That car was definitely nicely secured on the trailer. I'm thinking you could have driven it across the country with no issues at all. Good job. I can't wait to see it being body worked and then color!

I've really enjoyed following your build. Looking forward to the completion. Well done!

I might have been a little paranoid, but I worked out. I also wanted to set it up so when it comes home with fresh paint, nothing has to touch that paint.

I spent most of yesterday and today cleaning and reorganizing the garage (and fabricating a new post for our deck shade structure). With things moved around, I could get to the 914 motor. Don't be jealous of the awesome red paint on the head covers and pushrod tubes.

We ended the day by getting the motor up on the stand. More jealousy: red on the blower housing and intakes (and also on the exhaust and trans).

I stopped by the body shop to drop off the brackets to mount the car on their rotisserie. Here are a few other cars in progress there.

More outside.

And inside.

Before starting on tear down, I made some space to lay things out. I repurposed the plywood from the trailer cradle into a work table.

After some inspection, and labeling, and photos, I stripped off everything from the topside.

The first round of parts to clean and inspect.

And the new list.

Today, I stripped the outside of the engine. Everything came off easily, except one cheesehead screw. Given that this screws into the top of the case, I took some care. That turned into about 30 minutes of penetrating oil, finesse with a beefy screwdriver, heating with a torch, and finally lots of "gentle" taps with a hand impact tool. Eventually, it gave up.

With the sheet metal off, I could see the tops of the cylinders. I was a little disappointed not to find an official 914 mouse nest, but a fair amount of crud made up for it.

Right side

Left side

Next, we get to look inside, and see what is hiding there.

that is a lot cleaner than most I have opened up
Rock On

I opened up the engine today. Good thing I still have an official 914 pry tool, from previous ownerships.

Valve train all present and looking OK.

A couple of the adjusting screws have pits.

Everything came off easily: push rod tubes, heads, cylinders.

I need to clean off the carbon and crud, but the heads look OK so far. Left side.

Right side.

The cylinders even show cross hatching and no signs of wear.

Next up: removing the pistons and miscellaneous, and then splitting the case.

Progress on the latest list.

Pistons out. Looking OK, but with a lot of oily carbon crud on top.

Oil pump, exterior view.

Oil pump, interior. Anyone recognize this pump?

So, after removing the 6 main case bolts, and undoing 20 fasteners around the perimeter and elsewhere, I am ready to split the case. But the seam is resisting.

Click to view attachment

I'd bet something like this could split the case halves.....

Did you get the bolt that goes through the windage tray? It is between the two cylinder spigots in a recess.

It was the same one I didn't see when I first split a case.

All the bolts were out (I counted them at least a dozen times).

I tried the method of prying between the front shaft impeller flange and the front seal. After a gentle pry, the seam opened up along the front, but the back was still stuck. I resorted to some plastic wedges (door frame shims), and that did the trick.

Inside the case looks very good. Left side.

Right side.

Number 2 bearing looks good.

Cam bearings also look good.

The cam lobes look very good.

But the bolt-on cam is not stock, right?

The crankshaft, fully assembled.

The number 1 bearing and journal.

Rigged up to pull the camshaft drive gear.

The gear itself looks very good.

Time to remove the connecting rods.

The number 1 con rod bearing looks good.

But the number 2 bearing shows a bit more wear. This is the worst one.

All the crank journals look great.

After a quick measuring session, the mains are about 2.3520 inches, suggesting these were ground one step undersize.

And the con rod journals are about 1.959 inches, two steps undersize.

A bit more tinkering today, starting with removing the oil pressure relief valve. Step one was to make a tool to fit the slot profile in the cap.