Changed out 1 Bilstein strut insert today ,old one felt very odd on damping and rebound and also leaking oil, fitted Boge/Saches gas touring as replacement hoping that will provide better ride,which is truly horrible at present.
Swapped out steering arm balljoint as the rubber boot was split,and then the rain came,packed up for the day...winter on its way .

Did ya track down the electrical fault yet? Nice ricer wheel :-) ,I do like the suede though. K&N's not cooperating Dean? Original airbox would be cool on mine, can't swing that price right now. Too dusty where you are, for the K&Ns?
Good karma to ya in the progress. Car looks good mate.
Cheers, Dion

No Dion I have had no luck sorting my charging issue,talked to mate that overhauled it and he said he will sort it,just need to remove it from car . I made the decision to go back to stock aircleaner due to the dust,running BMC reusable filter but have a paper Mahle one to go in, IMO paper filters are very good @ filtration, I have no way of telling how much dust is going through my engine with the K&N's and would rather not have to worry about it.
The upside of the swap is a much quieter car inside...yea yea I know the 6 sounds great but its really a bit much at times.
Hope to get my other strut changed out today and deal with some unfinished stuff while the car is jacked up in the front.

Yep was a good day yesterday after a test drive ,replacement struts work great,no more tramlining and bump steering happy camper.
However lost a good mate today and had to take a nearly 15yr old mate on a one way trip to a vet clinic,shit harder than I thought GF stayed with her cause they were close,darn never had the balls myself but that was the way it was.
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Happy to have her move on from her misery as she was full of cancer, apparently a common golden retriever thing.
Live moves on don't expect a replacement dog in near future.

Damn Dean!
Glad for ya about the 914.
Totally sucks for the loss of your furry pal.
They are indeed part of the family. But I agree with ya about
not letting them suffer. I dread the day when our dog has these issues.
Be well.

Dean, sorry to hear about the pup - always a rough one.

Always have enjoyed your posts and admire your perseverance and inventiveness in solving the variety of challenges these cars throw our way. That mixed in with your life experiences make for interesting reads - you have got the whole Kiwi thing going on!

One suggestion- in your next care package from the states, include a set of silicone valve cover gaskets. Don't overtighten the bolts and they will cure your leaks.

Chur bro

Thanks to Dion and gereed75 for the kind words,sad to say but she was very hard to look after latterly and to be honest very expensive,you don't think about that @ the time however.
What a personality, dumb as they come,a retriever that never bought anything back,was very good @ sleeping and eating ,above all a great companion.
My rocker covers....I wish it was that simple really,they are long sorted and dry now,I have 2 leaks one very minor and another a little worse,trust me I will get them sorted one bloody way or another .
Whilst the car was up on stands I made a decision to make up some support brackets for my alloy crossmember,I believe they serve two functions on the 911,one to attach the sway bar and the other to support the beam,they are on the stock 914 one so the must be needed....right.

Weather has turned to so only a little done ,carb gearbox bellcrank rod eye was very worn and thought best to replace as a hard thing to fix on the side of the road,purchased genuine replacement from pelican,not commonly listed but found it @ a fair price.
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On another note picked up a new mig as my old one died,nice unit and got a cracker of a deal from a mate that knew a guy that worked there ,self regulating wire feed through amp selector and can be programmed to favoured settings.Click to view attachment
I need to weld the front of car back in after PO chopped (really badly) a hole for an oil cooler,so this welder with be great.
I do quite a bit of light engineering in my spare time so looking forward to having a machine like this and to be honest happy with an outlay of $646nzd on a machine that has local warranty and parts support.

Dean - Condolences on the loss of your pup- we have all been there or will be there. It sucks. All we can do is give them the best life possible while they share their lives with us. Hopefully you will get another to love and care for when the time is right.

Thank you for the kind words Micheal,strange not having her around,my kids have found it hard cause it was really their dog but I was happy to stand in when they left the nest .
Well the dog had the life really ,coastal property,she walked for 30 seconds into the sea @ high tide and swum till low tide.
We had a long weekend recently and I had a mates Sidney silky for 3 days ,I have known this wee fellow for sometime..wow so much spirit and personality.
Won't be getting another dog for many reasons,besides have both my kids cats to look after and they are different.
So involved with other stuff @ the moment,getting into all sorts and little has been related to the 914,the weather is poo now and my little area of paradise gets in bad in the winter,darn it.
Did cosmetic restore on replacement tach and put LED strip in speedo as it was nice by the open fire .
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I use the much heavier duty 911 front pan on my alloy crossmember.

You might want to look for one if you can?

Sorry not sure what you are referring to ?

Bit going on so not as attentive on the 914 as I would like,got my mk3 golf ready to send my son as he is selling his mk4 gti,built this little beast about a year ago,manual conversion,rebuilt head,ported and Newspeed cam,exhaust decat and larger pipes ,really performs well for an 8V 2 litre motor.
I did a replica of the UK only 8V gti,dumped the electric windows and a heap of useless crap,mk4 Recaro interior also.
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Really overcooked it on what I put into it....kids eh that's what you do.
Building large flatbed trailer for customer so again that's taken time also,pleased with the result and nice to get back into some engineering .
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Replaced my rear tyres on the 914 with correct profile 50 series today so basically have smaller speedo error of I think 1.93% which I can live with.
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Went to Kumho Vetum sport as they match the fronts and offer great performance as previously used to good result on my now sold A4 1.8T Quattro avant.

Still messing with gauge backlighting and have done metric speedo and replacement tach is next,screwed up and recrimped the bezel on the speedo and hadn't put the light tube in for the low beam lighting .
Pleased with the result and better than LED's alone which are a big improvement but I found one gauge was better than the other and found that ennoying and I have poor night vision so for $7 per gauge for the strips it was not worth pissing around with.
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Needed to get off my ass and do final tune on the carbs,did float level check with PMO tool ,all in order but the specs given are for Webers so further research to the 911 manual for Zenith set-up,levels set @ the lower end of the scale,Webers are top end of scale ,PMO don't tell you that a good kit really but.... .
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My fuel pressure was too high so dropped that back,seems the Holley low pressure regulator has a mind of its own,back to 3 psi and steady after it was causing leakage in to the throats @ 3.6 + psi .
All float levels spot on in the four bowls good news,set idle speed and balanced throats as per the manual,had some spitback on idle but engine not fully warmed up .Then it all came together the hard part is equalizing vacuum using the idle speed screws otherwise the bleed screws have little effect.
Keen to check it on a cold start but think I'am close to spot on,dropped the idles from 55 to 52 so that will effect starting somewhat.
Test drive (been a while) with very good results ,engine much cleaner to full throttle and faster getting there to rev limiter ,now time to attack the mountain of other jobs .

Needed to get off my ass and not double post

great read and super progress... well done and I'm happy to see you are getting some seat time

also sorry read about your dog.. I had to put mine down a little over 2 years ago and man that was hard... told myself I could not do it again with a new dog... so I went and got 2 new rescue dogs because that's different than 1 dog

Cool dogs,bet they love the snow eh,would really like another dog but living on my own I would be tied down too much....that's the issue.

Hey Dean, glad ya like the silencer. So....when I finally get this car back together
you know fer sure I'll be bothering you for all the knowledge ya gained fiddling with these Zeniths. Heheheh. Glad your up and running!
Cheers mate, Dion

Cheers mate,surprisingly I haven't had to muck around with them too much unlike would many say,I did find if you carefully rebuild them and do as much set-up as possible before fitting them you are ahead,mine ran well without much effort on first startup.
I have found they aren't happy if the fuel pressure is too high,they seem to be less tolerant than webers.
Small steps ahead never the less .