This is what I have. Yours if you want it....including the ride. Click to view attachment

Back side

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Hi Marc,

Great offer, but my problem is on the passenger side, I should have caught that last night but was apparently too tired... or maybe still in shock over finding that little surprise . Your piece would have opened some options for repair if it was from the other side. I'm going to pick your brain on this one while your here. It's a bit of a head scratcher.

No problem. I'll try to find someone else who needs it. See you Wednesday.

I have a good passenger side. Yours for cost of shipping..

Thanks Ben, that's very generous. I think I need to get back in with the blaster and clean the area up nice before deciding how to tackle it. The issue is access. It is the little bulge in the outer wall of the headlight bucket/inner fender that is tucked up under the funnel for the headlight and is where the bumper bracket welds on from the outside. It's really hard to see or I would have found it and addressed it before putting the car on the rotisserie. The rust is clearly cosmetic at this point since that bracket is what a corner of the car has been hanging from for months and nothing has bent, torn, or cracked. It would be easy to bend up a patch from sheet but I don't know if I can get the welder in there to tack it in place from the inside. If I can, this will turn out to be minor, if I can't, going from the outside seems the only other option and that is a can of worms. That will require either pulling the car off the rotisserie, or rigging an alternative support that will let me pull the bumper bracket out. I'm looking at the bolt for the fog light mount as an option. Looks pretty beefy.

The fender piece could open 3 options:

1. A new trunk "ear" that would let me cut out the one I just repaired that might open some access from the inside.
2. Provide a replacement bumper bracket in case the old one can't be removed in reusable condition.
3. Provide a preformed donor patch.

Truth be told, I could probably clean this spot out, treat it with rust converter, protect it with paint, and forget about it. Somehow I don't see that happening... we'll see what I think after blasting.

Anyone have some welder nanobots they could loan me?

Let me know was gonna start to get rid of the metal for cost of shipping this week that I don't need any more..

Finally got that area blasted tonight. I won't be needing that part but thanks for the offer. I think I can patch this in place. Not worth shipping and tearing up a fender chunk for. It ain't gonna be fun though. I thought that little hump where the hood release attaches was a giant B, this might be worse.

Brent I like your tactic of tying the copper backing in place.
I’ll need to remember that in my future endeavors. Brilliant.
Glad you’ve found a game plan for the headlite bucket area.
I was having a hard time visualizing the spot but after rotating the
pic I understand now. Yeah that’s a tricky spot for sure.
I know you’ll remedy it!

Thanks Dion. I'll admit my copper "hillbilly helper" worked better than I thought.

I wouldn't say I have a game plan yet, just a better idea of worst case scenario. Hoping I can get a patch in there without tearing shit apart. Worst case, I rig up a temporary support to hold the car in the rotisserie, tear out the bumper bracket and patch the wall from the fender side, then replace with new/donor bracket. I hope I don't have to go there. Worst part is none of this will impact the structurally integrity of the chassis or the appearance, but I don't think I could go this far and leave the car like a tobacco chewer with a hole in his lip.

Special Delivery
Wednesday was a fun day. Marc (Kelty360) arrived early afternoon hauling some special cargo for my project. We quickly discovered we have a lot more interests in common than just our obsession with Porsche's red-headed step child. I have serious Westy envy and since Marc parked his camp on wheels at our house for the night, it allowed us to talk all afternoon and into the night.

Stowed away in the Westy were a pair of doors from Rich at 914Werke, and a complete set of tinted side glass. The doors need some work to fill holes from aftermarket side mirrors and screw holes from door mounted speakers (luckily they did not cut the structure), and a small repair on one of the seal channels. My original doors would take about 2 weeks to repair with uncertain results, these reduce that work to 2 days. But look at these beauties. They have me rethinking paint and maybe I'll just match these doors. That way, whenever anyone asks the question about what color I'm going to paint it, I could just reply, "All of them."

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The other goodies tucked away in Marc's Westy was a full set of tinted side glass, also from 914Werke. I didn't really need these, but my original clear glass has some deep scratches that would have needed replacing eventually and I've always wanted tinted glass. I need to clean these up but they mostly look great. I am concerned about a portion of the passenger window because there appears to be grinding slag embedded int he glass. On my quick inspection, I was able to pop some of it out with a thumbnail so hopefull the rest will do the same and I can polish it out. I've never polished glass before, anyone have suggestions?

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This is just another example of how great and supportive this 914 community is. Marc generously offered to haul any parts from Seattle I might need. I immediately thought of Chris's suggestion to see if someone passing through might be willing to haul doors. I posted a WTB and withint 15 minutes, Rich had stepped up with what I needed. If I'd listened to Rich, Marc would have been hauling a full windshield in that Westy too! But I didn't want to push my luck. And I could have really pushed it by having him haul a rear trunk lid from Rhodyguy who generously offered to send one along after catching wind that Marc was headed this way. It's just an amazing community and I thank all of you for supporting this crazy project.

More Channel
Then yesterday I slipped out to the garage for a couple hours. I set the cancer under the bumper bracket aside for now and wanted to tackle something that was an easy win to boost my psyche. I have one last bit of channel to repair at the upper left corner of the frunk, and there is a hole in the fender behind the antenna mount that needs patched.

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I started with the channel. It was a pretty small area with some deep pitting, a 10mm hole, and a small nipple of channel wall next to the hole that was eroded away. I decided to try just zapping everything back into shape with the MIG. That actually worked well. It isn't quite finished but close, and that's as far as I've gotten.

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Tackled this nasty spot today.

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First, cut out the rotten parts, but save what's left of the rocker cover bracket to fab a new one.

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Then replace the rusted weld flange inside the support.

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Fabricate a patch.

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Weld it in.

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Clean it up and give it a coat of weld-thru primer.

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Now fabricate a new rocker cover bracket to patch in. That piece was a PITA, but I finally got a good dry fit.

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I need to cut the holes for the fuel vapor lines before welding it in, but I was getting tired and was afraid I'd F it up. So, I quit for the day and will start fresh tomorrow.

And here's a lazuli bunting that was at the feeder the other day.

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Since this thread features critters in the wild, here’s Brent with his malamute eying the Westy delivery van. Those doors hardly took up any space! Had a great time checking out Brent’s massive projects and discussing all things under the sun.

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I’m currently posting laying in bed in my campsite at the foot of Devils Tower in Wyoming. Life is good. Click to view attachment

Top notch work Brent!
Thanks for posting the pics Marc, enjoy Devils Tower.

I spy with my little eye: a fuel tank filler location behind the sliding door. Synchro?

I can even answer that one. Yes! That Westy is a sweet ride.

I finished up yesterday's project this morning. Just to make sure everything is in the right place, I put in the plumbing and clamped up the rocker cover before tacking the bracket in. It was a PITA, but everything seems to work. A shout out to BPic for quickly posting a pic for me yesterday so I could fill in the blanks on my rusty bracket. I think I got it right.

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The rest was easy enough.

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Nice to have that chore out of the way. Now I can load up my spool of Easy Grind wire and patch some body panels.

I thought about buying a Synchro, but opted for a standard Westy because I already have two Toyota 4x4s. My friend, Randy, called me Friday - 'Eileen's new 2.1L is done and she's ready to come home. I'll be picking her up when I get back from AZ end of June

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Nice! I had a '74 bus that we really enjoyed and have great memories of, but I got tired blowing up engines. I always wanted a Westy. Marc has a Subie/6 in his. Maybe he'll say more when he's off the road.

Marc, if you need a place to park on the way home, you know where to find me.

Nice Westy Mark. Two or four wheel drive they’re like nothing else on the road. With all the windows, I call mine a rolling sun porch.

Now, enough Westy love. Get back to work on your 914, Brent. BTW I may take you up on that driveway space. Still haven’t figured out my next stop.

Stop by. Two moose were hanging out about 20 feet from the house an hour ago.

So here's the rest of the progress for the day... or should I say, some progress and some tail chasing. I spent a fair amount of time stripping more undercoat and seam sealer to clean things up to repair that rust hole near the antenna mount.

I cut out the cancer and treated the hole with phosphoric acid.

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and the patch was welded, ground, and blended. Not too bad.

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Then I went back to that channel in the corner near the antenna to grind down the final welds. I noticed a couple pinholes and blew out the bottom trying to fix them. Then I got pissed off and ripped out that section and cut a patch. I wasn't really happy with that repair anyway. The hole I zapped shut was really too big and the patch was brittle. I didn't take pics because it was just a repeat of the other side, only a much smaller piece. Here's the result with a temporary dusting of primer on it and that patch I did earlier.

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The next patch is going to be interesting. Stay tuned.

No progress to report but planning the next task and am would welcome advice so I hope I can explain it well enough. That next task is patching rust at the bottom rear of the front fender.

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The old door has a matching patch of rot, plus some brazing from the PO's body work.

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From the get-go of this project, that area had a narrow gap that I assumed (and still hope) is caused by the corrosion pushing the body lines together. The plan is to adjust the gaps as part of the rust repair so the first step was to fit the replacement door and see where things fit. After a lot of fiddling, I got the hinges adjusted for the best fit I could get. The front fender and door line up pretty well with all the surfaces matching along the same straight plane. The rear quarter and door look good at the top but I discovered a problem that the puffiness of the rot in the front of the door and fender was masking. The rear quarter meets the lower part of the door with about a 2 mm offset in the planes.

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Believe it or not, I'm not too worried about that and here's why.

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I bullocksed the repair on the bottom of that quarter and it has to be redone. The problem was that I cut and welded the patch along that bottom bend and didn't think about how welding would shrink the gap. The upshot is that the body line along the bottom is shit and has to be cut out and redone. This time, I have a couple of spare doors that happen to have the exact profile I need so I'm going to cannibalize skin off the old door to create a new patch. While I"m doing that, Ill be able to fix the f'd up alignment with the door.

The bigger question is about gaps at the front of the door. Here are pics with gap measurements in millimeters.

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As near as I can tell, it must be normal for the gap to widen (almost 1 mm) at the curve between the top of the door and side because I can't think of what problem would cause that. I'm tempted to weld a little material along the edge to even out that gap. I don't really have a plan for the gap at the bottom of the hinge post but hoping one emerges after I cut it open for the rust repair.

I did a bit of cutting this morning and more measuring to figure out this gap thing. This is the bottom of the A-pillar with the rotted fender skin removed. I confirmed that the gap remains a steady 4mm down to where the rust begins and then tapers to about 2mm at the very bottom. I'm feeling like somehow the corrosion swelled the metal or allowed it to move to close that gap, or maybe the gap was always narrow there. Either way, it should be easy to correct.

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I'm stilled a bit confused by the wide gap at the top of the door. I need to play with those hinge adjustments more to see if there that can help. I did think through possibilities of bent or shrunk frame members, but my chassis measurements are spot on and because the doors bolt to the A-pillar, that gap should remain constant even if the pillar moved. I also need to get both sides stripped to bare metal to make sure I'm aligning the actual panels and not body filler.

Heading home from Iowa in the morning with a nice 914 trunk lid strapped to the roof. I had a very generous offer from rhodyguy for another lid that needed some minor repair but opted for this one because I feel like I've patched enough holes and not confident in my skills to handle a trunk lid patch.

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Yes I believe it is fairly normal. I will be welding in the gaps on mine to make it cleaner.

Good to know. I made some adjustments that got the top area tighter and will have one more adjustment to try. I'll still need to do some welding but maybe not as much.

Spent time during the week working on the driver's door gaps some more. I ended up grinding out the holes for the hinge bolts a little larger to allow more range of adjustment for the doors.

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After that, I was able to better align the door with the fender and got most of the gap down to about 4.3mm. I'll still have to weld a bit to regap some, but I'm much closer to the end goal now.

I had other projects to work on today so didn't get to the car until about 4 pm this afternoon. I made a start on tackling this mess.



This required a lot of dental work to cut the rotted fender skin where it crimps around a flange on the A-pillar, and cutting out the rusted portion of that flange. After cutting everything out, it got a good treatment with the KleanStrip version of Ospho. Here it is ready to rebuild the inner structure that the skin crimps over.

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Amazing how long it took to make this pathetic looking scrap of metal to repair the structure.

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It didn't take long to weld the little scrap in and grind it down. This will all get buried under the skin and seam sealer, but I still took the time to restore the original profile and look.

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Tomorrow I'll see if I can pull off repairing the skin. Wish me luck!

Luck... ha and peshaw!

I'm sending you good vibrations for:
- clean and solid parent metal
- perfect welder settings
- not welding the wire to the tip (particularly when working in those hard to reach areas)
- patch pieces that turn out nicely on the first attempt
- no weld spatter sparks ending up in your ear

Now get back out there! And keep up the great work!

(and I promise, that rear window will get packed and shipped at some point!)

Good, Good, Good! Good Vibrations!

I don't know what kind of Mojo you were sending me Chris, but I'll take some more please What a rewarding day!

I started the day with a lot of trepidation because I knew I was in above my head with the task ahead. First up was fitting up the door again to see what adjustments were needed on that inner structure I did yesterday. As expected, there was some, but not bad, just a little bulge below the bottom body line.

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To fix it, I just cut across the bottom crease line.

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Then tapped the bulge up into the right line. Amazing how ony 1mm of extra material can throw things out of whack.

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Then trim off the access and glue it up with a little high temperature metal adhesive.

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A little grinding and final adjustment, and Bob's your uncle. It still looks a little out of line in this pic, but it isn't.

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Now for the fun stuff. First, I made a pattern for the skin patch using tracing paper. I started by tracing the existing gap lines, the bottom crease line, and outline of the cutout for the patch. Then I shifted the pattern over so the partial fender side gap line was lined up with the door gap side. That let me trace the front edge of the patch so it would follow the door contour.

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I retraced the lines with black marker. Solid for cut lines and dashed for bend lines. Here it is repositioned in correct alignment.

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I cut the patch piece out of the original door since it already has the right contour, including the bends at the bottom.

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Now for a couple hours making the patch.

I used the pattern to cut it out and left 12mm on the door side to bend over a 10mm flange that crimps over that inner structure flange repaired yesterday. There is a subtle curve on that edge so the flange had to be bent a little at a time, then hammered over onto itself, the pried open enough so it could slip tightly over the structure flange. Tedious work just to get the that point,

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Then repeatedly fitting it on, grinding a little off the back edge, refitting, more grinding, again and again to sneak up on the perfect fit. The crimp fit is so tight there is no need for clamps.

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A new scar that needs to heal.

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And here's the end result. Not too shabby!

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There is still a bit of house keeping to do behind the door, but I want to finish the rear quarter repairs before pulling the door off again. I have an idea for making those adjustments that will be easier than a full repatch. That's on the agenda for tomorrow.

Great work, I'm always impressed with the patience of a good repair piece. Is it just me or could you run your welder with less wire feed to reduce the height of the spotwelds and spend less time on grinding? You dont want balls of metal ontop of the weld, they should float out a bit more.

Yeah, I was having fits with the settings today. I dialed back the feed and it helped some but I'm a little worried I have a diode out again as the welder just seems weak. I'm going to mess with it tomorrow and see if I can sort it out. I have easy grind spooled up for this job so at least grinding didn't take long.

Brent - Excellent! You're right to be pleased with that repair! Super-duper awesomeness, for sure.

Congrats and more of the same. Can't wait to see the next steps.

And here come some more focused vibes re: welder settings:

Looking good. Ironically i didn't need to repair that area on mine but the flares must have helped..

@#$K!!!
Well, I just ran some test welds and I'm pretty sure the diodes on the welder are burned out again.

I tested butt welding some scraps of 20 gauge and the chart settings of Voltage = 1 and Wire Speed = 6 just sputter and put a little ball on top of the gap. The only acceptable (but not great) weld I could get was cranking both the voltage and wire speed full up. That should have blown holes through the metal like a canon.

I'm going to order a new set of diodes and capacitors but muddle through the repairs today with what I have.

I understand having to replace diodes on a 30 year old welder, but this last set is less than a year old although probably saw as much welding as the old set. But still, they shouldn't be burning out like this. Very frustrating!

I have never had a set burn out.. You have a 125 handler?

Look at that! I saw that nasty section a couple of weeks ago and thought you really had your hands full. Great solution and execution. The other side will be a piece of cake.

Sorry to hear of the welder diode issues but
that repair patch job looks fantastic.
Really nice Brent! Good homework on your part.
I’m getting quite jealous. :-)

Thanks Dion and Marc! I remember the look on your face Marc when you looked at that and said, "How are you going to handle that?" I hope the other side will be a piece of cake but the rust is more extensive than this one. The skin patch should be about the same, but the structure repair will be more complicated.

I made some more progress this morning. I wanted to address the alignment of the drivers quarter panel before flipping the car around in the shop to tackle the front fender repair on the other side. The problem being that the quarter stuck out almost 1/4" from the door alignment.

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My original idea was to cut a patch out of the old door to replace that corner and address the bottom body line F-up at the same time. I had two problems with that plan. One is that it would add another long butt weld across that panel that is Frankenstein enough as it is, and said butt weld would not be possible with the welder in its current crippled state. The second problem is with yesterday's patch fresh in my head, I knew how hard it would be to bend the weld flange with the curve needed to match the door gap, and would probably require building a hammer form.

I decided to try something different and pretended I was a plastic surgeon for the day. The new approach is to just slice the weld flanges of the quarter and lock post open to give the panel a "face lift" to pull it into alignment.

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While I had the Dremel out, I also trimmed the weld flange on the RD sail panel piece to match the original width.

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It worked pretty well, my main concern was that the tapered flange width would look goofy, but I don't really think it is noticeable. If it starts bugging me, I have a couple ideas for addressing it. This pic makes the repair look way more ugly than it is. It seems like unless you primer a repair, the camera makes it look a lot better or worse than it actually is. Anyway, the flange looks good and just needs some minor cosmetic cleanup even if you can't tell in this pic.

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And the new alignment looks good

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Up next is to use a similar approach to fix the bottom body line that I FUBARed when I patched the rust down there.

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Well that didn't work

After lunch, I slit open the bend at the bottom of the driver's quarter panel, adjusted the line, and started to weld it back up.

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But I had blocked out just how sketchy that part of the panel was to begin with but was quickly reminded as melted lead started dripping down. This is the panel that I had patched rust on the bottom (badly), and then fiddle farted with body solder to smoot and strengthen pitting on the inside from too much road salt. I quickly realized this was not going to be acceptable. So, i spent the rest of the afternoon with shrinking disc, hammer, and dolly to straighten the panel in prep for cutting and patching. The closer I got to that corner, the worse shape the panel was in. Cutting that out will be an improvement in many ways. Still a little more panel beating to do, but its really close. Here the outline of about where I'll cut.

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Great to watch and see the problem solving and welding. Looking good!
It's nice to see progress

Thanks, and right back at you. I love your GT project but those seats... well that's a WHOLE other level!

Overdue for an update. I've had a few distractions from the project. Two weeks ago I made a quick trip to Petaluma to visit friends. Turns out my friend lives only a couple miles from Tygaboy so I managed to pay Chris a visit and got to meet the infamous Martin. I really enjoyed visiting with Chris and seeing his amazing project. That hight tech jigsaw puzzle makes a lot of sense when you see it in person. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend the fabulous fab workshop at Chris' place the following day. Instead, I was out on Point Reyes with a bunch of other biologist nerds doing biologist nerd things. Here's my friend Tim showing off an aquatic garter snake.

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When I got home, I had a lot of other chores to attending to that kept me away from the car and enjoying the nice Montana weather.

This Poor Frankenpanel

Finally, I was able to get back to the Porsche around mid-day last Sunday. Some days you go to the shop and everything just seems to click. Last Sunday was not that day. I dug into repairing the lower portion of the left rear quarter. First I made a template tracing the rear door edge so I could match the contour for a perfect match with the patch.

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Cut the patch from the old door and clamped it in. Looks pretty good.

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Welded it in and that's when things started going sour. It looks pretty good here.

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But the bend at the lock post wasn't as crisp as the original and I had pretty good luck sharpening the RD panels up with a body hammer. So I tried that on the bottome and totally F@##d up the gap. I think I can fix it without cutting but it will require a long, thick piece of bar stock that I didn't have on hand so will have to wait. The other problem is that I started getting nasty blowout on the vertical section of butt seam.

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When I cut that opening, the metal looked nice and solid all around the edge, but after the blowout, I peaked around back to find lead spatter out around pitted metal. Just a reminder, this was the panel I farted around with body solder to fill, smooth, and strengthen some moderately pitted areas. The damn stuff sure works because when I inspected to size the patch, it looked like clean, smooth, shiny sheet metal back there. That is - until the welder hit it. That meant yet another patch had to go in to this poor quilt of a panel. I was really starting to envy those who can just RR the whole quarter with NOS.

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Yesterday I put the patch in and it fit pretty well except the edges were out of alignment by a couple millimeters in a couple spots.

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I could have easily clamped the patch in to match, but I could feel a couple of bulges in the quarter so I pulled out the good 'ol shrinking disc.

After a few passes with the disc, the patch aligned perfectly. There was still a bulge above the first patch that wouldn't shrink out, so I had to make a relief cut in the seam for the first patch.

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Then the shrinking disc was able to to do it's magic before the switch on my grinder suddenly quit. But today I was able to finish the patch work with a lot of tweaking and cussing. It's still a work in progress as that panel needs a lot of work to straighten it out. I'm pretty sure it will need a bit of bondo, but I'll get it as close to straight as I possibly can.

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Re-hinged

Finally today, I needed a break from tedious panel repair and decided to weld in the trunk hing pivots now that I have a trunk lid to align. First I had to find where I put the dang pivots. That took about 45 minutes. Then aligning the lid just so to get the pivots in the right place. I hit them with 3 plug welds on each side plus 5 tack welds on the edges just to be sure. This picture makes those welds look pretty crappy even though they look nice in life. I'll still grind them down a bit before painting though.

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My new old trunk lid needs just a little adjustment. There is a low spot along the left edge and just a more subtle one near the hinge on the right. I'm guessing this was caused by reefing the lid down on my roof rack with ratchet straps for the ride home from Iowa. It should be easy to gently persuade the lid back to the right curve and I'd rather have this than having it fly off the roof in transport.

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The lid actually goes up and down like it is supposed to. That's nice.

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Perseverance! Nice one Brent. You’ve certainly had some challenges.
Looking great. Those trunk hinges can be tedious.
It’s coming along nicely. Bang on!

What Dion said.

Brent, it was great meeting you and I hope to make it to your place at some point.
Good to see you back at it. Keep on keepin' on!

Thanks guys. It may be more stubbornness than perseverance but I appreciate the encouragement. Whatever challenges I have faced can be chaulked up to two things: I'm a CSOB on a budget so am trying to salvage bits that most people would just remove and replace; and I'm punching way above my weight class with respect to the skills this project demands. I knew that going in and it is what I enjoy about it.

I also forgot to mention that I started last Sunday by replacing the diodes (and both capacitors) on my welder for a second time. It is a total PITA job that set me in a foul mood before diving into that rear quarter bottom. No doubt that contributed to stupid mistakes.

Made a little progress today. First I flipped the car around in the shop which isn't easy, but gives me better access to the passenger side. Time to dive into this mess.

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Nasty rot at the bottom of the door and fender. Somebody has been in there before to braze in patches (there was one on the door too but it is gone now). Let's see what I can do with that door rot first.

Well that was easy! Thanks to Marc O. A couple bolts and even the gaps and alignment look good.

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You have got some serious courage Brent.

Metal Origami
Had some distractions be finished up the fender patch this evening. It was largely just a repeat of what I did on the other side so I'll try not to repeat, but the lower hinge post repair was more extensive so I'll give a little detail how I approached it.

That little piece is quite a complicated affair. there is a flat area that fills the space between the fender wall and inner hinge post with a flange that spot welds to the chassis inside the fender, then there is a little bead around the perimeter that makes a little step out to the outer flange where the fender skin crimps on. The step is shallow in depth at the top but tapers to deeper at the bottom, and the whole affair curves around at the bottom to follow the fender contour. That area is not visible with the doors on, even when they are open, so I wasn't concerned with getting an absolutely exact match. I just wanted to match the structural function but get as close to the original as possible. It took some time to figure out how to tackle this with my caveman set of tools. It started with making a cardboard template of the inner flat area.

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The template was transferred to a metal blank and then the bend line for the spot weld flange was marked and the piece was trimmed leaving plenty of extra metal for the step bead and crimp flange.

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Then the line for the step bead was marked. It looks goofy here but will make sense later.

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Next, I dusted off the old hammer form used for fabbing the inner long bottoms and banged out the step.

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Then into the brake to form the outer wall with step bead and flange.

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Finally, the bottom was rolled to form the piece. After bending the spot weld flange in the vice, it was ready for trimming.

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The tricky part was removing the original material but leaving enough of an outline to serve as a kind of wire frame for final fitting and trimming.

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Then I could clamp the patch in place and use the frame to mark trim lines.

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Final trim was done but grinding away the original door skin that remained on the wire frame with the patch clamped in place. That brought the edges of the new crimp flange exactly to the depth of the originals.

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too be continued...