I am a long time lurker. I joined 4 years ago when I started looking at getting a 914 to do a 6 conversion but have never done an introduction. I was very involved with the Porsche community 20 years ago before I had kids and am getting re-involved as they grow up and move out. I have always had a love for 911's and have several. I have also had 944 turbos. I still have several 911's (some projects) and 914's. I am currently thinking I need a 1st gen Cayenne turbo. When I was more involved in the Porsche world 20 years ago I spent a lot of time doing DE's and Club racing as did my wife. As a result I accumulated several broken engines. At the time 911 engienes were relatively inexpensive and when you damaged one you just bought another. Fast forward 20 years and 911 engines are expensive an 911 rollers are even more expensive. So what do you do when you have a excess of 911 engines....914-6 conversion. That is how I started down the 914 rabbit hole. I decided to fix one of the 911 engines and make a 914-6 to see if I like 914's, I do. I now have four 914's (plus four 911's) which I think puts me into crazy Porsche guy territory. I plan to post about what I have been doing over the last 4 years with 914's as I get time. Since all threads are useless with out pics here is one from earlier this year with my first 914 and one of my 911's . The pic is from when a good friend of mine and I (his engine was in the 914 at the time) took advantage of the almost nonexistent traffic from COVID and took a drive thru the mountains. More to come.

john

Should we say, Welcome again to 914world and congratulations with all your porches and now you are hooked to 914s

You are at the right place.

again

Great- we like Porsche addicts here. Definitely looking forward to seeing the coral of cars.

I just love the lines on the 914,...the 911 its to bad either

I think I may have bought one of those 911 engines from you recently for my 914 conversion project...nice to see you on here.
Dave

redux - looking forward to the story. . .

Nice Pair

So to continue the story...
I started looking for 914's. I had read enough to know about the common rust areas but not enough to know the nuances of the years. After several months I had looked at every 914 that was reasonably priced that had come up for sale in the area. Most I felt were overpriced for what they were or too nice for what I was looking for. I finally found the blue car in the picture. It had been in storage for 20years and not run. The person I bought it from had purchased but was unable to get it running. Its a 73 without to much rust. A deal was worked out for the purchase that included delivery to my house. Someone in the past had updated the rear bumper (why, why, why).
Finally in my garage. 70 911 project in front 2001 turbo to the side.

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john

The fuel injection had been removed and a single single mount carburetor had been installed The car had recently been repainted before going to storage so paint looked pretty nice. I have a feeling that it did not run well after the swap to the single carb and was parked as a result. The non running issue turned out to be the spark plug wires being on in the wrong order. With this sorted out I got the car running and could test out tranny and brakes to make sure of what I was working with.
The car has blue seat inserts matched to exterior color and blue headliner on targa top. Pics of interior as received.
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Glad you decided to step out from the shadows. Good luck with the car!

You are jumping in with both feet. A 6 right off the bat, you’ll be hooked for sure.

next steps were engine removal, general cleaning and -6 conversion. I read as much as I could about other peoples conversion and got as much 914 information as I could find. First project was oil tank. I looked at just purchasing a oil tank. Ben (MB911) was just starting to make his tanks available. I decided to use the opportunity to justify buying a TIG welder. I purchased unfinished VELIOS cast tank from Ben and bought a TIG. I will say welding Aluminum is hard (still cant weld thin stuff). I went thru 3 tanks of gas practicing before I got decent welds. There was a fair amount of machining needed to the raw tank castings as well. In the end my tank turned out pretty good. These castings have bad porosity issues. No leaks at my welds but leaks all over do to porosity that required additional welding to fix. Mostly finished tank and welds.

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Set up for leak testing. Ran long air hose and pressurized in bath tub.

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I used perforated aluminum sheet inside for baffles and de-airing. Copied designs from pictures others had posted. In the end it works well but was a lot of work.

john

Welcome

I kind of got side tracked on introduction. So will start a separate build thread on my blue -6 conversion.
I completed the first conversion with a 2.4 MFI E cam engine and short gear tranny. Dave (racer914) bought this engine and I am currently building the 3rd engine to go in this car. I decided I liked 914-6 a lot and thought about what I might do different. The idea of a GT flared car was appealing so I started looking for another 914. In the meantime I started collecting spares, transmissions, gauges, dash parts and other odds and ends. I started looking at all the reasonably priced 914's that came up for sale locally. I ended up buying a 70 roller that had multiple ugly paint jobs but looked pretty solid. I started stripping off all the paint to see what I had. turned out to be decent under all the layers of paint. No hell hole only tiny rust in jack point and some previous passenger fender repair.

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While thinking about what to do with this car another came up for sale. This was a 75 roller that was a abandoned body shop project. It was a rust free car from southern California had been stripped to bare metal and most of the exterior was ready for paint and super straight, I could not pass it up. I did not have any place to keep this car but worked a deal with a friend to keep it in his car trailer until I could get around to it. I do not have any pics of this one.
Now I have 3 914's two are projects plus my 911 projects and I am running out of places to keep them. So what to do.... Buy another 914!!!!

A 73 came up for sale at a very reasonable price. I went and looked at it and it was rust free so purchased it on the spot. When went to picked it up and drive home the next day I got the full story. Two owner car, documented 83K miles (Porsche dealer stamps in maintenance book) it had only been driven 3K miles in the last 20 years. It has a issue where it will not stay in 4th gear that limited driving and the engine is very well marinated with oil and will need a full reseal. Fuel injection works great and the car is very original. Its too nice to cut up and do a -6 conversion so I will fix the tranny and reseal the engine drive it a little and probably sell it to fund other projects.
Pics after a little disassembly for cleaning.

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Rear after bumper removal and a little cleaning. The underside and wheel wells all clean up like this as well


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So, I jumped into the 914 deep end and like it. I will post some build threads as I start down the road with each of these projects. I appreciate all the information I have gained from the forums and hope to contribute back as I can.

john

John looks great.. Good job.. Lots of work for sure.

Nice
Great to see another Colorado teener.

We have a local 914 Colorado email group I hope your on

Nice to meet you
I wonder if we’ve met in the past as I used to participate in a lot of Colorado DE and then club racing in the 1990’s and early 2000’s

HI Brant,

We probably have meet. I also did a lot of DE's in the late 1990's early 2000 as well. I ran a yellow turbo body targa and then a black SC. I was in the Black run group and also a instructor. My wife (Loelle) also drove and she had a silver 72 Targa.

John Haley

And good luck with your builds.

John
I definitely do remember you
I used to run a -4 black 914 in orange and black run groups and was an instructor also
I used to share my car with my dad Robert
And I’m brant mcclung

Great to see you on here
You should participate in some of the drives and the Red Rocks Classic 914 event next summer !

I dropped out of PCA completely
They walked away from air cooled cars in club racing around 99-2000
I ran my last club race in 2003 and never regretted the decision to leave

Vintage racing was the correct decision for a 914 owner
We have about 20 ex- pca racers in the local vintage gang
Brant

John,


here is the link for the local colorado guys
we sometimes have local drives, or car day events

HERE


the RRC event thread will be on the world site next summer also