Mine had the fiberglass repair in the frunk!


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I was particularly impressed with the effort the PO put in my pedal cluster bracket underneath . I mean, really. That looks FILTHY.

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The only thing more piss-poor than the repair was my own PPI . I should have looked harder and then run away. But I was young and naïve about 914 matters way back then. Now I'm just old and foolish.

looks like a giant cancerous growth! POOR dear 914!!

Gawd I was just about to say FG is worse than wood.

My son's trunk was worse than yours, luckily RD make a makes a whole new trunk bottom.

looks like mine

So apparently the rear trunk is NOT supposed to be constructed of 12mm thick bondo?

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- Tony

Ahhh.. I'm sure it's the structural bondo

It was laid in there SO thick. When I was cutting it out, you could smell the bondo in the middle (that hadn't been exposed to air) curing...! Then I dug out bits of random metal that looked as though they had been cut from an old washing machine, that were buried in the bondo. Fun times.

- Tony

And the mosquito was hard to catch!

Bondo artistry exposed:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuMxtOaAOEo




--DD

Wow.

How I prefer to remove bondo. Much faster.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njhJF8O2s44&feature=youtu.be

Back in the early 80s I went to visit my Mom in Michigan. I grew up in So Cal, you see where this is going.
I had probably only purchase a couple cars by then, I knew nothing about 914s other that I thought they were a cool little car.
I found one, took it to the shop down the street to have it looked over, and was told she was good to go so I purchased it. I think the shop person was friends with the seller.
First problem I noticed driving down through Ohio was my foot was freezing so I pulled over and found a hole where the 20 degree air was coming in, stuffed full of paper and took off again. The lil gal just purred right along at around 80.
Shooting through Texas at night suddenly the windshield popped open around the edges. Had difficulty getting the doors open, bought some tape to hold the glass down and took off again. The next fuel stop it became apparent that the doors were not a way to get in and out of the car, windows the rest of the way.
Heading up the mountains towards Flagstaff the rear brakes locked down and slowed the car way down. Did I mention I only had enough money for fuel to get home?
Fiddled with the rear brakes and even considered removing the lines, kept going.
Ran out of money for hotels so drove 26 hours straight which went a little quicker once the brakes wore through the metal backing but the motor was sick.
After getting home and a long sleep I started diggin into the car to see what was up. Well, there were no outer longs or much floor. The guy had riveted aluminum over the area, bondo over the edges then undercoating sprayed over the entire area. Rear calipers were frozen. The doors could not open and motor did not run well.
A young fella learned a lesson that week.
Some guy came and bought it for much less than I paid.

I still just do not know if it is worth it welding up these 914s! Hours and hours of work to save one and then it is just a re welded car. At least I will have fun with it when it is finished and it is a one owner 73 2.0!

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It’s a two owner car now.

I never understood why a one owner, low owners, car is special. It’s used and rusts no matter who owned it Where is more important than who unless it’s a celebrity owner.

Are you losing faith?
I replaced a lot of frame and half the sheet metal on my TR6. The red 914 not much better. And the other 914 needs help. But otherwise the car would be junked crushed, melted with ore to make toasters.
Kinda figured that kind of saving the marque was your life’s work at heart. There are certainly quicker ways to make money.

Sell replacement sheetmetal to owners of old cars?

one can capture the whole history of the car by talking to the original owner, find out intimate detail about every bump and bruise, capture all of that original paperwork, including most times the original bill of sale and window sticker, know where the car was sold new, etc. All good information.

George,

Why are you making multiple topics on this and not just posting this on one topic? Its technically a build thread.

While I enjoy seeing a 914 being restored, you separating your posts into multiple topics makes it impossible to follow progress.

Maybe @Sirandy can merge these for you if your aware that they should all be in one topic?

Send that PITA work to another shop. There's gotta be someone on the east coast that has a Celette bench and can do all that icky work.

@sirandy

Couple more (And the reason why I posted.... He had 4 threads for 1 topic)

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...=332494&hl=


http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...=332404&hl=

Not all "one owner cars" are created equal, here is one such story.

https://www.pca.org/news/2016-07-19/barnfin...owner-nightmare

But if a one owner car is unmolested and you can get the history this is really a plus. I've had many one owner cars where yes it is rusty but the guy never cut any corners on work done, so restoring the car is much much easier. We bought a 64C one owner car a few months ago, parked in the 80s, original paint in rough shape, but all the gaps, lines, etc are really nice. So making it back into a good car is very viable, as opposed to cars like my 60 Roadster that has probably had 20 owners, each with a different idea of what a nice car is, things like flat floors are something the 15th owner probably thought was a good idea since he probably only paid $3000 for the car, as opposed to an original owner who remembers when it was new and while the car isn't worth much in 1978, he still sees it as a million dollar car, and treats it as such.