I think mtn flyr would be the one to ask. I'm not plugged into any Porsche scene, if there is onel. A nickname for Bozeman is Bozeangeles, Montucky for its split personality between Hollywood and Deliverance. The Porsches do come out in summer but I rarely see a 914. I can tell you that there is not one 914 in any salvage yard in the state.

But the Beartooth Highway is one of the most spectacular drives in the country and a must do. It feeds right into Yellowstone NP where you can challenge the bison with your teener.

Fun Diversion

Here's just a quick little side trip. Thought it might be fund to show the owner's manual package for this car. The tech specs booklet is something I bought when I started this deal. Am I correct this is NLA? I dug into the maintenance record and receipts for the first time. Learned the car was originally purchased in PA in June, 73. Then in 76, the car moved from PA to Kansas City. The receipt trail begins with the woman I bought the car from. Earliest receipt is from the same KC dealership for an owner' manual and car cover. That seems like a new used car owner purchase to me. There is no hint of when the car got its slathering of bondo and nasty Maco-quality paint job. My guess is that the original owner beat the crap out of the car for 3 years, then did a cheap makeover before unloading it. Maintenance receipts then go all over the east half of the continent: KS, DC, Houston, Fort Worth, MI, DE, Denver...

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And a couple more docs in my files that have been gathering dust. One from a familiar member here, the other a letter from Bruce Anderson from Excellence Mag answering a bunch of dumb questions. If you can't read the date of that letter, it's Aug 15, 1988. Kids, before the Internet, this is the way people communicated long distance...

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Sometime in the fall of 1978, I ambled down the street of my folks house, up over the LIRR tracks onto the campus of SUNY Stony Brook University and went the Zappa show at the gym. No one I knew was interested in going so I went solo . As was typical with most shows there, ticket was a whopping 5 bucks.

Some pretty wild stuff. At 17, I only had an inkling of what I was gonna see. Sufice to say, it was an experience.

Weekend Update
Saturday I swapped out the rear swivel casters on my dolly jig and swapped out the pneumatic tires on all four corners for these HF wheels . The fixed casters were a big improvement but the flat free wheels were a bust. They are not solid rubber and create flat spots after a few minutes of sitting with weight on them which makes the car really hard to get rolling. So I switched back to the pneumatics and was able to roll the car out of the garage and across the gravel drive by myself on Sunday. I haven't given up on better wheels though. I want to try these solid wheels but they are not in stock at my local HF.

Most of Saturday was spent cleaning the tiny garage to reduce the trip hazard and continuing to strip the car. I sealed the deal on a bunch of sheet metal from donor cars. KevinW is sending me front and rear trunk floors, passenger side engine mount, and both sail panels for a very reasonable price that slashes my sheet metal bill substantially. Other progress on Saturday was scrubbing up the engine case that had become grungy and tarnished in storage as best I could, and applying Tectyl 846 to protect it. I don't know if this stuff was originally put on Type IV engines but from reading here and on Pelican, it is what Porsche used to protect 911 engines and trannys. I like amber look and will treat the carbs and tranny the same way. I will also be ordering new yellow zinc bolts and nuts for the spots that will be visible when the engine tin is on.

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Door Braces

Sunday was door braces day and I would really appreciate if the experienced pros can check my work here and offer some wisdom. I stood in from of the heim joint bins at the hardware store for a long time because that's how I wanted to build these braces. But I couldn't justify doubling the cost for braces that will probably be used only once. So I went the turnbuckle route.

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That door card and glass will come out before any more work is done.

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Do these braces look okay? Is that lower nut placed in a good spot? It seemed like that inner long provide a bit more meat for pushing and pulling and is in more of a straight line with the roll bar mount point than the speaker grill area. But I could be wrong.

And now, more questions. Before doing any cutting or putting any tension on the braces, the door gaps are flaring wide at the tops.

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The car was too close to the garage wall to get a shot of the passenger side, but it is only slightly better. 10mm at the top and 4mm at the bottom. This one is 13mm at the top in case you can't read it.

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I think the hinge side gaps look good. I'm guessing about 5mm all around is a good target?


I'm not surprised the gaps were off but thought the flex would be in the other direction. The car has been supported by its wheels for 13 years and is not supported by the A-arm mounts in front, and trailing arm mounts (where the alignment shims go) in the rear. So now for the questions:

1. Are my braces adequate or should I add more?
2. Should I add more support under the car?

I have not taken adequate frame measurements yet but will do so. Apparently Montana has outlawed the metric system and I'm having a hard time finding a metric tape measure or steel rule locally. One more hardware store to try. But I will find those and make up a couple of measuring rods for the critical dimensions. I have also not leveled the car yet. There was no point since I needed to roll the car out of the garage so I could do some maintenance on the wife's DD. But before tearing into the longs, I want to make sure I have my ducks in a row - adequate bracing in place and the car supported properly. It seems like adjustable door braces from hinge post to lock post would be handy but then I lose the ability to keep the doors on, which seems like a huge plus. So any advice here is appreciated.

Finally, I'm going to order a boroscope from Amazon today. I want to get inside that driver's long to see what is going on. I may wind up taking that off too.

I haven't posted any progress in awhile but, despite a quick trip down to the Grand Canyon, there has been some. While waiting for sheet metal to arrive, I've spent most of my time continue to strip the car, organize parts, and begin cleaning and refurbishing. All the interior pieces got a scrubbing with Garrot's Garage interior cleaner followed by a wipe with 303 Protectant. The dash and knee pads are in rough shape but it is amazing how much nicer they looks with just a good cleaning. I will try my hand at crack repair later. Once the parts were cleaned, I bagged them in bags purchased from a local dry cleaner and tossed in some desiccants to hopefully keep the parts in good condition in storage. Our family room was beginning to look like a parts warehouse.

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I spent some time refurbing the rusty and neglected instrument cluster that included repairing and resetting the odometer, repainting needles, and repainting bezels and mounting plate. The old mount rings are still in decent shape so I just cleaned them and gave them a wipe with 303 protectant. The worst job was refurbing the trip odometer cable which had been seized as long as I've owned the car. It took a lot of soaking with PB Blaster and heat, but I finally got everything apart, cleaned, and working again. Unfortunately I snapped one of the ears on the tiny little set screw that holds the knurled reset knob on so I'm trying to source a new one. When I was finished, my wife asked if I bought a new instrument cluster, which made me happy.

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Just like Sheldon Cooper's spot - zero, zero, zero, zero... and one extra zero.

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Next I turned my attention to the heater/ventilation control panel which was in really rough shape.

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But with sanding, paint, and refrabricating a missing piece, I think it's an improvement. I googed a couple spots that can be seen close up. I'll probably try to fix them but they aren't noticeable at the distance a driver or passenger will be sitting, so I'm probably the only one who will ever notice. I even restored the glow in the dark finish to the up/down arrows. The chrome bezel will get replated eventually.

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On Friday I picked up my first batch of sheet metal! A big thank you to KevinW who gave me a great price on these pieces which goes a long way toward keeping my restoration costs under control. He also was meticulous in cutting these pieces to my specifications and leaving me plenty to work with for final trimming.

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On Saturday I was occupied cleaning up our family room and garage so didn't make much progress. My plan on Sunday was to start working on the front trunk floor but snow from the day before and two burst inner tubes on my cheap HF pneumatic casters prevented me from rolling the car into the garage, and guaranteed it would be less than pleasant to work on the trunk outside.

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Instead, I pulled the sail panels I bought into the garage for prepping. Later in the afternoon, after the snow had melted, I started chopping on the car.

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I was happy to not find any nasty surprises inside the roll bars. Mostly just surface rust to be cleaned with some minor repair work to be done on the passenger side. That's where I ended the day.

I'm going to leave the sail panels off until I complete the long and hell hole repairs since the holes provide some extra access to the inner fenders and door jambs. I've also decided to replace outer longs on both sides instead of just the passenger side. I just want to open up the driver's side to make sure the job is done right. But I'm leaning away from replacing the rear section of the floor. Most of the metal is intact but the bottoms of several bead channels are rusted out. I'm going to try making a hammer form to create good patches. If it doesn't work, an RD floor kit will still be an option. Finally, Cary was right that the rear trunk lid is trash. Not only is the rust more extensive than I hoped, but it was caused by a thick layer of cracked bondo over a shitty damage repair. So the trunk lid will be donating its sheet metal to other parts of the car.

Nice progress. Great to see another resurrection.

welcome and wow... you nailed that gauge cluster, it looks new, well done and gl

Thanks! I forgot to mention that I also replaced the plastic lens on the tach with glass. The other two gauges were already glass so my car must have been built during the transition to plastic. A local glass shop cut it on the spot.

The Testor's fluorescent orange I used on the gauge needles is just a barely perceptible hair more orange than the original, unfaded color. I wish I would have picked up a bottled of fluorescent red to mix in just a few drops to get the match perfect. Nobody will ever know the difference but I'll always know there are a few drops of barely more red paint under those silver needle centers.

It is coming among well. Gauges look super. Did you put in a new plastic gear in trip meter as they all die after a long time?

Bob

No. But I haven't re-crimped the bezel on that particular gauge yet so it is not too late. Where is the best place to get one?

Pelican sells them. I had the one on my 86 Carrera go bad. 70,000 miles and it just breaks from the I guess the grease on the gear breaking down the plastic over the years. I sent mine out to fix but you can do this yourself. They can send you the small parts by mail.

Bob B

Thanks. I'm putting together a Pelican order anyway. Is the 17 tooth drive gear what I'm after?

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More Progress

Haven't updated in a couple weeks but have been busy on the project. Continued to work on some little stuff in the evenings like cleaning up the fresh air control box that had been painted (not just overspray) by the PO. Took several days of soaking in brake fluid to soften the paint to get it off without damaging the plastic. Once it was finally clean, I refurbed with a kit from 914rubber and added the screen from the same. I read that some people had to trim the screen to get the gasket to fit. The trick for me was to install the screen in the gasket with the flange angle point down. Then start installing the gasket onto the box at one of the narrow ends. Work along the long front and back until the box is seated in the gasket groove along all but the last short end. Then I used a 4" taping knife to wedge the last end of the gasket into place. Not too hard and fits perfectly. I hope installing this thing back into the car is as much fun as I have read.

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I also took a day to drive to Billings to pick up this Craigslist find. Not the screaming deal I missed out on earlier, but still a good supply of air for half the price it would have cost to buy new.

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Of course I had to interrupt my work on Saturday to get it up and running. I was able to dust off my old Sharpe air separator/regulator that has been in storage since I sold my old compressor to the new owner of our last house 13 years ago. The next time I am in town, I will pick up an oil fogger and parts to plumb this so I have a clean air line, and an oiled line. I plan to use different style quick connects to prevent accidentally hooking up clean hoses and tools to the oiled line.

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I also used my 25% off HF coupon to pick up a 40 lb. sandblaster on Memorial Day.

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FINALLY - REAL PROGRESS!

Up until now, I have been swimming in the kiddie pool. Time to get serious and do something manly.

After much planning, I trimmed up the donor front trunk piece. The cancer on my trunk had crept onto the lower wheel wells. My donor piece had enough material to make nice patches. On the driver's side, I cut the spot welds on the wheel well seam to separate the wheel well remnant for later use. The passenger side had less rust so I decided to just include the patch in the trim. This turned out to be a mistake. Unfortunately, the pass side ear under the headlight bucket of the donor piece was damaged beyond repair, so I had to slice it to require a butt weld.

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And here is the opening cut out, ready to receive the donor.

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You can see the driver's wheel well patch laying on the floor. I decided to do this in stages to allow aligning the new trunk with the original pinch weld seam before cutting it out.

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And here you can see the patch cuts for the pass side.

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About the biggest PIA was getting the front suspension assembly bolted into place prior to welding to make sure all the mounting points stayed properly aligned. The problem was that the chassis is bolted to the rolling dolly via these same mounting points. So I jacked the front of the car up on a beam of doubled 2x4s to get the necessary clearance (and forgot to take a picture).

Despite trying to be very careful, the butt weld gap under the firewall wound up just a little wider than I was shooting for, so I rigged up a copper backing jig to hold things straight and help with blow through using a 1 inch copper pipe attached with washers and self-tapping screws. The copper wires were just to let me hook the jig on from underneath, and then pull it tight from the front to screw into place.

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I didn't notice until seeing this picture that I forgot to strip the undercoating off the bottom before welding It didn't seem to affect the welds and I had a fire extinguisher within arms reach at least.

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And here it is about half way through tacking.

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And here it is in place. It will need some metal finishing. The butt weld on the ear turned out great, but the little wheel well patch will need more work. The top of the patch butted against some slightly pitted, but seemingly solid metal which blew out like a mofo when welded. I was able to gap the divide but am not happy with the result and worried it will be too brittle. So I'll be cutting that out and redoing to make sure I get into good, clean metal.

When I get the car on a rotisserie, I'll also weld in a reinforcement strip behind that firewall seam. I hate to do it, but that seems like it could be a flex point and I worry about the brittleness of the weld. I did try to minimize heat in doing those tacks, and let things cool down slowly between tack runs. But still... better safe than sorry I think.

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The pinch weld on the driver's side was clamped only, and not welded.

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So as soon as I had things in place, I gut another big hole out.

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And patched it up.

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That's where I stopped for the night. My welding was definitely rusty but by the time I got to this last patch, I had my 30 year old Hobart dialed in pretty good and was back in the groove. I should be able to finish tacking this in today and get it ground. It looks like the backside of seam will only require minimal sanding. That's nice.

I forgot to mention that the trunk bracing was removed carefully so it can be reinstalled after sandblasting and primer. Figured I'd take advantage of the extra access to that area as long as I can.

OT, but I was at my local cedar outlet today to pick up some siding for a garden shed. I had to get a pic of the road sign.

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Awesome! I wonder if that is a reference to the song at all?

--DD

Probably a happy coincidence with the name of an early homesteader. But in my mind, this marks the exact spot Frank started his empire.

But we have some colorful place names in these parts. Here is my personal favorite:

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And if you are brave enough, you can stay at the Bloody Dick Cabin.

I'm overdue for an update here. There has been more work than progress but things are moving forward. First, I finished up the front trunk for now. There is still some metal finish work to do (I just received my new shrinking disc today), and I won't weld the braces back in until I can blast the areas under the headlamps out and get some epoxy primer on. Might as well take advantage of access to that area while I have it. Overall, I'm pleased with the result.

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Then I lost almost a full weekend of work to finish up our little potting shed that is a hold over project from last fall.

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Then it was back to the Porsche. But I knew my shop situation was going to be a challenge when I started this. I needed to make some improvements. So I devised a plan I think will get me through this project, and leave me with a garage bay to park the car when it is done. I did a massive cleaning and reconfiguration of my woodshop space to make room for rolling the Porsche into that side of the garage. Then I used an HF coupon to purchase a 10' x 17' portable garage and assembled it just outside my woodshop garage bay. I left the end at the garage door open so I can roll the Porsche in and out of the garage or tent as the need arises. I'd like to add a second door on that end, but so far I've gotten no response from HF about buying just the door end. I will also have to reinforce this structure before the snows come, or else it will collapse for sure.

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The idea is that the tent will make a makeshift blasting and painting booth. To facilitate rolling the chassis, I had to bring in a yard of road mix to tamp in the driveway to level the transition between driveway and garage floor. Then I covered the gravel with cheap, 1/4" plywood to keep the dolly castors from digging into the fresh gravel. Thicker plywood would be better, but I'm cheap and this does the trick. I can easily pull the car in and push it out by myself. Finally, I covered the tent floor with thick tarp. The tarp catches blasting media for recovery and should help keep dust down when painting time comes. I tested the media recovering by blasting part of the rear trunk area with crushed glass. Then I rolled the chassis into the garage, lifted the edges of the tarp, and was able to shopvac up at least 80% of what I had blasted.

A bonus is that I can have the Porsche AND the wife's DD in the garage at the same time. That scored some bonus points.

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Of course part of the challenge is figuring out how to get the tubs of car parts off the garage floor. So on Saturday, I reclaimed some space from a high shelf in the garage and loaded it with tubs and boxes. I found another spot of unused wall high on another wall, and added another shelf. It was just enough to get everything off the floor. The garage/shop never looked so clean and spacious. Then Saturday evening, there was a rumble and crash and I got

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That is what it looks like when you just assume the shelf you installed 10 years ago had heavy duty hardware Overall, I got off lucky. The only damage was two OEM Hella taillight lenses. One was a Euro lens I planned to use. The other was a perfect condition US original that I planned to sell. The euro lens broke cleanly at the glue line between the amber and red sections so is salvageable. Anyone have suggestions on the best glue to use? The US lens is trash.

Despite the setback, I had been chipping away at cutting, cleaning, and prepping my donor pieces for the rear trunk during the odd hour here and there. By Saturday evening, I was ready to tack in the tail patch.

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So I did

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The patch is slightly lumpy along the spot weld line from having to weld up all the spot weld cutter holes. But it isn't too bad and I'm hoping my new shrinking disc with some hammer and dolly work will smooth it out. But first I need to finish welding in the patch.

So that's where things stand now. Next will be patching the rear trunk floor which should go pretty quick. Then the fun stuff with the outer longs.

This weeks update is a short one. I got the tail patch welded and ground...

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and welded in the rear trunk floor patch.

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Got to use my new shrinking disc on the tail to smooth out the lumps created from welding the spot weld cutter holes shut. It worked great. The surface is within about 1/32" of smooth. I think I could get it to perfection with a lot more time and effort, but 1/32" of filler seems a fair price to pay for gaining time for other work. I still have a small patch to fabricate on the lower right corner of the tail. Donor patch didn't quite cover that area.

The donor patch for the floor had some pitting at the rear edge under the seam sealer. It's still solid metal but caused a bit of bubbling on some of the plug welds. But it is attached solidly and the welds will be ground down and buried under seam sealer when all is done anyway. After applying epoxy primer, I'll smooth the pitted areas with a thin layer of FG reinforced filler. For now, I brushed on a coat of Jasco to convert any lingering rust left after blasting with crushed glass.

Unfortunately, I have to leave town for a week so won't be able to grind the butt weld to see the final project until I return. But it feels good to having the junk in the trunks almost taken care of. Getting closer to ordering some RD steel and diving into those longs.

Man, that's a lot of inches of seam welding you've done on your car. Looks really good!
I've been holding off on a similar repair I need to do to my rear panel and you're motivating me to get after it!
Keep up the great work (and the pics) and continued success on your build.

Thanks. I think we are inspiring each other because I've been following your build. When I have to fab pieces for my longs and floor, I hope they turn out half as good as yours.

A better picture would reveal that there are a few spots on that seam that look like a bird took a , but not too many. I really struggled over where to make that seam. I wanted to hide it under the center support channel but that looked like it would get involved with the transmission mounts and other stuff. In the end, I'm happy with where things sit. But I was nervous as hell about it. The nice thing about a monster butt joint like this is that there is a lot of real estate to move your tack welds around in and keep things cool. It still took a couple hours of "tack - tack - tack - wait...." though.

Overdue for an update again.

As usual, I like to divide time between rustoring the chassis and a more fiddly task I can do while relaxing on the couch, staring at the idiot box. This time, it was re-keying the door locks. I ran into a problem with the pass side door handle when the outer stud just spun free and detailed in another thread. Probably as a result of trying to get that handle off, I found a hairline crack where the hinge arch meets the mounting tab.



I knew that would bite me in the butt eventually so decided to attempt a solder repair with a propane torch to reinforce the crack to maybe by some time. I figured the handle was toast otherwise so nothing to lose. The repair actually went well and I think I had it... But then I decided to touch it up just a little better... I wound up blowing out a chunk of the hinge arch with the torch. It didn't blow all the way through, but enough to weaken the piece. Undeterred, I decided to experiment with the limits of cheap pot metal repair. So I melted on a big glob of silver solder and then ground and shaped it back to it original form.



Amazingly, that seemed to actually work! I reassembled the handle with spring and reefed on it a bit to see if it would hold. It did! And then I noticed that the hole on the repaired side was ever so slightly misaligned so the gap with the flapper tapered a tiny bit... like maybe 1/64". I stewed on it awhile and decided I couldn't live with that. So I decided to touch it up to make it perfect.

And here is the result:

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I cry Uncle! If anyone has a handle with a busted flapper but good base they would like to sell....

Anyway, rekeying the locks was a piece of cake. Dan (a.k.a. Tweet) set me up with new tumblers. He actually went way beyond what I expected to get this done with minimum cost. Dan also sold me a nice ignition lock to replace the VW part that I had on the car, and a new key blank that I will have cut to code. Now I have all of my locks working with the original key for this car (glove box lock not shown because it already fit the key so I didn't mess with it). The frunk handle was also refreshed with a new coat of paint.

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Going to hell.

Back on the car, it was time to dig into the hell hole. This is the make or break moment for the project. I had peeked inside with a fiber optic scope before, so there were no real surprises when I opened up the long. It's bad.

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And still bad after a bit of cleanup.

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After gaining insight and inspiration from many previous build threads, my plan is to rebuild the inner wheel well and lower section of inner long with fabbed parts and button up the outside with RD pieces. I believe I can do this without removing that outer suspension console.

I started with the top of the inner long in the wheel well by fabbing a patch made out of one of the sail panels I previously removed for replacement. Before this project, I didn't even know what a metal shrinker and stretcher was. This was my first attempt using one. I like these tools!

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I carefully gut away just the top layer to keep the inner double layer intact. After cutting around the perimeter with a dremel and cutoff wheel, the layers were easily separated with an air chisel. I drilled the inner wall for rosette welding to the new patch. This should provide a strong reinforcement to the patch. Many thanks to Cary for pointing out the U-Pol copper rich weld through primer! I had been using Eastwood's self-etching weld-thru and hate it. This copper stuff is fantastic.

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Then it was just a matter of clamping the patch in place and welding it up.

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While I was there, I decided to patch the rust on the firewall.

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I fabbed a couple patches from the other sail panel. So far, all the patches in this car have been made either from metal removed elsewhere on the car, or from unused portions of donor parts from other 914s. For some reason, I think that's kind of cool. The upper piece was my first complex bend on this project. I'm happy with how it turned out and this gave me confidence going forward. Here are the patches loose before cutting out the rust.

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And here they are, welded in with just a little more grinding to go. I had one spot that blew through over the bend at the lower right of the upper section. I lost the definition of that bend repairing the blowout and the location of the rear engine shelf made it impossible to get a dolly behind to bump the crease back in. So I tried my hand at using body solder. My hat is off to anyone who has the skill to use this stuff I don't! In the end, I did get the bend somewhat redefined but couldn't get the solder to feather out the way I'd like. You can see my botched solder job just above where the pinch seam runs diagonal.

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I'm still having trouble with that sunken edge around the welds preventing me from being able to grind the weld smooth without grinding away parent material. Do I need to increase my wire speed to get more fill in there? Structurally, it is sound, but it would be nice for all those welds to disappear without using filler.

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And here it is with a temporary coat of primer. Not perfect, but not bad. I think it will look perfect with a very thin skim of FG reinforced filler. The dark spot is wet paint - not a dent. That weld bead in the pinch seam looks worse in these pics. But I think I'll hit it with the grinder anyway.


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That's how it looks today. Next up is rebuilding the lower part of both layers of that inner wheel well.

I think you're running into the heat shrinkage causing the "dip" that prevents you getting at the entire weld bead. If you were gas welding or even TIG, you could hammer and dolly to stretch it back to flat.

With MIG, about all I found that works better is going REALLY slowly. Like: one tack, hit it with compressed air until it's cool, next tack, cool, repeat until you're ready to kill yourself... or accept the fact that it's going to be under the back pad and no one will ever see it.

That said, I have the same "but I'll know it's there" problem and I agonize over every bit where you can tell it's been repaired.

BTW, that complex patch piece you made looks fantastic! Nice fab work.
Chris

Brock,

You really are doing a great job on restoring you car. I have fear that a lot of people do bad jobs on welding their cars and that there are a lot of cars that the owners say they are restored but in fact they really are crap.

You should be very proud of bringing back you car that has great memories for you.

Bob B

Thanks for the tips Chris. I think you are exactly right about what happened on the welds here. My usual method is even more painful. I typically put in just a few tacks spread out around the patch and then walk away and let things cool down slowly thinking that a slow cool will be less brittle than if I rush it. I have no idea if there is any truth to that.

But because of all the bends in this panel, I wasn't quite as worried about warping so I got cocky and tried throwing down three or four tacks in a row and then let it cool. Looking back, where I did that is exactly the spot I showed. Your post helped me think it through. I have yet to grind the long seam in the rear trunk and that one was tacked very slowly. It will be interesting to see how it finishes.



Thanks Bob, you have no idea how good that is to hear. I know what you mean about crappy welding on restorations. The engine compartment side of the hell hole has a bunch of really bad welding that needs to be cut out and redone. But the thing is, that crappy welder was me 30+ years ago.

Well Bummer.

Since my rear trunk lid is not repairable, I decided to salvage the skin off of it thinking I could use it to fabricate patches for elsewhere on the car. I thought I had read that all the sheet metal on a 914 is 19 gauge but I must be mistaken. I cleaned up the nice sheet I got from my deck lid and threw a thickness gauge on it. 20 ga. dammit! I checked around the car to make sure my gauge was correct and discovered that all of the structural stuff is 19ga. but the body skins are 20. I think that's too thin for fabbing inner long patches so I guess I'm off to buy a sheet of 18ga tomorrow. And here I was feeling smug about the idea of creating all my patches from metal salvaged elsewhere on the car. Oh well, I can still use the lid for some door skin patches at least.

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Are you near Noxen, my brother lives there. He is into model A Fords

Are you near Noxon, my brother lives there. He is into model A Fords

Nice country up there. But no, I'm way down south in Bozeman.

Nice fab work, and great progress. This is a fun project to watch.

I really enjoy reading this thread but hadn't kept up to date. Today I chuckled while reading your experience with HF tires/swivel rollers. BTDT. Wish I could have waved you off that experience. If you load up one of those hard rubber tires the wheel will separate because there is no carry thru sleeve/bushing. Liked your space solution. Rolling her in and out is a perfect solution.

Someone did try to wave me off but I was already in it. Actually, now that I have some plywood down over the gravel under the tent, they are working pretty well. As long as the car stays fairly level without side loading, they seem to do their job. But I learned that lesson when the left front solid tire tore clean off as I tried to wheel the car around on the gravel. I swapped a pneumatic tire back in on that corner which, on the smoother surface, rolls just as well as the solid tires. So if I sheer any more rubber off, I'll just continue to swap back the pneumatics. Cheap is cheap, but they are getting the job done so far. Wheeling the car in and out is a simple one-man operation.

Brent

What an inspiration. Take your time and enjoy the process. And here i am complaining about my emergency brake cable

I've been too busy to keep up.
I'm with Chris, thems are some nice fabrication skills.
Beautiful pieces.
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Ditto on the tip Chris gave you. Slow and steady wins the race. I'm actually using an IR temp gun to check the metal before the next weld. On a stitch like that, 3 blips. Stop and let it cool. I know its hard to stop ................

Keep up the good work

Saturday Aug. 12, 2017

Spent the day cleaning up the mess from my previous inner suspension console repair over 30 years ago.

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Boy did I not know what I was doing. I didn't completely remove the flanges of the original console and welded the new one over the top with globs of filler. Then I slathered a pound of bondo around to pretend that the welding (it was my first welding project) didn't look like Terrible workmanship. But I can't be too hard on myself. Crappy or not, for less than $150 and two weekends, I was able to turn my $500 car purchase into an acceptable looking, and very driveable '73 2.0L that gave me many, many, pleasurable miles of driving. Given the crappy workmanship, I wasn't too surprised to find a nest of tinworms lurking under the console that looks like had migrated to the outer console.

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I already knew the engine mount was toast, so purchased a donor part from KevinW and he was generous enough to include both inner and outer suspension consoles with the part. I was hoping to not have to mess with the outer console but it is a mixed bag. I was already planning on getting an RD inner wheel house piece to patch that area and using the full patch makes some sense. So it doesn't affect the project budge which is always a plus. But it complicates the project because I'll have to figure out an alternative way to support the car while I do the repair and make sure the console goes back in the right spot. Anyway, I got the inner long mostly cleaned off.

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Then decided I had better stop because the amount of steel left for structure on that side of the car was starting to make me nervous. I added an additional support under the rear shock tower just for extra measure. That's a copy of Jeff Hail's suspension dimensions taped to the quarter panel.

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The Hell Hole

My pleasure cruise inside the engine compartment gave me plenty of time to ponder the origin of the name "Hell Hole." It seems obvious. This is the part that rots to either send 914s to their grave, or drain the wallets of poor suckers who try to save them. But a day in the pit got me thinking of some alternative reasons:

1. The general area contains some of the most pleasant parts to work on - like that f@#$ing little cone screw in the shift linkage, or those a$$ cannons of trunk torsion bars waiting to shatter a thumb. After working on any of those goodies, you might think you were in hell.
2. or maybe it is because after an hour or two of bumping your head on hard edges and having your back stabbed repeatedly by sharp, pointy things, you will have sworn enough oaths against god to be condemned to hell.
3. or maybe it is because any grinding that takes place in there will send a shower of sparks bouncing off walls, into the air, and down the back or your neck or any other gap in your clothing; reminding one of the inferno of hell.
4. Possibly the name is apt simply because for the umpteenthed time you say, "oh hell, I left the [insert tool of the moment here] over there out of reach. I have to climb out of this hole yet again to get it."

Sunday Aug. 13, 2017
Now things are getting interesting

I decided it would be wise to start putting some metal back in before taking more out so I spent the last of Saturday night and most of Sunday experimenting with ways to fabricate new lower sections for the inner long. My last act of Saturday night was to attempt bending a 30" section of 18g sheet in my cheap HF bending brake. It worked well with lighter stuff or small pieces, but this pushed it to its limit and there was a "pop" as one of the crappy welds broke on the bar reinforcement that allowed the movable back piece to flex and ruin the bend. No biggie, I knew it was a cheap POS and it was easy to start Sunday by grinding off the bad weld and redoing it.

The bottoms of the inner longs are not simple bends. There is a radius bend from the sidewall to bottom and a half channel bead that runs lengthwise along the inner edge to stiffing the part and form a recess the floor is spot welded into. There are also channel beads spaced along the outer edge running perpendicular from the inner bead to the outer welding flange. Just to make things interesting, the depth of the beads are about twice as deep in the front third of the long as they in the rest, and there is a ramp transition between the two depths along the inner half channel. It would be a perfect job for a bead roller with offset tipping wheel (or so it appears from my Google research). But I don't have those and can't justify the expense. Luckily, Rich Casto made a nearly identical repair with limited tools so I stole ideas from him.

Here's what I came up with. Bending the radius was pretty straightforward using Rich's method of welding a piece of round stock to a bar of metal and sandwiching it in the brake for a bending form.

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Likewise, I used Rich's hammer form method for banging in the channels but used a little different form design. I just welded 1" wide bars of flat stock of two different depths (1/8" and 1/4") to a strip of 6" wide x 3/16" flat stock to create a form to hammer the channel.

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For the side stub channels, I just welded a couple of tees of the same bar stock to create forms for each depth. I then ground.... and ground.... and ground to tapper the stub form down as it approaches the welding flange. This matches the factory piece.

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There was a lot of trial and error figuring out the right sequence and hammer form technique. I tried a number of things on the channel, including creating negative mirror image forms for pressing the metal with clamps. But that didn't work, 18g is too stubborn for that. In the end, I found a BFH with brick set chisel as corking tool worked best. The chisel leaves more tool marks than I would like but I tried a piece of oak which didn't work, and I didn't have any rock maple on hand to make a corking tool with. Next time I'm in town, I'll pick some up and try it.

The method I settled on is this:

1. Bend the side wall and floor using radius form in the brake.
2. Hammer in long channel with BFH and chisel.
3. Form welding flange with plastic hammer and a vice. This helps to secure the piece on the form for the next step.
4. Hammer in stub channels.
5. Planish out dings and marks with body hammer and dolly as needed.

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Here are the test pieces I made. These are a bit rough because they have been bent, flattened, and re-bent a few times as I worked out my technique.

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I had just enough time left in the day to start working on an actual piece. I started with the more difficult front piece that includes channels of both depths and the transition in between. I got as far as forming the welding flange. Tonight I will work on the stub channels.

Here is the result so far. It will need a bit of hammer and dolly to smooth out those dings, but I'm not sure how much effort it will be worth since one side will be inside the long, hopefully never to be seen again at least until after I am dead, and the other side will be covered with undercoating. I didn't roll the flange all the way to the front because I'll need to do a final trim and hammer the flange to match the curve where the long meets the wheel well.

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And here is the bottom.

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My fist time seeing your thread, Brent (?) - read it from start to current status this afternoon (when I should have been working on my car - lol)

Awesome undertaking and total dedication to achieving your dream car. Truly inspirational

Subscribed

Fab-iddy, fab, fabulous fabbing! Looks great.
I'm sure you've seen and heard it all before but it bears repeating:
Brace the bejeezus out of the chassis and go slow when you install all that long bracing.
Following closely so keep the great work coming!

On the speedos I've torn apart, there's a fixed-wheel on the right hand side on the ODO cluster shaft that starts to spin. It needs to be modified to fit back on the shaft tightly so it doesn't spin. The gear shown in your Pelican link is on the left hand side of the ODO shaft. You can check it, but I think the right hand side is where you'll find the problem.

I recently posted how I fixed some years ago ... here's the link: http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...p;#entry2500537

Thanks Mark. Yeah, we figured out that the 911 gear didn't apply here. I wound up using the pinch method on the pot metal gear and all seems to be working now. But now I wish I had gone farther and put loktite on that gear. We'll see how long it lasts. May have to go in there again some day. At least it is an easy part to get out of the car!

Brent

Yes! And this is a good opportunity to revisit this. Early in the thread, I asked for some input on my bracing: http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?s=&...t&p=2476431 but didn't get any response.

In the pre-Internet days, I replaced an outer long on my wife's '73 1.7L. I didn't have much guidance except a VW-Porsche article just mentioning to weld in a brace across the door opening. So I welded a half inch iron pipe horizontally across the door opening and called it good. I didn't understand anything about shrinking and probably pre-loaded the door opening to close a little as soon as I cut out the old long. Then I installed the outer long using WAY too much heat - just pile drove my way through. Surprise, surprise, the door wouldn't shut when I was done. I had to grind the striker to make it work. So not only am I aware, but I've actually made that mistake!

So for the bracing... I followed Cary's lead to do the doors-on bracing so I can watch my gaps as I work. I've got the adjustable braces running from upper seat belt mount to under the speaker area. With the door on, I can easily adjust the door gaps with the turnbuckle. But that mostly affects the top part of the gap. I'm wondering if I should run another adjustable brace from the lower mount of the diagonal to back in the vicinity of where the lower seat belt mount would be if I still had one. Seems like that would allow me to pre-load that inner long with a bit of outward (stretching) force to fight any shrinkage as the welds cool.

Also, my preference would be to get a long 4x4 or similar pushed up under that long to provide even support from the bottom to help keep things straight. But there is nothing left there to support. I'm thinking I just need to watch my measurements and door gaps as I work and let that guide me. Thoughts?

One nice thing is that I work at home so it is easy for me to run downstairs every couple hours and throw a few tack welds in. I'm thinking on that length, four spaced out tacks and walk away. I plan to spend a good week of that before the seam is closed.

As long as you do it very slow. (Butt slow) like you say you are, will. You have a good chance it will be fine. You are doing great on your baby so far.

Bob B

August 16, 2017 - More fabbing

Not much progress the last couple of days. I realized that before I finish up that front lower long piece, I should fab the patch where the lower front wheel well wraps around to extend into the long.

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Rich Casto also made this piece but didn't provide details on how it was done. Last night I took my first stab at it on a piece of scrap. I made another radius bending form using a larger diameter rod to match the bottom radius of the fender and bent the piece in the brake. That worked pretty well.

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Next I spent an hour wearing my arm out on the shrinker to form the vertical radius. This really tested the limits of that little shrinker but kind of worked. As you shrink, the material widens on the flange side so I had to stop and grind that back a couple times so the piece would still fit in the throat of the shrinker.

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I actually overdid it and had to stretch it back a little. I wasn't surprised that the edge that would become the weld flange split when I did that. The biggest problem here is that as the piece was shrunk to bend, the bottom radius narrowed and became more crisp at the bend.

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I experimented with using the radius brake form as a stake dolly and banging the more gentle radus back out. This will work, but I need a better stake dolly to get a smooth finish. Sorry about the blurry pic.

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I went ahead and bent the flange down to see how it would fit. Not bad for just eyeballing the curve.

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But I don't like that split and am not sure this is the right way to go.

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I could patch the split up, but maybe there is a better way. Anyone have ideas? What I really need is a better selection of dollies, I think.

I think the way to avoid that is to make that part in 2 pieces:
- the "top" part with the lip tipped in
- the "bottom" part with its lip tipped out
- weld them together along the line

Or give a go to hammer forming it?
I just worked up a piece via hammer forming that included an inside corner and was surprised how well it turned out.

Hope this helps...
Chris

Thanks. I thought about the 2-piece solution but wanted to try it in one first. I think hammer forming is the way to go but not sure what to use for a form. Thinking maybe bending a piece of that round stock and welding to a stake to clamp in the vice.

If I go 2-piece, I think I could move the weld line down to just where the radius goes flat before the flange bend. It should be easy to use the shrinker for smooth, match curves without that radius pulling in. Edit: I just looked again and that is exactly what you suggested! I might play with that tonight.

August 19, 2017 - No Progress

I had to work on Saturday so didn't get anything done on the car. Work consisted of hiking through places like this:

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And looking for things like this:

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It's a rough job but somebody has to do it

August 20, 2017 - Back in the shop

First I cut out the old lower section of the inner long.

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Finished up the front lower section of the inner rocker. I picked up a hunk of maple to make this corking tool which also is good protection against vampires, and a cheap anvil from HF to provide something better to hammer on.

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The maple with a BFH does a pretty good job of forming without leaving as many tool marks. My forms for the stub bead channels are a bit fiddly for getting the metal aligned and clamped properly. Luckily, precise location of these channels isn't important so one is off by as much as 1/8" from the original. If I did this again, I'd make the forms as negatives like Rich Casto did. That might be easier. It took a full day, but I managed to get the job done.

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The hardest part was trimming and forming that curved flange at the front. There wasn't enough left of my original to provide a good template, so I had to flip the piece over and match it to the driver's side to create a mirror image. I hit it lightly with an 80 grit disc on a 3" angel grinder to knock off some of the tool marks. That also made it too shiny to get a good picture.

Before removing the old, rusted section, I made a couple of witness blocks to make sure I could install the new piece at the right height.

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This made trimming and fitting the piece much easier.

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August 21, 2017 - Made rear section of inner long

Last night I was able to bang out the rear section of the lower inner long. It only took about an hour and a half thanks to a combination of experience from the first piece, not having to deal with two channel depths, and not having a curved flange section to hammer out. I didn't have enough left of the original to know how many, or where, the stub channels were located along the rear. I just assumed they were evenly spaced along the length. It looks like the piece will be trimmed in front of the last one, so that was a bit of wasted effort. I even had time to weld it to the front piece. Here it is, loose laid in place.

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Hopefully tonight, I'll have to make the final trim and fitment, and get the first few tacks in place.

Man, I'm in awe of you guys who cut out such major sections of your cars!
Nothing but and

Great work, love the metal shaping you're doing. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on how hard/not hard it's been for you to get the results you're happy with.

Maybe I'm getting lucky but so far (knock wood/I'll take it!) but, I'm finding the fabrication goes pretty well. Some forethought and maybe a practice piece or two.

When I started my project just over a year ago, I happily confess I was a bit intimidated by the thought of trying to fit even a preformed replacement panel.

Sorry for the hijack, just curious to hear others' experiences. Again, great stuff and keep it coming.

But I also do those kind of projects as it becomes very rewarding.. Click to view attachment

Here is Chris donation to my project ..

Keep up the great work.

Ha! Great minds. Amazing to hear this from you because your fabrication has been a real inspiration. It looks like you've been doing it for years. I've thought about this a lot the past few days and almost added a paragraph in my update, but decided to spare everyone my philosophizing. But since you ask...

I've been a woodworker since I was a kid and have always been somewhat intimidated by metal work. I've done a few small projects with good results, but always kept them simple. This project has been a bit of an eye opener. I don't want to offend anyone, but in many respects, I'm finding metal working much easier than wood. Not that I don't think metalworking requires insane skills that I still don't possess, but metal, as a material, is more forgiving than wood in some important ways. Wood has to be cut and dimensioned with great precision, and good joinery requires relatively complex lock and key type configurations (dovetails, mortise and tenon, finger joints, what have you). 1/64" can make or break the work. Metal can be bent, stretched, and shrunk within limits and the welder is a marvel for joinery. Again, I'm not pretending I possess the skills of the real pros, but as a neophyte novice metal shaper, I feel I'm producing far more satisfactory results than I was at a similar level of experience woodworking. Of course, I'm also bringing some of that woodworking experience over to metal so it isn't completely a fair comparison. But you get the point, and it has been a real pleasure to discover that the story on a piece of steel isn't dictated so much by the cutting. So, overall, I'm very surprised how accessible metal fabrication is, even for someone with a cramped shop and rather paltry assortment of tools.

Is it worth it? That's a pretty easy one that I have also ruminated on. Inner longs run about $300 per side new and I need to do both sides. I have about $10 worth of sheet metal in my passenger side so just in terms of $, it is well worth several days building forms, wracking the brain to figure out the steps to make the piece, and wearing your arm out with a hammer. Maybe more important, completely removing and replacing those longs would be a LOT more complicated and fraught with danger than leaving the top of the structure in place while the rusty bits are repaired.

Awesome! I'll be tackling that in the future. Nice work!