the car came in when she popped a rocker arm stud. I put her up on stands and went home. teh next day, I tried to close teh passenger side door and discovered this.

the hell hole was white, teh battery tray perfect but teh shape in teh bottom of teh long and engine shelf was off. it was a rounded bowl shape with no corners anywhere. there was some rust bubbling but at a glance looked OK. it was finely sculpted bondo, chicken wire and giant blobs of??...I still dont know

its so mangled, I'll post a reference shot

I thought I could scab plate it till I looked at teh inside of the long. you can move teh chassis with one hand on the bumper

ripped and about to break in half

vczbhn

...it gets worse, much worse

ghck

<pucker~!>

not done yet. it gets worse...

look inside teh long

is that a bunch of MIG wire in there?

but wait folks, if you order right now, you get the extra chunks free, thats right, a 5 lbs bag of bondo chunks at no additional charge.

this was a sweet looking ride. mmm...leather, sniff sniff

yup, mig wire

he paid 5200 for this car in 2003. advertised as "perfect 914"


what would you guys do about it? it will cost MORE than that to fix it

gfh

Eeep! Only two options I see... Suck it up and fix it or chassis swap.

5 years later? not much recourse i would think.

buy a roller and swap all the good over.

sell/give the tub to to some one thats wants to try to save it or pratice welding repair on.

the owner wants to throw in the towel on his dream. I told him it would be most cost effective to transplant his components. he is talking parting it out. we all know about first 914 experiences

What? That's normal. Suck it up, order the parts and fix it. Every piece is available. Still sux though.

Well that's creative....

Fix it, or give it to me and I'll fix it. I fixed/am still fixing worse on my 914 and the body of mine is in WAY worse shape. If my 914 was that pretty I would have a lot more motivation to finish it too!

Seriously though, if it gets parted out I'd be interested in the tub if it doesn't get messed up in the parting out process.

-Chris

anyone able to turn this post into a poll?
repair
transplant to new chassis
or part it out

Well if he still wants a 914, he should find a tub. We have all seen bare tubs on the west coast for cheap.

When he does the swap, clean everything up, replace the wear items, and he will have a super nice 914 for years to come.

Someone will probably even take the bad tub off his hands and fix that! If he wants to sell the dream let me know and I will do the swap if the rest of the car is as nice as it looks.

Jim

I agree with what others have said. Looks like it's got nice parts, swap them to a nice tub. Cheap to do, then let someone else fix the rust bucket. It's all fixable, but if it were mine and it was that bad, I'd be worried about the rust that isn't as easy to see in other areas of the car.



and I thought my first attempts at welding were bad!

I am letting him grieve a while. once the sting wears off, I'll show him this thread and all y'alls words of encouragement. he got beat up on teh motor too. it had to be rebuilt twice and had to fight the shop to make it right and now this! I understand why he would want to bail out

Maybe I'm a glutton for work,

But that is exactly why I buy old cars with crappy paint so that I can see what is there.....

Does it work all the time? No, I did buy a car once where the DAPO had a wreck, replaced the front fenders with new ones, and and bondo'd t the inner trunk area to hide the dents and ripples. The paint was OLD.

With a car that nice looking, I'd probably bite the bullet and fix the rust.

Ken

For Minnesota.

Start a new poll thread (so it's your thread, not mine). And send me a PM right away with a link to this thread and the poll thread and I can merge the two threads.

Not everyone has the... looking for the right word... or words... the capacity/capability/storage/cash/means/ability/time/patience (pick one or more) to deal with that level of automotive endeavor.

i'm so lucky, as little as i knew about 914's when i bought mine, that could have been me.

What does the rest of of the car look like? Is the drivers side long in bad shape? Does the rest of the car look solid? If the rest is good, fix it.

Ya still need to post the name of the shop.....

in due time, I will

put it in storage and in 5 years it will be worth fixing.

Can't blame the guy, I would be sick too.
BUT, I would use this adversity to make a real perfect 914 this time around. Get a nice tub and have it stripped and painted just right and then slowly put all of the nice parts on it.
First 914 I bought. the clutch went out a month after I got it. So, I dropped the engine to clean it up and paint the tin and put in the new clutch. While I had the engine out, I trailered it to the body shop for the front flares and new paint. Already had the rear flares on. When it came back, I had the engine ready to go in. Drove it for several years before selling, wish I had kept it.
Good luck to him either way.
Tom