I know what you are saying about having one of those days! Say, I remember hearing that putting a ground wire on chassis when painting somehow helps.

Here read the second post

https://www.autobody101.com/forums/viewtopi...93ff81694280324

Interesting. I was planning to ground the car when I spray the exterior to reduce dust clinging, but hadn't thought or heard about the effect on metallic flakes. It will be easy to hook up a wire so I'll give it a go.

Might as well try all the tricks. Ground the car, quick prayer, medidate, be the ball Tommy etc..

Tommy!

Just spent some time catching up on your thread and WOW she is really coming along.

Wish I had a mere fraction of your patience and ability.



Keep up the great work!

Man, you are going along nicely. Patience of a saint with that steering wheel.
Harness looks great against fresh paint!
Nice accomplishments.

I have to second Dion here on the steering wheel and only add you had me rolling on the floor with your writing of the detailed wrap experience, starting with the thread. Some of your comments were really funny. And people wonder why it takes so long to do some of these things. Ha!
You are doing a great job!

Brent.
Had to laugh when I read about your steering wheel experience.
Seems like we've all been down that road before.
I finally gave up messing with the poor quality kits and just send my wheels out to the professionals.
Good job for seeing it through.

Really like the color of your paint.
You'll get there with your patience and perseverance.
Great job!

Thanks. One way or the other, the word "pubis" was bound to show up in this thread.

Your wheel came out pretty good!

I tried restitching my stock wheel, just to see if I could get the stitching figured out. Let me just say, you will never see pics of it

Brent, you are killing it. Great work, man. I am very jealous as my project has all but stalled since moving to the west coast. I am really enjoying watching your progress!

Let me dispel any myth that I know what I'm doing. Today was a perfect illustration. The main job on the agenda was respraying the front trunk to fix the stupid, stupid fuchup respraying the VIN stamp. But while having breakfast, I decided to pick up my steering wheel to caress the supple leather ad admire my fine craftsmanship. So satisfying! But wait... I noticed one of the ears of the rubber horn pad just barely lifting off the frame. Barely, barely. I was a bit conservative with the contact adhesive because I didn't want any to squeeze out of the edges and ruin the paint. A little too conservative on this one. I decided to grab an acid brush and adhesive bottle and just touch that up. Almost there, just a tiny touch out there at the tip. Then whoops, a tiny bit of adhesive touches the frame and I immediately wiped it off... and there went the paint.

So off comes the rubber pad and out to the shop to strip off the adhesive, sand the frame, and recoat. It looked great again (hmm sounds like a political slogan). Then I had a great idea. I had such a great result baking a part with enamel paint, I figured what could go wrong here? Four minutes into the bake, I found out. The paint started to blister. Well THAT didn't work. Yanked it out, let it cool, then sanded and wire brushed the blistered areas and sprayed again. Looked pretty good except the paint inside the little ridges on the horn ring still looked rough. Nothing left to do but strip all the paint off again and start over. I'm a real genius.

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I set that aside to fix my even bigger fuch up. I didn't take any chances with overspray so tented the cockpit with masking plastic.

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Wiped the frunk down with dewaxer, lightly scuffed with 400g, sanded down a few minor drips vacuumed, dewaxer again, then blew it out with compressed air. Same treatment on the longs except the drips to be sanded were more substantial. Then I resprayed. Turned out fantabulous.

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I owe my success to @TravisNeff :

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And here's the little turd what caused all the fuss. I should be able to sleep better tonight.

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Say whaaa? Whoop!! glad it helped!

Nice work. BTW, you'll want to change out the anode rod in that water heater every 3-4 years. That water softener will accelerate the wear rate by 50%. Also, I searched thru the paperwork that came with my red car but couldn't locate where that fiberglass "sound deadening pad" was purchased. You could pm @Bullitt and ask him. He was the PO and might remember. It was definitely made for a 914 as it has the same cut outs as the OEM pad.

Thanks for the info!

The hot water tank is stainless steel. It's a fancy indirect fired jobbie that runs off our high efficiency mod/con boiler. No anode to replace

Looks like I have some catching up to do.. Plan to have my front trunk in paint by the end of the year. Great job..

Looks great (silver is my favorite color on a 914)

... but at some point, you'll have to shoot a smidgen of clear on that turd to keep it bright & shiny

Yeah, at first I was going to leave it rusty, but then decided to polish the turd as best I could. Then realized I'll need to clear coat it if I want to keep it that way... or just watch it redevelop a patina over time for that authentic "New Porsche" experience.

You have a running engine. You win!

I've been working on some fun stuff before I get back to the grunt work. Strung the main harness into the front trunk. Amazing how just adding wire makes it start looking like a car again.

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In a rare flash of forethought, I had secured washers and nuts on all the grounding studs on the chassis before painting.

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Simply take them off and voila! a nice clean grounding point.

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Ground cables temporarily in place. Nuts will be replace with new or replated and toothed washers added.

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Also loose installed most of the pieces of a new set of OEM green brake lines from PMB. I have some guilt about these. I actually ordered a set of their economy lines that I planned to paint olive drab to look like OEM green lines, but there was a several months delay and a mixup in shipment from the European supplier. Long story short, I was given the choice of a set of SS or green lines. VERY generous of them and I'll try to make up by sending them more of my $$ as I work through brakes and suspension.

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I thought it was strange, but the straight coupler fitting that goes here appears to be plated steel rather than brass like the rest of the fittings. It's in the bucket of hardware that will be sent out for replating.

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Another fun thing. I reattached the VIN plate and added the reproduction HO campaign sticker I had printed. Thanks to @VoPro914 for sharing his artwork files My original had the VIN written in black ball point pen and the H.O. and dealer ID in blue, so I replicated that.

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I know these usually go up on the fender well next to the VIN stamp, but this is where mine was. Looking at the service bulletin for the campaign on Jeff Bowlsby's site, I think either location fits the instructions for decal placement. Regardless, this is the history of this car, so I preserved it.



Finally, I reattached the original octane sticker. It cleaned up surprisingly well so I kept it.

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Just a little improvement over the condition it was in when this madness began.

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Brent your car & the process & progress is
absolutely brilliant!

I decided to work on the dash frame today. That might seem a little random unless you've been in my storage shed lately and tripped over the bulky damn thing. For that reason alone, I wanted to get it out of the shed and back on the car. There were still a couple things on it to come off. The glove box lock looked like crap.

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After a quick soak in mineral spirits, blowing it out with air, and a shot of lock cleaner and dry lubricant, it looks good as new.

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Ever wonder what the guts of a cigarette lighter look like? I've never been a smoker, but having a working plug is important. The housing will be re-chromed.

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Now to the frame itself. I forgot to take a before. This shot is after a scrub with Simple Green and a red Scotch brite pad. Just imagine this coated with a thick film of brown, sticky, waxy, mouse piss and you get the picture.

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The factory only sprayed flat black on the top and front of the frame and I wanted to preserve the original random Olympic blue color and manufacturing marks, so I just sprayed the small rusty areas with phosphoric acid to convert the rust and left the phosphoric coating to add some protection. That area shouldn't be prone to rust but I might hit those spots with some clear before final installation. Here's how it looked after paint. You can also see the cable tie sleeves lined up there. Once the mouse piss was cleaned off of them, they were in great shape so will go back on.

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Before it can go on the car, I had to repaint the blackout around the vent openings. First I made a mask from the trace I took before blasting off the paint.

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Pretty simple.

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I'll add new foam on top and, of course, vinyl later, but once the paint dries, I'll be able loose install it where it is out of the way.

I am loving these details Brent!

Long overdue but great work and thanks for documenting.

I had to do a little lock smithing on the glove box lock this morning. Before installng, I thought it wise to test it with the new keys cut to code I had made. This was one of 3 locks that matched one of my old keys so was what everything else got rekeyed to match, but when I tried the new key, I found it worked, but the action was rough with a hard catch. So I pulled it all apart for a more thorough cleaning and inspection.

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I found one wafer sticking and not popping up when the key was removed. That wasn't the problem but I cleaned and smoothed the groove and replaced the spring to fix it. Two other wafers were remaining slightly protruded when the key was in place. Strange, because I couldn't see any wear or problems with them, but when I replaced them with wafers from my stash, they pulled down flush with the key in place. A thorough dose of dry lube and it was ready to reassemble and install. Here it is back where it belongs.

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And a wider view of the dash frame in position. Just temporary. It needs new rubber cushions on the top mounting studs.

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So is that what a dash is supposed to look like before it gets hacked up..

Wish I saw this thread before I moved from Missoula to Los Angeles in August...oh well. Awesome project and best of luck getting the final steps done and back on the road! If you ever saw a white one cruising around Missoula (or the rest of the state, i used to take it camping in Pipestone all the time) that was me. Oh, and Go Griz!

That's what I'm claiming anyway!



Bummer, it would have been fun to connect. I do recall seeing a 914 in Missoula once but couldn't say what color it was. Quite a few years ago. I only make it up that way once or twice a year usually. And... Go Cats!

Latest Update

I've spent most of my time sorting and cleaning hardware for plating. What a PITA job that is. But it needs to be done because not having fasteners is bottlenecking the works here. It took awhile to figure out a workflow. Here's my setup sans blasting cabinet.

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Here is my half-assed organization. One bucket for rusty crap to be cleaned, a bucket of cleaned (first pass), a bucket for chrome, and a box of larger parts that will go to the blasting cabinet. Anything too small or with deep crevices to wire wheel get tossed in the tumbler or the blasting box. I'm just using crushed glass medial left over from blasting with a bit of pine-sol added for the tumbler. Works pretty well. After parts come out of the tumbler, they get a rinse in water and anything with threads gets a wire brushe to clean them out. I'll go through all these parts one more time to make sure threads are clean and ready for plating.

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To break up the monotony, I've alsoe been working on refurbing a few parts that can go back on the car. Here's the blasting cabinet full of a batch of cruddy parts.

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And here's a few of those parts painted and installed.

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The cable and 2-1 cable pull that go under here are MIA. They must be around here somewhere.

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That is the wrong bolt for this piece. The allen head bolt is in the plating bucket.

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Speed nuts for these next two are in the plating bucket so they are just laying loose.

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More fun stuff... I repainted the metal plate for the ash tray bracket and sanded and sprayed cold galvanizer on some of the galanized metal that had rusted. Here it is back home.

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I also refreshed the glove box. I went minimal on the door to preserve its history. On the front, I just resprayed the edges that might be visible but was careful not to cover of the splash of color (signal orange?) as it came from the factory.

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The back got a full coat of satin trim black except the bottom edge where the vinyl will wrap around.

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The box itself needed some work. It cleaned up pretty well considering more than a decade of mice nesting in it. After two rounds of soaking and scrubbing with Nature's Miracle, there is only a slight hint of "Ode to Rodentia" and a few rust stains remaining. I will burn a cone of incense inside the glove box with the door closed to eliminate the lingering odor. That's a trick I learned after buying this car from an apparent heavy smoker. After trying just about everything but an ozonizer, I found that fighting fire with fire worked when I sealed up the car and lit up 4 cones of incense and let it sit for a day. No more smoke odor after that.

Another issue with the box was that it had warped along the top edge. I fixed that by spraying the top inside and out with water to dampen it, then propping it open with a stick to so the bow was reversed while drying it with a heat gun. Then I clamped the top between wooden backers while it finished drying for a few hours. When finished, it was arrow straight.

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I think I'll give this stuff a try to hide those stains.



And here it is back in the dash. A nice splash of festive color I think.

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And the lock works!

Brent, I should have offered to re-flock the inside of your glove box for you. It's simple. Bought some gray flock on Ebay and some gray paint at the local craft store. Lightly sand the inside, brush on the gray paint and woof the flock in there with a plastic squeeze bottle....brand new inside.

Everything is looking great.

Looks great Brett. Did you connect those two glove box springs yet?

Thanks Doug. I'll look into that. Dash will have to come back out before I paint the exterior anyway, so sounds like a re-flocking is in my future.



Ha! Yes, and it was actually quite easy. I pulled the dash out and laid it upside down on my couch to install the door and attach the springs. The box went in AFTER the door was installed. Easy.

The small black parts came out great. What are you using for paint? Rattle can or are you spraying it?

Rattle can but good (SEM) stuff. SEM Trim Black or SEM Trim Black Gloss depending on the part. Some of those cover plates had severe rust pitting that isn't showing in the pics but can be seen on close inspection. I had a rattle can of Duplicolor Filler Primer on the shelf so I spray quite a few heavy coats of that on the pitted metal and sanding it off to fill most of the pits. Then top coat with SEM. I will say that the SEM gloss does not lay down great from the spray can and should be color sanded to get a truly glossy finish, but for these parts, it is fine. The regular Trim Black (which is satin) lays down really nice straight out of the can once you get the hang of it. It comes out in relatively heavy droplets which then flow out to form a nice film. It takes a little practice to figure out and if you just do a "medium wet coat" like you would with other paints, you will get runs.

Just caught up on your last few posts Brent. Great attention to detail you're putting in there, great stuff. I'm so itching to get on with this myself!!!

Thanks Stephen. I'm definitely jumping the gun here since I still need to paint the exterior, but this seems like a good way to clean up some of the clutter in the sheds. Plus it is the most fun part! It will add a little extra work in the long run since some of this (the dash) will have to come out before moving on. Hoping to make her a roller before turning attention back to body work. It all feels a bit random right now.

'Tis the Season

I've been overwhelmed by the generosity of this community this week. First up, while installing brake lines, I discovered one of the elbow fittings had some buggered threads. It probably would have worked okay, but there is no room for probably when it comes to brakes. It's just a standard flare fitting elbow, but metric. Porsche somehow feels justified in charging $80 for the goddam things. Should be $5 tops. I started a thread here to see if anyone knew where to buy the correct substitute. The result is that this arrived compliments of Mark Heard yesterday. He wouldn't even let me pay postage. Thank you Mark!

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Also arriving yesterday was this little gem from @tygaboy .

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A word of warning about doing business with Mr. Baker. The man does not honor an agreed upon fair price. He has refused payment! Seriously though Chris, thank you from the bottom of my heart!

There is yet one more act of kindness working its way through the mail. Hopefully it will arrive tomorrow but you will just have to wait to see.

The project this evening was to replace one of the missing connector tabs on the window defroster and resolder the one still on there.

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Now, you can buy replacement tabs but it would be $15 shipped and I'm a CSOB and the replacement wouldn't exactly match the original. So I went all hillbilly again and made my own. Turns out, the thickness of these connectors is about 21g which is close to the thickness of Type M copper pipe. So, I pulled out the scrap I used as a welding backer way back when I welded in the frunk floor. Lopped off a chunk, cut it lengthwise, and hammered it out flat to make a sheet.

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Next, I needed to make a pattern from the original. It is a 3D shape so I stuck a piece of good painter's tape on it and traced around the edges.

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I used an X-acto knife to cut around the edges, peel it off the original, transfer it to the copper sheet, and mark the outline with a sharpie.

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Full confession, a screwed the first one up by getting carried away with the snips. I did better the second time by just rough cutting with snips and then grinding with a dremel, fine tuning with a file, and finishing with a bit of grinding to fine tune the thickness and put a bevel on the leading edge of the connector. Then a little bending with needle nose pliers and a bit of 400 grit sandpaper finished it off.

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The only thing left was to solder it on. The original tab apparently took the metal under one of the solder pads with it when it departed, leaving a scarcity of metal to solder to. I filled in the void with solder as best I could and then cocked the tab just a tiny amount more inward than the original position to give that pad a touch more metal to bond to. Looks pretty good.

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Totally unrelated, but the other day I was doing a bit of cleaning and just had to snap a shot of the "display" that has been next to the TV for quite some time now. This wasn't sanctioned by the wife, but she is a VERY tolerant person. Even she couldn't resist picking up and testing out that leather wrapped wheel.

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Excellent reverse engineering on the rear defroster conductor plate. That was brilliant.
Wheel turned out nice too.

Gauges and wheel look great

Brent, did you ohm out side-to-side on the rear window? I went through all the trouble to install a defrost window and found out it didn't work ... there was no continuity through the elements

Hey Mark, That's a whole story. The short answer is that the jury is still out on this defroster and it won't be installed until I'm certain it works. Here's the long version:

Yes, I measured resistance side to side and got nothing, but I do get current along shorter lengths of the grid. I couldn't find any test specs for these windows. It's worrisome because I get a reading of 1.8 ohms on the known working defroster on our Honda. I did a bit of research and learned the best way to test these is to power them up and measure voltage. The voltage should drop as you approach the middle of the lines. Second best is to measure resistances along sections of each grid line.

The best 12v power supply can only put out 4amps and a typical draw for these things is 10-12 amps, but I hooked it up anyway. I do read voltage at various places of each grid line but readings are hampered by 40 years of oxidation making it hard to get good contact with the meter probes and I didn't want to try scratching through the oxidation like I normally would because I didn't want to create a gap in the circuit. I also don't think the power supply is strong enough to overcome the resistance. The upshot is that I read current across any given section of the wires except two of them but not current end to end.I THINK all but two of the wires are good and I have a good idea where the two that aren't are broken so should be able to repair them.

I won't install the window until I've tested it with a car battery though. If the grid turns out to be not salvageable, plan B is to install an aftermarket grid from frostfighter.com on my original glass. The only difference would be that the aftermarket grid lines will be straight instead of following the arch of the window. I don't consider rear window defrosters optional equipment around here though.

I replaced them on my 68 Karmann Ghia in 2001. IIRC, there are a few aftermarket kits available. Just trace the lines with a marks-a-lot on the back side before you scrape them off then cover the back side of the glass with white paper. It will show your lines better and protect the glass when it's laying on your bench.

My window was too far gone to attempt repairs. There was no continuity across the window and when I dug into the problem, found numerous breaks in every element. Just wound up wiping the window with a rag when it fogged up

So did you repaint the grid? The only full grid replacement kits I've found are these from frostfighter The wires are pre-spaced on a plastic sheet which you stick on and then peel off the plastic to leave only the conducters attached to the glass. Looks pretty slick but being pre-spaced means the are straight and can't be curved. Interested to know about other options. Hopefully I won't need them but nice to know.

The problem with the rag in hand method here is that rear glass tends to ice rather than fog, and typically on the outside of the glass. That happens year round too. It keeps us from getting soft up here.

We typically don't have an icing problem here in the coastal areas in So Cal, but we do experience a light dusting of snow at out AZ mountain home from time to time.

Maybe I'll opt for a pair of heated 911 flag mirrors and not worry about the 'rear window' (which was a cool movie too)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=/6kCcZCMYw38

Gimme a Brake
Continuing on with trying to get everything apart and cleaned for plating, this weekend was dedicated to brake calipers and the regulator. I've been dreading this because the car sat outside with brake lines disconnected for 30 years and I wasn't sure what I would find. So here's what I started with. If you look carefully, you'll notice I have 2 late front calipers and one late and one early rear caliper. Lots of mix and match from the early/late parts bins going on in April of '73.

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I followed Eric Shea's how-to instructions on his web site and Youtube with a slight deviation at the outset. He recommends getting the pistons moving before disassembly by pumping the brakes. That wasn't an option so I took one of my heavy duty c-clamps inherited from my grandfather who died in the 1930s (back when men were men and tools were unbreakable) and clamped on each piston to crank until each one moved. Surprisingly, all of them moved with ease. After that, all of the fronts popped out using only compressed air but, of course, I had to apply a bit of redneck ingenuity. After popping a piston out on one side, I needed to plug the hole to hold pressure to do the next. I didn't have a stopper on hand so I cut a disc of plywood a bit larger than the bore and made a rubber pad from a worn out chemical glove to form a seal when I clamped the disc over the bore.

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It took a bit of experimentation to get it right and a few misfires before I settled on the chemical glove. A nitrile glove, pictured above and below, did not work but made one helluva load squeaky fart sound when the air was applied.

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But with a good seal, the pistons do pop out with bang. Important to pad the opening.

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Here's a slightly better shot of the setup with the rag removed.

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I also got lucky with the fasteners holding the halves together. They all came out quite easily.

Moving on to the rears, the late caliper was easier than the fronts because you can crank or drive the pistons out with the adjuster mechanism. I did hit a snag trying to remove the inner adjuster from the bore. My picks aren't beefy enough to handle the clip holding that in and screw drivers don't have the right bend. I set that aside until I can get better picks.

As some of you know from my other thread, the early caliper is turning out to be a little bastard. The outer piston came out without a hitch. The inner is another story. The adjuster just spins without pushing the piston out and the e-brake lever only moves the piston a couple mm out and then the piston goes back when the lever is released. Something is afoul here and I'm not sure how to attack it. I also can't split the caliper until the Ribe bit I ordered arrives.

I set the calipers aside for now and turned to the regulator. Nothing special to report there except if you ever take one apart, clamp the spring and valve housings tegether before you unbolt them be the will fly apart and bind against the last bolt. There is no question the regulator needs a refresh. It looked like Satan's rectum in there.

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Here's the net progress for the weekend.

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I actually didn't get much time to work on the car today. We hiked out to the back 40 to cut down a Christmas tree. We have plenty that need to come down. One hundred years of fire suppression, conifer encroachment in the aspen, habitat degradation.... but I better not get all ecologist on you.

+1 for Alfred Hitchcock!!!

You're hired

Great job

That's high praise and thanks! But we both know there is no way I could have done this without your excellent tutorials. Thank you!