@sixnotfour

Finally decided. Ollies actively working on the heads. 34mm intake and leave exhaust stock. 1973 2.4l spec 911E was 32mm. 911S 36mm.

Smallest PMO ITB EFI manifolds are 34mm which is what I plan to use for induction. I don’t want to build a S spec motor so I feel 34mm splits the difference, will breathe a bit better than E spec and will allow me to get to modern FI.

Hopefully it all works as planned

@bbrock . Thanks just trying to keep up with your precedent Looking forward to some Idaho time and a few days of skiing in the near future! Missing the mountains!

Good choice.... Ive done em all...Right down the middle.....solex cams ...

@sixnotfour

Are you running carbs or FI?

webers,,,

Had great aspirations for a weekend of welding but got busy at work and forgot to check how much Argon I had left. Turns out, not enough. Talk about a failure to plan biting me in the butt!

Started to put the flap of the rear engine bulkhead back into place but ran out of argon.

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No shortage of other things to do.

Heard from Ollie's that my 2.4L mag case is going on vacation to CA for some welding along with some of it's other mag case friends. In talking with them it sounds like they are seeing more and more mag cases that have corrosion, sunken deck registers, and other isssues as they age that require more extensive rework than was the norm say 20 years ago. Was happy to hear that is well underway though!

Could be dumber. I went out the other morning, got all set up, and started welding without opening the gas valve. Took me a few minutes to figure out why my weld puddle was splattering.

Can't count the number of times I've done that. And while sputtering crappy welds thinking, "what the heck is wrong with this welder now." The answer was always the dumbass holding the nozzle.

I think I have you beat. I do that so often that as soon as the first weld "fails", I know EXACTLY why!

Well February basically slipped away with very little 914 work.

Was traveling for work, a bit of vacation and then manged to get sick on vacation with a really nasty case of Bronchitis.

So it's March and time to make some progress.

Now that I have the wheelhouse inner and the inner frame rail in place I was able to weld my lower longitudinal bracce back in place in anticipation of putting the inner longitudinal back in place.

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Spent some time evaluating the door gaps 1st with a simple gauge set to 1039mm "h" dimension from the door swith to the door striker plate.

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Then finally visual and just measuring to see how consistent I could get them visually. Not too bad.

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The slow part of this is that after tweaking things, I constantly have to go back and measure the rear suspension console to front suspension dimensions to make sure nothing has moved too far out of whack. Luckily, what I found is that by adding the brace, I was able to pull the lower door opening back to where it was before I welded in the wheelhouse inner and the inner frame inside the hell hole.

Started prepping the longitudinal inner by putting the heater tube pipe back in place and painting the inner with Eastwood frame paint.

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Unfortunately that sort of burned out the day.

Completed the build out of the longitudinal today. With a little luck, I'll get the long welded in tomorrow or at least tacked in for yet another round of suspension measurements.

Started by mocking it up using Cleco's

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Decided to use solid rivits to secure the spring steel heater tube holders to the long. Same as the OEM attachment method.

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Unfortunately the reproduction longitudinal doesn't have the same offset recess as the original. This leaves the bucked rivets overflush to the longitudinal inner surface.

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Hopefully these don't show though the carpet later on. I guesss in the worst case, I could put a thin layer of open cell foam over them to help smooth things out. Least of my worries at this point.

Those longs don't appear to have the recesses stamped into the bottom either. Glad to see someone else OCD enough to use solid rivets on the hose brackets. I don't know why I did it, but it had to be done. I can't imagine those rivets will show through the carpet.

You had me at "Clecos"...

Yeah. Not to thrilled about that. I looked around at AA and RD and it didn't seem to me that anyone really had a longitudinal that was a true reproduction.

I get it. It would be a more complex tool and ultimatley no one really sees it directly once installed.

Would have been nice to have the option for 100% reproduction though! I guess I'm just happy to have the part at all.

After a year apart, the front of the vehicle has been reunited with the rear.

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In the process of getting ready to weld the long to the front fender area I had to clear off some primer and I got carried away. I decided to strip the undercoating out of the fender well. Love the flail wheel for this. Makes quick and easy work of it and can do so without completely stripping the OEM paint underneath.

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In the process, I'm now noticing that the passenger side front fender has been replaced at some point - potentially in conjunction with prior accident (on left side) that probably led to the addition of flares? Odd. Color of the panel looks like it might have been NOS sheetmetal. The underside of the panel certainly wasn't primered with the same primer as the panel exterior. Ah, the mysteries of a vintage car. If only they could speak and tell the tale.

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Will update my VIN registry to reflect non-OEM front passenger side fender.

Fitting up the longitudinal outers. Finally starting to feel like some progress is being made.

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Such a great feeling when those outer longs go on.

@Bbrock
@Mb911
@tygaboy
@Jeff Hail

Need some tribal wisdom. Maybe talk me off the ledge if it's warranted.

Before I welded in the passenger side outer long I had the passenger side door gaps just about perfect with what I thought was a hint of preload on the wide side.

I welded so slowly it took about 3 days of on/off welding to get this bugger buttoned up. I knew that when I removed the door braces I'd have some shrink.

I think I got a little more than I expected and definately more than I wanted.


It seems to me that my passenger side door gap is a hint too tight (3mm but consistent). Being an OCD engineer, I'm on the verge of starting to cut welds and trying to push it back out and then reweld. I don't like this idea either since that opens up all sorts of possibilites for further screw ups and more shrinkage.

For what it's worth this car has been hit in the left front and was clipped so it's not like I have a virgin driver side to measure from. Although it was clipped, I've spent tons of hours measureing my suspension pick up points, door post gaps, header to roll bar gaps, etc., none of these has moved since welding in the longitudinal.

3mm gap just looks too tight to me. But at the same time it seems crazy to try to cut & re-weld for 1 - 1.5mm of improvment.

Well, here's what I have. Although you can see the door braces in the photo, they are just leaning on the firewall, not connected to anything.

Passenger side overall

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Passenger rear

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Passenger front

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Driver rear

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Driver front

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I'm contemplating other solutions.

One might be to mill 1mm of the front of the door hinges to pull them forward about 1mm. I'm just worried this may have other implications for things like striker fits and/or fit of the triangular quarter window to the A-pillar.

1mm = 0.040" and doesn't sure seem like much but to me it looks like a country mile.

Other ideas?

Time to go work on another unrelated project before I do something unwarranted.

OK, this may sound totally hack but...
I swapped my late doors for a set of early ones. The early ones are a little "longer" and I had what I felt looked like too tight a fit at the rear, particularly on the driver side.

WARNING: GRAPHIC CAR-NAGE follows! CWs and other purist-types may want to avoid this post!

So I took a 2x4 and small sledge hammer (I know, I know!), opened the door and bonked on the hinges, essentially driving the A pillar's hinge mounting surface forward until the front/rear door gaps sorta split the difference.
I also found that I could open the door just a bit and use it as a lever to set the door's up/down alignment to the body.

Stating the obvious: go slowly if you try this approach. I was surprised how easy it was to move the hinge area forward (and backward, if you go too far!)

I figured "Hey, these things are +/- 3mm so what's the big deal?"

What can I say, it worked for me. The doors open/close/latch and lock just fine.
YMMV.
Here's the best shot I currently have of how it turned out. Let me know if you'd rather I remove the pic.

@Tygaboy .

Hmm. I sort of like the idea. I've definately reefed them up at the rear using the door as leverage to get the gap consistency I wanted.

When you did the "tweaking" did you just leave the door in place and hammer on the door hinge; bolts and all? Seems like that would be the way to go to do easy visual checks of the progress.

As another interesting tid bit, the passenger door on this car is an early doors - no impact bar and are clearly from another car (yellow on passenger side under the door trim).

I thought early and late doors had the same dimensions but differed only in impact bar and window regulator style. If that is true, that the early doors are a smidge longer that might help explain why the driver side door is a bit tighter at the rear too.

This car is an early build 73 - April and I know some early 73's had the earlier doors too so I never thought much of it other than that someone had swapped this door for sure and I haven't dug into the driver door to see what it is yet.

I agree with Chris .. You could also use a porta power to stretch it a bit.. My passenger front gap is not ideal.. I still have to work it through..

I've never heard of early doors being longer.

The HORROR!!!! I can't believe you did that... but... that is exactly what I did. I had a door that was sagging plus an unacceptable wide gap that could not adjust out. After puzzling it over for a long time, I discover that the upper hinge post had indeed stretch from years of door weight and possibly a teenager or two leaning on an open door. So... Bang, bang, Maxwell's silver hammer came down upon its head... There is easily a mm of adjustment to be had there.

@mepstein - I didn't mean to imply they were, by design, longer than late doors, only that the set I have ended up being longer than the lates that were on the car. All within the usual tolerances for these cars. I suspect I just happen to end up with a set of each that may be on the inner/outer ranges.
Also, and this may have zero to do with any of this, but my suspension pickup mounting points measured way outside (longer) of the specs available on this site - see my build for details, if interested.

Yea, the way these cars were made, I could see one line worker fitting it tight while another fit it loose and getting 1-5 mm difference in the final fit.

Yep, doors in place for the exact reason you mentioned. BAM, BAM, check. Repeat as needed.

Just watch the end of the piece of wood you use as the hinge bolts may chew it up and you just want to know what your pounding against.

I haven't had a chance to bonk the doors yet though strangely I'm exited about the prospect of it. I would be such a simple & elegant solution.

I spent a little bit of time cleaning up the garage and working on couple other projects.

1st, as I was cleaning I passed by this gleaming gem. I had completely forgotten to thank @mepstein for his generorsity in passing along this shining addtion to 2.4L six fan. I think this will be a spectacular accent piece when the fan gets painted or powdercoated.

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I also spent some time working on engine tin.

Want to plead with those of you that have hacked up 2.0L passenger side tin from A/C installs, please don't toss it. It can be fixed and made to be perfectly serviceable.

If you have 2.0L passenger side hacked cylinder tin that you're contemplating scrapping feel free to send it my way!

Starting point:

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Finished serviceable tin:

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Nice work on that tin What is it about those six fans that make them so sexy?

@bbrock

Just like that special Marshal amp that Nigel Tufnel had. Insert best Spinal Tap imitation here . . .

It's that these go to 11 . . . See.

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Not just 10 fan blades which anybody could do. . . but you see a Porsche fan has 11 blades.

@tygaboy
@bbrock

OK - So although I'm not a fan of bonking stuff with the BFH, I did make some progress but I hated every minute of it. It reminds me far too much or working on race cars under duress where expediency often trumps doing it right.

My bigggest hammer is about 5 lbs and I was seriously worried about missing the 2x4 and really Fuching up something else. Plus I'm old and frail and swinging a 5 lb hammer gets tiring really fast!

I gained about 0.020" or 0.5mm of movement and by that point I could see the hinge pillar sheetmetal starting to take on some deformation that I didn't like so I decided to call it quit's.

Overall, it looks much better to my eye than the overall picture does in the photo. If I'm still not happy later, I can always mill the door hinges another 0.020" and /or use some shim stock to tweak the fit's. In reality that won't likely happen until I get around to completely stripping this car back to return to original color of Alaska Blue Metallic. I personally despise red. Red cars have me cost thousands more in speeding tickets than other less eye catching color cars.

So here's the finished product.

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I would be happy with those gaps

One of the other key projects for the day was to go out and hoard some Argon. My local gas supplier is one of the last in the area still open for business.

Now that I'm on forced vacation, I'm going though lots of gas and getting tired of having to stop to go exhange a tank. Now I have a spare on standby!

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Having accomplished and after having tweaked the door fit, it was time to get the lower door post extension added that ties into the outer longitudinal. Fabrication of this little piece was way too time consuming.

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Most importantly, this piece had a couple of semi circular features that were used to fill in the remnants of previous AC damage left by a dealer turned loose with a hole saw

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, big time. Nice work.

Don't let perfect get in the way of really good.
(ask me how I know!)

@bbrock
@tygaboy

Thanks. That means a lot to me coming from you guys. Good enough to you = good enough to me and encourages me to keep moving forward rather than getting lost in 0.015" of door gap!

For some reason, some of us older guys have enough extra gas without having to run out and get more

Started to prepare the rear bulkhead for new sheetmetal. Started by getting new panel holes for the snorkel and the speedo cable aligned to OEM sheetmetal.

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As usual, one thing leads to another. Needed to know how that outer bulkhead would fit to the inner bulkhead. And then of course since the inner bulkhead seemed too low, I needed to know how the new floorpan would fit.

After exhausting my supply of vice grips and welding clamps I had a temporary loose mockup. Turns out it all looks to be pretty straight forward and fits pretty darn well for repop sheetmetal.

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By then it was getting late, I was delerious, and after spending so much time in the hell hole, the sprayed on truck bed liner + the contact cement adhesive was grating on me.

Based on some pin holes that are on the interior passenger side that I had found when I had to cut out to access all of this work, I had a feeling that the driver side bulkhead was probably hiding some rust. Turns out I was right. That damn OEM engine pad that holds moisture had done its work. The driver side had some pretty heavy pitting and a few pin holes too. More metal work!

I was told this car was previously Florida car and owned by a body shop guy. I have found plenty of sand in the car so I suspect it may truly be a Florida car. Good body shop guy, well maybe not so much. Cheap body shop guy, maybe. I had an inclination that the spray on bedliner wasn't just there for noise deadning. I hate when people just try to cover over rust and pretend it isn't there.

After many hours of listening to the flail wheel and after going though a fresh $40 belt, I got most of the bulkhead stripped. That crap is tough and doesn't come off easily. If anyone has better suggestion to stripping bed liner I'm all ears!

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Hi I use citrus spray to remove that kind of gunk...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Citrus-Based-Adhes...M/dp/B0006VPLKM

@kroelofsen

Although that would work on the residual contact cement adhesive, I don't think it would even touch the spray on bed liner underneath a layer of paint.

If I'm mistaken, ping me back if you've sucessfully used it to remove spray on bed liner and how much of this stuff is needed.

Hi @Superhawk996 I used it to remove glue on the fire wall and to remove the undercoat in the wheel wells. It softens the under coat so it comes of more easy. It does not really touch paint although but it becomes dull...!

If the door if functioning correctly and it is just the gap, which were bad from the factory on many cars, one trick is to weld on some welding rod to the leading edge then file to shape.

Been a few weeks since I've posted. So many other things compete for garage time.

My wife has been insisting that I trim the "new" dog's hair since the dog groomers are no longer open. The important thing to understand is that I love dogs and that this is the Mother-In-Law dog that we are looking after while she is in assisted living.

I've grown up with Labradors. Very low maintenance dogs. The idea that I'd have to spend more to get a dog a haircut than I spend to cut my own haircuts just doesn't seem right.

Well, it just so happens that Amazon sells a set of dog clippers. How hard could it be?

Turns out not terribly hard. Mission accomplished.

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On the garage front, lots of time spent on things that will never be seen, or appreciated later on.

Added a doubler to the inner longitudinal transition. Not so much becuase I think it was absolutely necessary Porsche did a good job of staggering the joints but more so for my own piece of mind.

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As it turns out, this might not have been a great move. Up until now I've been constantly checking my X & Y suspension pickup point locations and things were peachy. So yesterday just as a sanity check before moving on, I put the Z gauge back in place to check.



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I now have a 6mm height change in Z! FUCH!

Now I'm trying to figure out the next step.

1) Leave as is. Add another 6mm of caster shim as needed later on.

2) Try to create a fixture to "pull" this back down and then I could heat the "frame" sections with a rosebud torch to stress relieve it and hopefully get it to settle back to where it should be.

Option 2 comes with the concern that my body dolly really isn't intended to be a Cellete that can stand up to body pulls. I'm very concerned that I'd have to double up my body dolly longitudinal member to prevent it from deforming as I pull down on the suspension console. Time to think about this carefully.

I will be doing yet another complete round of measurement on all suspension pick up points just to make absolutely sure that Z height is the only thing that moved.

Fuming from having discoverd the suspension console FUBAR I took out some agression by stripping the rest of the hell hole shelf.

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I then tried to distract myself for the remainder of the evening by prepping the lower bulkhead.

This car is crazy. Much of the lower 1" of the floorpan to anything is terribly rusted. But above that 1" line, things are pretty solid.

Case in point, here is the Speedometer cable tube after being removed from the original sheetmetal and blasted. Rock Solid.

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Brazed it to the replacement sheetmetal with some silicon bronze TIG filler.

Oh man. That sucks. What about just cutting off the suspension console and repositioning to the correct geometry location?

Nice job on the hair cut!

@bbrock

Entertained that for about 0.5 seconds. That thing was already swiss cheese when I took it off the 1st time. After all the puddle welds the swiss cheese holes will be even larger.

The other thing is that I've tried to execute this whole excercise without cutting my rear quater panel or the door jamb. I have esentially built the "frame" and suspension structure from the outside inward.

Access to the front to the supension console for cutting puddle welds and/or to re-weld is non existant.

I've got to admit at this point that tribal wisdom about cutting the quarter and/or door jamb appears to be the better path than the one I've taken by trying to preserve the paint.

The new option crossing my mind is leave as-is. Mill a 6mm offset plate. Use as temporary solution. In future years I intend to strip all to bare metal, fix front quarter prior accident damage with lap welds and the shady trunk floorpan. At that time, I could put it on a Celette and have it pulled properly. Not ideal, but, I'm trying to prevent myself from getting too hung up on this as I contemplate solutions.

Still cleaning up the floor and getting ready to lay down new measurement points to insure X & Y dimensions haven't changed.

Need more think time. Open to alternatives like you've mentioned though if anyone else has experience recovering from a fiasco like this.

Your rear fender looks like it has bullet holes. Something you're not telling us?

I live in Detroit Metro area. Should be self explantory.

That is the other part of why I should have just cut the rear quarter panel. In the process of trying to preserve the quarter panel paint, I decided to do this repair from the inside.

As I was the frame initially, the sawzall blade hit the rear quarter several times from the inside, chipping the paint and raising a dent. So for all my best efforts, that quarter still needs some touch up. Not so bright on my part. It was mentioned early on in my thread but there are a bunch of pages there so I'm sure others are wondering the same thing.

With the wisdom of hindsight this probably wasn't the best way to approach the work.