The long all cleaned up and primered. No rust through but there is significant damage. I'll seam weld the jack point and the one seam just in front of the jack point. The door jamb support is almost rusted off.

The front fender pic shows the rust hole in the bulkhead. Not real big but will be welded when I do the fender.

I could buy new rocker panels to replace the rusted ones on the car. But then again, that's why I bought a welder. First had to see how bad the damage and make a replacement piece. I made the piece before cutting out the bad stuff just so the piece would fit right.

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Cut out the bad stuff and test fit. Needed a little trimming here and there.

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Just want to hold the piece in with some spot welds. The edges of the bottom and around the jack point were bent with a pair of pliers. Not real sophisticated but it worked.

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All welded in and grinded smooth. Will continue working the metal to get it flat then add some bondo to smooth the welds and paint.

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Looking good!!

Painted the rocker after seam welding the jack support. The brace in front of the jack support is just about gone but I don't want to dig into this area just yet. It's still ok for now.

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Painted the fender with my airbrush. Also painted the patch on the tub below the fender. While I was here, thought I'd paint the brake caliper.

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Put the rocker panel on for now so I can drive the car and have it look complete. Since I'm using screws instead of the rivets in the door jamb, I can remove and replace the rocker panel in minutes. If only the factory used screws maybe rocker panels would have been taken off on a regular basis for cleaning out all the road debris that gets deposited behind the panel and more 914's would be in better shape.

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When I converted to 5-lug, the '87 911 front end was set up for brake wear sensors. I left the wear sensors on the pads and the mounting hardware on the struts but obviously the 914 is not set up for wear sensors.

I wanted to connect the wear sensors to the brake warning light in the dash. It should be easy to do since the parking brake-arm switch is a simple switch to ground. When the parking brake is pulled, the switch closes to ground and the brake warning light goes on.

Brake pad wear sensors are simple sensors being a short circuit when the pad is ok and an open circuit when worn. Just the opposite as the parking brake switch. The wear sensors are connected in series such that when either one wears, the alarm should be activated.

Since the wear sensors are opposite polarity as the parking brake switch, I needed to build an inverting circuit such that when the pads are good, the circuit should be open. When the pads are worn, the circuit should short to ground.

The circuit below provides the interface between the pad sensors and the parking brake switch. For ease of implementation, I connected the output of the circuit directly across parking brake switch.

The toggle switch on the circuit board is center off type so has 3 positions:

UP: wear sensors connected to circuit
Center: open circuit simulating worn sensors for testing.
DOWN: simulates good sensors and also allows disabling of the circuit.

The toggle switch is necessary in case the brake warning light is on so I can tell if the light is on for the wear sensors, the parking brake, or the master cylinder warning switch.

Connector to the circuit is a PC power connector.

The chassis side connectors to the wear sensors were connected to the struts when I bought them. They were cut off so I need to make a harness with 2 wires. The harness needs to go from one connector to the other, and have wires going into the cabin to the inverter circuit.

For my harness, I used a length of rubber hose I found in the attic. I couldn't fish 2 wires in this hose so I fished one first.

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Then soldered the 2 wires to the first and pulled the 2 through.

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Soldered the two wires to one of the connectors.

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Once wires are soldered and heat shrink tubing applied, I pulled the hose up to the existing sheath.

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Soldered the other side and applied heat shrink tubing. I cut a small hole in the middle of the harness where the wires will go into the cabin. I left one of the wires very long so that it will be the wires into the cabin.

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With heat shrink tubing on the cabin wire, the harness is finished and ready for install.

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It's always a jackstand party when Spoke gets under the car. Can you count how many jackstands are being used?

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I simply tiewrapped the harness in place along the hard and flexible lines.

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Pulled out the gauge to find the wire from the parking brake switch to the indicator light. The wire goes directly to the light so piece of cake to find it and splice on a wire to go to the inverter circuit.

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To get the wires from the undercarriage to the cabin, I drilled a small hole and installed a rubber grommet to protect the wire. Before installing the grommet, I put some paint on the exposed metal from drilling.

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With all wiring completed, shrink wrapped and taped, the circuit will be placed on the dash support right under the radio. Circuit tested ok so it begins its life hidden under the dash. The next time I think about this circuit will be when the pads are worn.

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I have been reading this post all in once!
Great job!

may I ask you a quick question,
I would like to repalce the rear suspension of my '73 2.0 by myself and I wonder about how hard is that job!

I can not high the car so much, just enought for going under

Is an easy job?

Ciao, and once again congratulation for your car from Italy!

Hi and thanks for the complement.

By the way,



Have fun on this site. This is the best 914 site on the planet. These guys here will help you out of any jam you get into with your 914. Chances are if you have trouble someone's already had it before and can help. Check the "Lapuwali Classic Thread Forum" here for how-to articles.



Removing the rear suspension is quite easy as jobs go. The only difficult part may be that some of the bolts are rusted. I had a major problem on my 71 914 with a shock bolt that was rusted on. I ended up grinding the head off so I could remove the shock.

Here's a quick how to remove the rear swing arms:

1) Jack car up, remove tire and remove cotter pin holding center nut. Replace tire and lower jack.

2) With breaker bar and correct size socket, loosen center nut and remove.

3) Put car on jackstands. Use more than one on each side for safety, and stack the tires under the car for added safety.

4) Push on brake pedal and hold down with a stick. This keeps the brake fluid from draining when you remove the rear caliper.

5) Remove brake caliper and disconnect from brake line and emergency brake cable.

6) Remove the shock. One nut at the top and big bolt through the rear swing arm. Support the rear swing arm with a jack or other item to keep it from dropping and the drive shaft hitting the heat exchanger.

7) Remove large nut on swing arm pivot on the inside. Remove outer nut too. Remove 3 bolts holding outer swing arm adjustment plate. Watch out for alignment shims falling to the ground. Keep track of where they go and how many.

8) At this point, I've found I can remove the swing arm without disconnecting the drive axle from the transmission. If the axle spline is stuck in the hub, push it out with a gear puller just to loosen it. It should then come out on its own. You may want to remove the axle from the transmission if you want to repack or inspect the CV joints.


I might be forgetting something or other members may want to chime in with their methods or point you to a link. It isn't necessarily a hard job, just takes some time. The rear end will need aligned after replacement.

Thank you very much for your help!

This forum is very helpfull and you guys are nice and kind!

I will create a new post soon to show my car, and maybe to show the work that i will do on it

Ciao!

Please do!

Adding Pictures to Your Post - FAQ thread

I just read through all 9 pages so far, and I must add that this is inspiring...

How are you going to remove rust from the frame/jack points when you are ready to tackle it, and how did you pick away at all the tar? My car has it undercoated as well, and just short of manually picking it all off and without a sand blaster, what would be a good method?

Again, good job on the resto. Have you tried taking a sample of your paint and getting it matched by computer?

How many coats of high gloss enamel (from Home Depot) did you use on the front gas tank and other parts?

Sorry for all the questions...

Pete

Thanks for the kind words. I just wish I had more time (and warm weather) to work on the car.

I didn't have to pick away the tar on the jack points as the rust had eaten into the metal. On the other areas of the frame where there was no rust, I didn't touch them. In the fender wells, the undercoating tar had hardened and could be scraped off or softened with parts cleaner & steel brush and wiped off.

I'll probably do the sample of paint when I'm ready to paint the entire car. At my pace that will be about 3 years from now. I like driving my car too much to want to dismantle it to paint it. I'll get there someday.

The paint on the gas tank is from HD. It's made by Rust-oleum and called "Appliance Epoxy/ultra-hard enamel". It's very slow drying and has a real high gloss. I've used it on both sets of fake fuchs on both of my 914s. Cleans up real well on the wheels.

SPOKE FANTASTIC JOB SIR!!
Very helpful to those with less mechanical experience like myself. Keep up the great work!!

Nice work homeskillet! Love them flares

Just a little added insurance tucked right in front of the passenger seat.

Well done, one hellva job.......

Reinstalled the CHT and vacuum gauges which were originally mounted on the steering column.

The vacuum gauge was never on the car from the time I purchased the car. It was in a box of goodies that came with it. When looking behind the dash for the wires for the CHT, I saw a hose for the vacuum gauge which was routed through the tunnel and to the engine compartment and decided to install the gauge.

Turns out the hose was disconnected from the engine intake but not plugged up. I've had a vacuum leak for as long as I've had the car. The connection for the gauge was taken from the sense hose to the decel valve. This pretty much means my decel valve hasn't been working because of the vacuum leak at the T.

The CHT sender was never connected to the head. I didn't know where or how the sender was attached to the head so I just put the sender under a bolt for the tin. Where or how is this sender mounted?

The CHT and vacuum gauge install is quite basic. They are panel mount gauges mounted on the steering column. The wiring came through a hole in the dash. I didn't change much except I cleaned up the wiring a bit. I put the wires in shrink wrap tubing.

The bottom wires are for the CHT sender and the top wires are for the lighting.

I covered the spades with scrinkwrap too. Using a larger diameter wrap, the wrap was heated and when hot, the loose part of the wrap around the wires was squeezed and folded to conform with the wire. Shrink wrap can be folded on itself when hot and will stick together in that shape when it cools. It is excellent for covering exposed spades.

Once I reinstall the dash face, I'll wrap the wires and hose with tape.

The dash background was separating from the dash so I removed it and reglued it. Also sprayed it with interior paint.

Painted the backs of the gauges that mount on the steering column. This way they will look a bit more finished.

Some interior pics after finishing the dashboard background.

Just in time too, sale pending.

Damn, what an awesome car

Sold. The new owner (a 914World member) driving away. I should be sad but this makes room in the garage for a 911. I'm looking for a late 80s to late 90s 911. It'll be a retirement present for me.

I still have the red 71 914 so I'll still be driving a mid-engined Porsche.