Pulled the antenna out. Won't be replacing it. I listen to CDs only so I will weld up this hole.

Wetsanded, prepped, and primered the tank and filler.

Painted the tank and filler assembly with Epoxy appliance paint from Home Depot. Gives a real nice sheen.

Pulled the front trunk rubber seal to repair the rust bubble on the passenger fender. Also will remove the antenna. No more terrestial radio for this car. The last time I listened to terrestial radio was one of Howard Stern's last shows before moving to Sirius.

Found rust holes in the channels on both sides of the car. 2 are small enough to fill with weld, one needs a little piece of metal to close the wound.

Got the antenna hole welded up. Rain channels also welded up.

Fenders and rain channels primed and painted. I have about a pint of paint that came with the car. Need to use the paint sparingly as I want to paint the rear fenders after flaring.

Used my airbrush for the paint touch-up. Worked out real good using only a very small amount of paint. Very nice finish with the airbrush. The paint color looks to match very well.

Fuel lines replaced, new filter, new clamps (FI type). Tested connections before lowering tank into place. Real easy to place the tank w/o the trunk lid.

Replaced original broken trunk floor with MDF. Thickness is about 7/16 inch.

Installed new (to me) 180LB springs which I thought would lower the car although the current springs look to be 140/165/180 already and the same length.

Spring diameters:

74: 0.442 inch
180LB: 0.479 inch

The new ones are progressive. I did lower the bottom perches by about 1/4 inch. Overall result is no lowering of the rear.

Anyone need some springs? If I could determine the spring rate of the old springs, I'd sell them.

Multiple jackstands to avoid a Gint-event.

Chrome front bumper is on along with an excellent bumper top. Still need to pound out some ripples from where the bumperettes were. Haven't decided to put bolts in the bumperette holes yet; may just leave the holes.

I have fog lights and grills to install but the front panel behind the bumper was replaced after an accident a long time ago and the new panel doesn't have mounting bolts for the fogs. The whole front panel is a mess. The panel is in good shape, rust wise, but the welds around the front fenders on both sides have rusted as has the front part of the trunk lid gasket channel.

BTW, your eyes do not decieve you, the front trunk lid and headlight covers were repainted at some point with a nasty looking puke green color. Really not even a close match to the rest of the car.

It's lookin pretty good!

I haven't put the gasket back in and the driver side of the front trunk lid does not sit flush with the front fender. The rubber bumper is much lower than the lid position so it is not stopping the lid from fitting right. The passenger side is flush.

Can I twist the trunk lid to sit right or will this damage the lid?

Still working on the rear flares, trying to get both sides to look alike.

Meanwhile, I removed the rear suspension to replace bearings and hubs.

I got inspired by Eric Shea's trailing arm strengthening as well as what Chris Foley had done and Aaron's comment:

"what if you ran one at a 45 degree angle.. inner right bottom to upper left top etc? oh wait... too much geometry LOL"

The pics below are from Eric's thread:
Glimpse of Things to Come?

Eric Shea's strengthening:

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Chris Foley's strengthening:

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So combining Eric's, Chris's, and Aaron's ideas into one, I decided to use 3/8 inch steel rod at 45 degree angles in 2 pairs.

First order of business is to drill the holes. I used 4 drills starting with 1/4 inch up to 3/8 inch. Each pair of cross supports are offset as to not interfere with its mate.

These pics show the steel rod and long 3/8 inch drill bit as cross-support pair. The drilling took some time but was quite easy. Eric's large diameter hole drilling comments scared me away from his tubular strengthening.

Chris's cutting the arm in half to put in the plate is way out of my realm of experience and materials.

Not sure how much this will strengthen the arms but it sure was fun doing it.

All holes drilled, wire wheeled the holes in prep for welding.

Welding was a breeze as the thick arm steel and 3/8 inch rod meant no blow-through like when welding on fenders. I used the Millermatic 135 on 5.5 heat setting (out of 10) and 55 wire speed (out of 100).

I started with the first weld with the end of the rod barely sticking out of the hole. When the other side was welded, I cut the rod off at the desired height.

This allowed me to not have to measure lengths of the rod and one 4 ft rod was all I needed for the 8 pieces.

Nearing the end of the job. With the rod sticking out, this could very well be "Franken-Arm". I wonder if the car would go faster if I put 50000 volts on the rod?

Finally, after some grinding, the finished product.

Again, not sure if I did any real strengthening, but it was a fun afternoon.

Now on to putting bearings in and hubs on. Both are in the freezer. My wife thought I was mental when she saw auto parts in the chest freezer.

Bearings now installed. The first bearing needed quite a bit of coaxing to go in. Used the 1/2 inch all thread with the wood stops to pull the bearings in. The second bearing went more than half way on with gentle tapping before I needed the all thread.

I used one piece of wood in the back and one in the front with the bearing plate to buffer the bearing from the wood. The wood is 1 1/8 inch American Cherry. Not extremely hard but also not that soft.

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To pull the hubs on, I cut down the size of the rear piece of wood to fit on the bearing itself. The hubs went right on with moderate resistance.

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The hubs on, ready for paint.

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Rear arms painted gloss black.

NICE WORK!!!

WTF?

Things were going along well until I saw a little flake of paint on the passenger suspension console. After a little poking, I have found quite a bit of rust. I poked all around but didn't find any more. Will look at it later in detail.

So how bad is this rust? What else should I look at?

Right now I plan to cut out that entire section and weld on. How thick material should I use?

Took the grinder to the console rust. There's a hole in the console upright which was hidden by the outside support piece.

So should I be looking elsewhere for rust? How bad does this look? I've poked around and didn't find any soft spots. What is the gauge of steel? Is this 16 gauge?

Damn.

Make real sure that nothing is soft in there. I'd seriously consider getting a new suspension ear and doing it "100%", "while you're in there". You don't want to spend time repairing that area and finding out later that the console gave out from rust that you could have sured today.

Yes, do the whole thing. You don't want to see this...Click to view attachment

I've grinded all the soft stuff out. I will weld up patches on all the missing parts and put it back together and seam weld everything. Haven't seen anything else soft on this side and driver's side.

A little break from body work and fender repair to "upgrade" the tach from a 74 with single turnsignal indicator to 72 with individual turnsignal indicators.

Also will add a 3000uF capacitor to the tach windings to reduce the overshoot of the stock tach.

Removed the needles and faceplates. Old plate on the left new plate on the right. Tach in center was used to test the operation with the capacitor.
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Here's the tach with the capacitor to test fit its placement. I will hot melt glue the cap to the turnsignal tubes to secure it.
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Capacitor wired and hot-melt glued into place. Glued the wire at the tach board edge and capacitor top for strain relief from vibration.
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With the faceplate and needle installed, a little blurry test of the turnsignal and highbeam indicators. Ready for a road test to check for operation before replacing the glass and bezel. I am also replacing the glass as the one from my 74 had a plastic lense and the 72 has a glass lense.
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I have a set of lamps for the turn signal indicators from the old tach that I had. Added a length of wire to reach to the emergency flasher switch. I'll tap on to the front or rear turnsignal lamps which connect to the switch.

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Turnsignal indicators soldered to the turnsignal lamps.

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Here's the dash all refurbished and ready for install. The trim rings and frame were in good shape so I just cleaned and waxed them. Among the refurbishments:

Backdated tach with separate right and left turnsignal indicators. I used the old tach case, faceplate, and glass. The 74 had a plastic lense. From the 74 I used the tach mechanism, needle and faceframe. Painted the needle with red flourescent paint.

Added 3000uF capacitor across the tach windings to get rid of the bouncing. This cap worked wonders in calming the needle. Now the needle moves smoothly high and low without any bouncing or overshoots. I think 3000uF is a bit too much. The tach at times seems a bit lethargic in response but the stability of the needle makes up for it.

Opened up the speedometer and cleaned the faceplate and glass and painted the needle. The speedo's lense was the only glass lense on the car when I bought it.

Opened the gas/temp gauge to replace its plastic lense with a glass lense. Painted the needles on both gauges.

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Nice job! Can you explain tach overshoot? tach bounce?

The tach needle is a very free moving mechanism. The tach electronics convert the opening and closing of the coil points or electronic ignition into a DC voltage. The DC voltage is proportional to the speed of the engine thus the tach needle goes up with increased engine speed and down when engine speed is decreased.

If the dc voltage on the needle is allowed to change rapidly like when the throttle is blipped in neutral or when the engine is slowed quickly, the tach will jump up or drop quickly to the correct engine speed but then overshoot because of its own momentum. The overshoot then oscillates a couple of times before settling down to the correct engine speed.

A capacitor across the needle windings dampens the change of voltage thus making the needle movement slower and eliminating the overshoot. The bigger the cap the more damping action. Just the right amount of capacitance across the windings will yield a nice fast response without the overshoot. 3000uF like I used is too much. If I dig into the tach again, I'll change to perhaps 2000uF which should give more responsive operation without bouncing around.

OK, back to the welding.

I've had a change of plans for the green car. Plan was to do the body work on the rear flares and paint. But the clutch in the red 914 is starting to slip pretty bad. Too much throttle in 3rd, 4th, or 5th gear will start the slipping. Acceleration is really touchy. So it's time to get the red car off the road. I have a new engine to go in along with a clutch which hopefully is in better shape than the one on the car now.

I can't have 2 914s and neither are operational so the green car will be repaired and put back together without finishing the bodywork. The bodyword will be finished as time permits between spirited drives

Filled the 6 holes from where the reflector was mounted. My welding sucks but I'm getting better all the time. Can't run a full bead yet. I tried the stop/start method, running a bead about a 1/4 inch and stopping. Learning proper speed and power settings.
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Welded up the little holes under the tie plate with 14 ga steel. Seam welded everything I could see from this vantage point without removing the engine or rocker panel. Will go back on the seam welds when the tie plate is welded.
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With a piece of cardstock, I fashioned a template for the replacement tie strip.

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Tie strip cut from 14 ga steel. Bend and final shaping and its ready for welding.

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Welded up the metal around the taillight which was pancaked from a shunt. When I un-pancaked it, or as my neighbor would say, "I un-fucked it", the metal tore open so had to be welded up. The rear quarter panel is just about ready for final shaping.

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Tie strap welded in and excess weld grinded down and ready for paint.

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It was no wonder that this tie plate rusted out as the edges of the plate were not welded all the way around and several openings were left un welded and un-seam sealed.

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Sanded and degreased the area for painting. Rattle canned the primer and used my airbrush to put down the final coat.

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I only painted the area around the console repair. I resisted the desire to paint the entire wheel well or even paint and seam weld the driver's side. You know, avoiding the "while I'm in there" syndrom.

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I didn't paint or seam seal the entire console since I couldn't remove the rocker panel since the car is wedged in the corner of the garage and it didn't have its back wheels on to move it. Will finish this job later when I pull the rockers.

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Keeping with my theme of doing small jobs while keeping the car on the road, next little job is to smooth the back panel after welding the holes and paint it.

After straightening the back panel, I applied a layer of glaze for the final coat.

Only painting the outside and inside of the panel as well as the trunk lock support member.

I'm airbrushing the paint on to maximize the pint of paint left. Still need to do both rear fenders as well as a rust spot on the front passenger fender.

All painted and emblems reattached.

Looks good

Next job is to get the back of the car cleaned up, rust-wise, install the rear swaybar brackets, and eventually put the muffler heat shield back on.

For now, need to sandblast the rear trunk floor top and bottom. Just surface rust so no major work needs to be done other than cleanup rust and paint.

I tried to cover everything on the car to make sure the sand doesn't penetrate into unwanted areas. Even covered up the jack and trunk lock mechanism.

I have many old bedsheets which work good in protecting the car from flying sand.

Sandblasted and painted some other parts including rear swaybar and muffler hanger.

Lookin Good Spoke... keep it up.

Swaybar supports welded on.

Swaybar mounting brackets welded on.

Finally, it's time to finish the rear flared fenders. Bondo is on and sanded. I used about a 1/2 quart of bondo, most of which has been sanded off and vacuumed up.

I'm just painting the minimum that is needed since I have less than 1 pint of paint. Got the primer on tonight and I've put the first coat of paint on. I used the full size paint gun for the primer and am using the smaller gun for the paint.

Here's the fenders with primer.

Really nice work. I am in the process of starting to go through mine.

2 coats of paint, thinned 1:1 went on very nicely with the smaller HVLP gun. Paint looks like glass. Used very little of my paint. I should have enough to paint the rust repair on the front fender and hopefully, paint the hood.

Looking good, keep up the good work.

Time to attack the only rust through hole on the car on the passenger front fender. What gauge is the skin of a 914? It looks like it's 20ga. The cut out hole is larger than I expected but there was significant thinning of the metal around the actual rust through.

Pulled the passenger rocker panel off since it was showing some serious rust issues around the jack point. The rocker panel is in good shape except for this area around the jack point.

I don't know how the 914 designers could have messed this area of the car up any more. On the engine side of the long, you have the acid from the battery. On the outside of the long, you have road junk from the rear wheel accumulating on the jack point.

The jack point is still sturdy as I'm able to jack the car up with no flexing. Need to get this cleaned up to see the full extent of the damage.

The rest of the passenger long looks excellent. Gotta love the 70's era rustproofing: Spray tar inside and out.

Ready to sandblast. Don't want sand in the car so it's wrapped up very tight with the car cover and an assortment of old bed sheets. The sheets on the driveway will help the clean-up effort as well as recycle the sand.

Note the paper jammed in a rust hole below the front fender. Found this when poking around after removing the rocker.

Rust on the longitudinal is quite serious. Didn't find any holes but it doesn't look good.