i will not have the vacation time from work.

When are the entrants selected?

I have PM'd everyone who posted interest in participating, for some more information about what you have planned to complete over the next year. Here is who we have so far:

dudzy's914 - '75 2.0 liter
brettrarnold - '73 1.7 liter
injunmort - '72 barn find 1.7 liter (Adriatic blue)
Andyrew - '73 Audi-powered Outlaw 914
Stacks914 - Tube-frame, Corvette Suspension 914
mbseto - '71 1.7 liter
Olympic '73 1.7
jkb944t - 914 GT conversion
ThePaintedMan
trojanhorsepower
madmax914
Chris914n6 - Nissan conversion
lonewolfe - '72, 1.7, Irish Green
RJMII - '70, Mitsubishi 4g63

Ya, it is likely that many would not be able to make it to Okteenerfest since it is on the east coast. Bummer though. It would have been cool.

Our biggest debate right now is whether to choose entrants, or let anyone participate. So far 14 people have expressed interest in participating. I initially thought we would be lucky to get 4. I hate to exclude people. But, it would be difficult to cover 10 or 15 car projects. The thread would also become unwieldy for readers to follow very quickly.

If you just track status and benchmarks in the main thread, and include links back to the owner's build threads, it seems like you could manage many projects without much trouble. Put up a detailed post for the highlights, when someone does something esp. cool or instructive.

It occurs to me, getting relatively equal quality and quantity photos and descriptions from all builds might be tricky. Do you have guidelines in mind for content?

That might work. There are two things we are working through. First, comments related to 14 builds in the Challenge thread (even if each build has a separate thread) will add up fast and make it difficult to follow the Challenge without wading through a ton of extra stuff. Second, we have limited space in the magazine (even if we add pages for this content). With 14 builds, each one would only get about 1/4 of a page coverage in each issue. Not ideal. We are working on it though.

It would be great to have a way to narrow the field as time goes on (based on progress). So start with the 14 builds, and then narrow it to 8 by the end of the year, 4 by Hershey, and 2 by July. But, I am not sure how to do that. It is just an idea. All a bit complicated. I'd like to keep it simple.

Do it 'Survivor' style. Have the participants vote for the cars to stay in....or the cars to go.

Neat idea. We don't want a popularity contest though. Isn't that how that would end up? And we really want to make sure that this doesn't result in any hard feelings. It is just a friendly build challenge. Keep the ideas coming. I am really struggling to figure out how to narrow the field based on progress, knowing that we won't see the cars during the build. Only photos.

What about just a few experts as a panel of judges?

I don't think the popularity contest would be nearly as big an issue among the participants. In this context, you'd hope that they would want to keep the builders that have the most interesting, active builds going and cull the less ambitious. You might even encourage interaction among the builders to help and encourage each other.

Ok. Maybe you are right - this is a pretty good idea. I just don't want it to become a popularity contest, or for it to result in hard feelings for anyone. It's all fun, fun, fun.

So, the participants decide who stays and goes? No vote on 914world? Probably better than a panel of judges, because we don't have to bother people to be judges. And judges can feel in the middle if their friends are participants.

Anyone see any other problems with letting the participants vote who stays and goes, under this schedule?

Start with 14 builds (14 have expressed interest in participating, IIRC)
January 1st - reduce to 8 builds. Is 3 months enough time to reduce it b6 6 builds?
April 1st - reduce to 4 builds
Then maybe just leave it at 4 until the end.

OR, maybe it would be better to give them some more time:

Start with 14 builds (14 have expressed interest in participating, IIRC)
March 1st - reduce to 8 builds. Is 3 months enough time to reduce it b6 6 builds?
July 1st - reduce to 4 builds
Then maybe just leave it at 4 until the end.

Its not a bad idea, one of the big issues your going to see with 14 total builds is half of them will just totally stop, life gets in the way, interest dwindles, money grows tight... ect. This will give you the oportunity to cut those builds out.

I really like the idea of having the participants vote, but have no clue on the time frame.

JMHO but I like option #2

with the coming of winter, for us that have winter and the holidays for all of us. things will naturally slow down a bit.

each participant could have the number of votes for each period. 1 per vehicle. I guess they would just PM their votes to Steve.

We don't want this to turn into another 914 World badge debacle so whatever you decide should be fine....

This sounds awesome, is there anyone in the Reno area who is planning on participating, I would love to try and help out.

Reno914