Yep could not sleep, I run on 4 hours of sleep during the week, it has its advantages, mostly I do work, and not think of the 914. Most people are not alive in this area, so I can change switch and router configs and knowbody knows. I am off this week, so I have spent hte time doing 914 related stuff, and family stuff. Don't want to hit hte garage at 4 am, and wake the hood up.

What it looks like to me is:
Engman kit stiffens from front wheelwell to jack reciever
Back half is stiffened from the jack reciever to the rear suspension.
The two are not connected, and this is the weakest spot of the whole car. That is what is nice about Brad's kit, it goes from wheel well to wheelwell.
Mark

Here are more pics..

more...

Here is where my problem was..

hi there,

IMHO:
chassis stiffning is only one aspect on this problem.

BUT

what, if the uper door latch on the a-pillar is not proper alighnt to the lower door latch ?? - > door jams and/or bad door gap.
the A-Pillar is from relativ thin material, perhaps here is the weak point in this case ?

A-Pillar can be chekt from inside under the dash behind the speaker.
allighmet can be checkt with sraight 8mm round steel from upper latch to lower latch.

TOM

I am a bit surprised you are getting that much flex from jack stands to sitting on the ground with the petty bar. That petty bar should be holding the firewall/targa bar straight. Is the rear bar tied into the seat belt mounts on the targa bar?

I have gone through this also, I have the upper windshield to targa bar dimensions right on to the factory specs but my door gaps are somewhat tighter than I would like but there is an ok gap. I have fit other doors on my car(both from 73's) that were so tight they did rub so door sizes and fit are different from car to car. One option i have thought about would be to belt sand down the front hinges a little ( 1/16-3/32) as the gaps in front are always fairly wide if this didnt interfere with the door opening and closing, the window track adjustment maybe able to make up the differance.

Okay started the scientific method.

engine is out, dashes drawn all over the car. And here is what I get.

Upper top of the door, I get 1/32" movement with the door in place car down on all 4s.

Middle of the door 1/64" of movement

Bottom less than 1/64" of an inch.

Here are the pictures. 1st with car jacked up, 2nd with car on all 4s.

that 1/32" is enough to cause issues. So I wanted to see what would happen if both doors are open. And what did I find.

The chassis moves 3/64ths of an inch or 1/32" of an inch it is hell getting older. Not much at all. Part of me says take down hte door 1/16th of an inch to move it forward. My last test will be to pull the stricker plate off and see if that is influancing the measurements. I am in hte process of finding 300 pounds worth of stuff to toss in the drivers seat.

Here is the wear on the drivers door. Sorry for the craptography.

BTW, it is the stuff that is not rusted. Plan is to paint the car in June.

In those pics, it looks as if the gap at the front edge of the door looks good. (No chance of moving the door forward there. The car has sagged and must be brought back.

1/32" movement should not be a go/no-go situation, but without an engine, it should not change by that much.

If your gap at the front was large, and you had less than 1/32" movement, I would suggest moving the doors forward.

Someone asked how this was possible. It is easy with a car with a cage (or in your case a roll bar) installed. I use a large diameter turnbuckle between the point where the roll cage/bar is bolted/welded to the long near the lower firewall and push from this anchor point to first the top hinge and then the bottom hinge. You must move slowly an in small increments to insure you don't close the front gap too far. You can easily make adjustments to the hinge post in 1/64"s. Close the door after each stretch to see how you are doing. It doesn't take much to correct the door gaps on a car that is solid. Things are a little more tricky on a car with no cage/anchor point to push from, but they can be done as well.

I could take some pictures if it would help some people to visualize this.




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Stephen, I still feel that the gap between your reinforcements (the jack receiver location is more than likely the weak spot which is causing you your frustrations. I would carefully remove it, reinforce the area and reinstall the jack post (if that is your cup of tea).

I agree John, one thing that I am pondering now is how much push do I need to allow for shrinkage in this area, when it comes back from cool down? My plan is to add stiffeners back into the area, I worked on an engine oil coller leak this last night tested this morning, and now will be going back to the chassis. I want ot get the rust out of the pass log and will do exploriatory surgery on hte drivers, and move on from there.

Let everyone know what I find shortly.

and thanks again to all.

Here is hte carnage from this afternoon. Believe it or not I did finally find some good metal, I need a longer blade to get up in there, and my 4.5" angle grinder does not quite fit either. Time to go find a better tool for the job.

looks like you found your problem ...

Andy

Air chisel is your friend... I removed mine that way (and it reaches all the way up under the sill). Just be careful, they can really dig in if you hit a seam.

I've been thrashing around on the 914 internet for a number of years now and a constant refrain goes sumthin' like this:

"I wanna do (fill in the blank), but I don't wanna do (fill in the blank)".

Be it add power, oil coolers, stiffen chassis/suspension, big tires, whatever, guys looking for shortcuts. There are shortcuts, but most or em'suck.
You can waste a lot of time/effort/money and not go where you want.

Not to stray too far off the subject, I'll add this. The 914 chassis is basicly 2 rectangular boxes joined by 2 long thin (relatively) rectangular tubes.
You can stiffen these tubes till hell freezes over, but without extending past their join points on the end boxes, you're wasting your time & just adding weight....it's also inelegant from an engineering standpoint.... even using an extension of some type. Elegance would be increasing the depth of those center boxes. Welding the doors in place would be one fix....and adding some stiffening to them.

If you can't get your head around the concept, draw a picture. A WAG would put 80% of the 914's mass between the wheels....all of which is supported in both pitch & yaw by those center box sections.

A full cage would stiffen it up as well, but I thought we were trying to offer up REALISTIC solutions, not re-engineering nightmares.

The 914 chassis *is* an engineering nightmare.
Stiffening it up is an engineering exercise.
Realistic means different things to different people. Mine is sufficently stiffened for
Mod class autocross. Hard work & a bit of planning, but hardly a nightmare.
I've probably done no more actual work that Stephen.....just a different plan of attack.
To my way of thinking, a nightmare would be doing a bunch of work & still have a flexi-flyer.

Different auto-x classes will do that. I still have some delusion that I can keep the car a dual purpose car also, I like driving to the auto-xes still and beating the pants off all them trailer babies.

JP I wish I had seen John's stiffening before I did my work, I would have tied on back to the rear suspension console. Plan is right now to fix the rust, I hate rust as much as oil leaks, and then see what I get.

I asked how to move the front gap without cutting rivets or bending metal.
You have a good idea, I am sure it works, but it involves bending metal.

I am concerned that the car does not have the motor in it while you are finding the 1/32 inch movement.
I wonder if that would be more with a motor and a human...

One simple suggestion that would keep the car capable of both street and autox/track would be to add an angled bar from the roll bar (provided its bolted to the seat belt hole) and the front a-piller at your feet, where the speakers go.
This bar could be bent to allow easier access when getting in and out, yet provide some rigid strength in your problem area.
If you do this, consider one more bar going rearward to the shock tower inside the engine bay, under the lid.

In the worst case scenario, I would grind the fender, and grind the door a bit, and call it a day. Door gap grinding is quite common, and it was what I was gonna suggest...its not to hard, and if you happen to blow through the door skin on the edge, weld it up, and dress it with a grinder.
I think 3/32 is the proper door gap width, but I would personally find the largest gap on the door as it sits, and make the rest of the door match.
I would work over that fender first, grind off what you can, then take a 1*1 metal tube and a hammer and push it back just a bit more.
Then do the door, the handle will certainly move 1/32 of an inch forward.

Rich

Ya I'm a certified welder so here it goes. Many think that if one welds a bunch of stuff together everything will be fine once all loades are returned back to normal but that ain't so. Every weld joint is a huge factor since cooling welds actually draws the steel in tighter as the metal is welded, heated and cooled. So adding more stuff can actually shorten your rough door opening more welds you put on. The best way to ensure that this does not happen, is to precamber the opening by jacking the car up at it's weekest point and increasing it's total length. Once welded and the car dropped, them the metal will sag to hopefully a desirable position. Common sense dictates that most things fail at their tension side but thats entirely faulse. The compression side typically fails first before the tension side is affected. Like making a wooden bow, when we pull on the string, we see that the side furthest away from us, the front side, splinters and then the bow brakes. The reality is that the compression side, the back side closest to us, fails before the visual front side cracks. If you added an additional strong compression member as opposed to a more robust tension member, the difference would be dramatic. To add a kicker to the door opening in front of the door post would look wierd and useless and a solid roof sounds like a reasonable idea however, the window frame is not a huge structural member thus making the support system inadequate on. The best alternative is a full role cage which ties in the wheel wells and bypasses the longs all together as well as not relying on the car's skin for structural strength. Okay, now ya got it stiff but with all that weight, its to slow; but thats another topic

"Okay, now ya got it stiff but with all that weight, its to slow; but thats another topic "

Not really I have to run a minium weight for my class, so it is not a topic, it is a mute point.

Anyway weight can be taken out, I am very good at tit for tat weight.

Cool. Whats gets me is when ya look into the inside where all the car body parts are welded together, if you notice, they just tacked all the pieces up with like 1" welds, like 4" apart and cold tacks at that. The whole car is tacked together.

Yep it is tacked together, and then spot welded, which is not bad in a production model. Speed and a chimp could do it, for production. First welder I learned to use was when I was 6 was a fusion welder (spot welder) set your GA on the knob, slap two pieces of steel into the jaws, wait for the beep. Very Pavlov Dog sort of thing. I built a ton of stuff with that welder, matter of fact I keep thinking I should have one around for quick tacks. But a Mig is just as easy to grab and way more versatile. Yet I like hearing the bell, makes my tail wag, and my mouth

Great thread, good points, lots to learn.

Has anybody just bit the bullet and welded the doors shut? Seems like a quick and dirty method to solve lots of chassis flex. Of course this would be good if the driver was skinny and nimble or the top chopped off and the car dedicated to track or AX....not many of these situations apply here (?)

I don't think you want to just weld the door skins to the body. It would be much more effective to weld the gaps shut (and the doors in) and then somehow bridge the gap between the inner door frame and the jamb, welding that together. That way, all of the chassis flex would be concentrate on a larger area and more effectively handled.

That wouldn't be the most weight conscious thing though; its probably lighter to weld door bars in (NASCAR style) and then simply mount a fiberglass skin to them.

Worked like a charm

Spot welders are cool.

Rick

What are we looking at here? Is this a spot welder that welds 2 spots at once from one side? If so, way cool! I have not seen this. Where do I get one?

Well I bit the bullet so to speak, I installed a kit from 914 limited, Brad was a stand up guy.

I took a 10 ton portapower and replaced my petty bar and spread the chassis so my door gaps where a little of 5 /32s Tested the doors everhything is great, Clean everything up, rip out al the runst install the kit. Finish it up today, lower the car down on all fours and watch the door gap close up again. Passengar side is good, door opens and shuts with easy. Driverside still binds a little. So out comes portapower again and I adjust the door. It is now opening very nicely, actually better than the passengar side. I might have to do that to that side also. the drivers side must have been hit pretty good, but it is fixed.

Thats a spot welder which has one handel as the negative and the other as a positive. The best way to use that is to do one wekd with it and place each handel on either side of the steel. As you can see, that would be impossible in that picture. Everyone should have one of these and kill the rivet gun

As for the jack hole fix. You can do a long restoration but then you can weld some steel on instead if you want to do away with the jack hole. Before you plate the jack hole, make shure you have the car jacked under the pivot point, weekest point, of your problem a bit more than your perfect gap dimension by about 1/8" to 1/4". Plate the hole over and if the jack is not in the way, weld a piece of metal under the longs. Once done and welded, it will be under tension and when the jack is released, if your precambering dimensions were right, it will sag just a little to where your door is perfectly spaced. It shoule be close enougfh to adjust with shims at the hinges if need be.

JPB - it is done, BTW that is what Brad's kit does, it just ties a lot more of the structure togther. It wrpas aournd the bottom of the log.

Point I was trying to make was my car had multipule problems, which was mentioned before. the rust in the pass side jack hole is fixed, the drivers side had miniumal rusting, in another 10 years it would have been a problem, maybe more. The drivers side door was hit and fender also. I still need to move the lower fender back into proper location. But that will require the door to come off, looks like body work next off season. Next off season might find a custom cage going into the car also. The Dash will have to come out for that to happen. BTW, both doors open, I can get into the car, and close them, and re-open them. Which I could not do before I made the fix. Now I just need to find 33 pounds to take back out fo the car. Hmmm.....

Pass side covered in Eastwood's Rust encapsulation paint.

Im planning to weld in Brads kit today, I put the Engman kit in first and now Brads kit to finish it off. Brads kit is massive, it's hard to believe that there could be any chassis
flex or door gaps relaxing after it's installed . I dont plan on using the roll bar so this seems to be the next best thing. Im not concerned with the weight, the roll bar weighed a ton and I do have lightweight doors plus over 400hp.