Awesome work Dana!! Keep the momentum going

The more I see of your work the more I realize how little I know!

This is my favorite build!

Charlie

Way to cool!

Hell yeah Dana that is looking great

Awesome work as usual. Such a cool build.

Pic above reminds me: Why does the 914's nose always look so good when the headlights and their trims are missing? There's just something right about those voids in relation to the other shapes of the front end.

Not that I know what to do with them...other than fill them or reinstall the headlights.

I totally agree, I was admiring the proportions of those openings as well, but yeah what do you do with that information is a harder question.

Vector W8 pop-down headlights?
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Whipped up some cad templates...
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Transferred them to steel.
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Tacked them in.
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Finished the welds to about 90% and shaped the front edge, need to rethink the cowl separation line next then we can do a test tilt with the complete nose!
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Really like the updates. This project is too epic to die. Gotta be tough keeping it alive with everything else in life, but dooood!! Cheering for you.

I always wanted to shave the popup headlights. But they have grown on me and they are a part of the soul of the car. Don't look back I guess. Where will the new headlights go? Not that DOT matters.

Totally missed this—apologies. Your Vector-style pop-down headlights are a genius idea...would provide a change to keep the shape of 914 headlights without the "busy" brow.



Buuuut, you are well on your way now. Suspect this will also look great.

Awesome awesome awesome. First post here. I read the your whole thread. Any updates?

What an amazing build. Just read this whole thread. Wow.

I'm looking forward to the next instalment of The Anklebiter Build. I hope the winter was good to you.

Snort. Slough. Snithch. Dang, you wake me up. Snnghgph.

Sometimes work and life gets in the way. Imagine that.

I thought that video was so cool. That brake looked functional.

I love this build and hope to see it in person some day.

-Steve

Any new developments?

Hey Dana here is a
hope you are still tweezing on the Anklebiter.

@plymouth37 hope you’re doing well these days, Dana.

I'm BAAACK! Actually, I never really left, just did a couple other projects, built a house, took about a year off the car, but never fear, progress has been made, and now it is time to share the last year of work with you.

Here is where I left off, the front clamshell was just about together, just waiting for a bumper and some bodywork:

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I went to bolt on my fiberglass stock-ish bumper and just could not talk myself into liking the look of it, I have just modified this car too much to bolt on something off the shelf. I started researching 916 bumpers and a post on 914 world resonated with me, someone complained that fiberglass 916 bumpers fit so bad that they might as well build one themselves, so that is what I planned to do. The new bumper will be made from steel and modeled after a new take on the 916/Porsche design aesthetic.

This is my design inspiration board, a hint of 916, some contemporary Porsche, and a hint of the similarly styled wrx.
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Using the wrx grills as a loose starting place I did some sketching in Photoshop to get in the ballpark
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I started feeling out the shape by buying a 2014 wrx grill set and trying to integrate them into the 914 with chip board, still rough but I am starting to get a sense of the 3-dimensional shape that will be required to get everything to flow together.

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After I got that in the ballpark I remade my templates and mirrored them for the other side, there are still some waves in the template seams but I have a trick for that.
Stay tuned for next week where I get out the tubing roller and start welding in some structure!

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Hi Friends! Thanks for checking in!

Really like the look, late Cayman style

Great to see you back on this fantastic build. Very tasteful custom job

Best Bob B

I think you nailed it with your design, fits right in with overall car aesthetic. Only critique I have (and it’s an over the top item) is the big plastic inserts, including the grill don’t tie into the all metal look of the car….

WOW! This might be my all time favorite front end for the 914. I can't wait to see your work on this!

Followed this for a long time, what a great project.

You have good eye for design Dana, obviously. Does the non-parallel curvature of the outer bumper edge and front trunk lid edge give you any pause or concern?

That front end is coming out great!

Love what you're doing for the front end!

Wow! Nice work!

I’m so happy you are still working on this!

This is one of the two (likely more) main cars that inspired me to build mine!

So glad to see progress on your car Dana. I like the direction the front end is taking.

One of the most distinctive design characteristics of many Porsches new and old is the rounded transition from the hood surface to the vertical bumper surface, as you can see in this random assortment of Porsche bumpers:
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This would be a really hard dual curvature piece to fabricate so I figured out a hack, I bought a relatively cheap tubing roller at Harbor Freight and some .0625 wall 1.5" tubing and rolled the shape I wanted into it. It isn't a continuous curve, it is a little more rounded in the middle, and a hair flatter around the side grill areas
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Then I duct taped it into place:
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I had initially planned to cut out a quarter of this tube and butt weld it to the other sheet metal but it doesn't weigh much, and i kind of like the idea of an integrated bash bar in here so I think I will leave it whole and build the rest of the bumper around it.
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After rolling out the tube I cut out some sheet metal for the hood extension
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Then welded the tube to the inner structure of the nose, and tacked the hood metal into place:
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Next I put the template back on and gave it a look, definitely getting there, don't worry about the plastic grills, they are only for reference, I have a better final piece planned for those spots
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Time to fabricate the front of the bumper, I started by bending 1/8" steel round stock into frames for the fog light housing.
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I am not going to use these plastic pieces but they make great mirrored templates for the opening shape that I need to integrate into the bumper.
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Then i transferred my chipboard template from the bumper to a sheet of steel, I decided to make the bumper out of 3 pieces, the 2 complex corner pieces and a simple middle rectangle between them.
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I tacked the corners along their top to the curved tubing and folded them into shape, then clamped the fog light housing frames to them to find where everything needed to land.
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After much fiddling and hammering I got the corner pieces tacked into place.
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The round stock I formed for the foglight housings is tacked inside the bumper opening to form a radiused transition.
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Here it is lightly tacked in and with the temporary Foglight housings but I am pretty happy with the results, I will fill in the middle and the weird hole in the corners next time!
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Fantastic from start to…well, here. Really great. I have one concern. When I lived out there you could buy reasonably fresh coffee at a place with two outlets: Pike Place Market and University Village. Star something. Might want to ditch the Folgers habit if those little coffee bean vendors are still around. The down side is that bolts don’t fit as good in Mylar bags as they do in plastic or metal cans. Thou dothe rocke.

You and your build are epically epic in your/its epicness.

You are setting the bar for 914 customization and I think your car is the ONLY one I've seen where the styling changes not only work, but are, IMHO, improvements.

You've accomplished something that, in other hands, would have certainly gone horribly wrong and has instead turned out SOOOOO incredibly well.

I can't compliment you more highly. Wow.

I'll just stop here and drool over your work for a bit longer...

Thanks for the kind words guys!

Tacked in the center piece:
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Filled the little corner gaps around the tube ends and half welded everything together:
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Finished welding:
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With a little light grinding it is starting to take shape!
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Haha,, He is EAST of all that Downtown BS...Im Sure there is some Designer Coffee shops though...

Great Work..

Nice work! Awaiting to see how you finish off that center section, I’m sure it will be good based on all you’ve done so far.

Before I moved on to the grills and lips I filled and primed the hood extension to cut down on the Frankenstien weld aesthetic I had going on there.
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I got it close to straight, good enough for now, now on to the front bumper fab:
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I made some templates for the fog light housing buckets, and started mocking up the lip for the center grill opening:
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This lower bar will divide the air between the radiator and the active under tray that leads to the Ferrari diffuser at the back, as well as providing a sturdy mounting point for the new front tilt system. I like the look of the "pouty" 916 bumper and will try to have a bit of that going on here:
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