Pretty intense welding job on a very straight original paint 914 from South Carolina. Hard to believe that a 914 in a southern state salt free roads could suffer damage like this. Must have been sitting in the rain with bad weatherstrip seals

Click to view attachment

I have a very similar body. Only worse.

Entire perimeter is rough 1” up from floor pan. Driver side seems better like most water went to passenger side due to vehicle not level. Supposedly from FL.

I’ve found sand inside Longitudinals and misc structures. Suspect driven on beaches and left out in rain with top off or leaking seals as you suspect with the car shown. Sand from east coast beaches does contain residual salt from ocean salt water evaporation.

I admire you for saving it. My goal in life is to see every 914 saved!

That car sounds like it may have been in a flood In the past

I am not surprised George, if you consider the salt content in the water and the air around here where I live its fairly significant so a body with no galvanizing , sitting maybe on ground and getting low level flooding that would eat it up pretty fast. the AC units around here don't last 10 years due to the high salt content in the air, and even modern cars will see rust and corrosion.
it looks very similar to what I had to do to my car, and it spent most of its life in 29Palms CA, (a few years in Ohio first then CA then NC,SC)

Looks like it will clean up just fine! My longs were worse but what I feared the most was the hell hole and I actually had ZERO rust in my hell hole on either side!! amazing, right? so water intrusion up from below and in the back rear window and sitting collecting in the drivers side floor pan. Jack points were toast- one day after I got the car and I heard the rattleing and couldn't figure it out, it was the side jack post that had rusted off and fell off into the long!

No other sign of flooding like mud, or corrosion of wiring connectors, corrosion of fasteners below the floor pan etc. not flooding. Some sort of previous owner neglect in my case.

Yep, we're on the same program.

Hey George,
I agree that's going to clean up nicely. I live in the center of South Carolina and have been working on 914 on and off for 33 years. I have seen many car with the same area problem. I think it can be contributed to the Targa top and rear window seals.
Most of the cars like this I've seen, always set out side. So,So happy the values came back up and Guys like you had the for site to reproduce parts.

Thanks for all y'all do,

Bruce

And by contrast, I have a shell (removed the mechanicals to a better shell) that is up here in the northeast where the floors are perfect, but longs are gone.

So what you're saying is....

that car is...

...long gone?

you can add mine to your list. i saved it with a repair similar to what you're doing.
see the link in my signature line
It's now legally road worthy