Hi everyone.

A little background:

My daily driver is a summer yellow '74 that took me 5 years to restore. It took so long because I fabricated just about every rusty panel and learned a lot about metal work along the way. All of the mechanical parts were also refreshed on that car. Now its a blast to drive!

But, right after purchasing my '74, we came across a rather well priced '70 that looked pretty good (rust isn't that big of a deal). The plan was to cut it up and use the parts on my car since most of the body panels on the '70 were great, and mine weren't. Well, I didn't have the stomach to cut her up so there she sat until my brother decided he wanted to restore her. He started pulling out rust (this was last year), and boy was there a lot of it. At this point he got hooked.

A few months into this project, I found a '72 1.7 on Pelican with a spare 2.0. It didn't have too much rust (for a cheap NE car). We decided to go for it, and the deal was I would get the 2.0 and he would get the car and running 1.7. We got there and the engine in the car was actually a 2.0, and the spare was a 1.7. I ended up giving him the 2.0.

Once it was home we started working on it. It will be my brother John's car eventually (once he pays me ).

We decided to collectively restore it to get it going faster. I've been doing alot of the exterior metal work while he and another middle brother have been doing underbody things and a ton of sanding in the interior compartments. They are both learning how to weld.

The goal with this car is to have almost show quality paint and bodywork along with some minor suspension improvements. We are trying to spend as little as possible to get it to this point and because of this have been making all patch panels by hand.

I spent about 2K on my car including purchase price and paint, so the goal for this one is around $2500.

Sorry for the long story. Now onto the pictures.

These are of the car as bought. John is 6'8" and fits quite well.

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Now onto the body work. Both fender tops near the door handles were really rust (as they probably are on most 914s because of the foam). This was the first fix. Its not ground down yet.

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Some time on the TIG saved these SS HEs purchased from Garold (?) in Indiana a while ago.

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All of our cars have a subtle flare. Its like a signature of our garage since none of us care for the baseball bat method. This allows for bigger wheels/tires and looks pretty close to stock when finished. It is a lot of work though.

Before the cutting. With medium sized dent.

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Mostly cut to positioned to the start of welding.

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After a ton of hammering smooth and some filler. Anywhere there is filler its less than 1/16" thick. A lot of time went into this fender.

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From the back.

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And now onto the other side.

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Now onto the interior where the other guys have been working.

This has taken a long time since they have been learning. Their welding and fab skills have gotten world better in the past few months.

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Now onto their sanding . . .

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The cowl was really bad so I decided to take it off. We'll have to pull another one off the green now parts car or find someone having a sawzall party. If anyone has one please PM me.

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Saturday while they were working I scraped about 1/2" of bondo off the front of the quarter and started pounding it straight again. Its getting there . . . must grown John Kelly skills . . .

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Since we're caught up "That's all for now folks!"

very nice, i like the subtle rear flaring, way cool

mike

Nice work guys. You all get a lot done in a hurry.

Do you add strips of additional metal in making your rear fender flares?

What size wheels and tires are you shooting for?

Will you need to give the front fenders the same treatment?

John

Thanks. This is about 3.5 months progress so we really aren't that fast. The goal is to be done by the end of next summer.

Yep, extra strips about 3/4" in. wide were added. They are tapered so the whole fender doesn't bow out too much. The fronts are staying stock. They have enough room for the tires we are running for now.

Flaring the fronts in this way would be an interesting project though. I wonder if it would look good?

The wheels are some black 15x6 steelies with polished lips. They have a bug offset so they will be a little closer to filling out the small flare than stockers. Currently some 205s will be going on. Eventually it will probably get some correct offset wheels from Diamond Racing. It looks like a correctly offset 8" wide wheel with conservative tires should fit. Something in the 225-235 range would be nice. Not too big.