Hey guys i'm new, name's James, i've been surfing the forum for the last few weeks. At first i was planning on building a sr20 datsun 240z, but through some convincing by dlo, i decided to go with a subaru swapped 914. i just picked up the 914 yesterday and started working on it today. I'll try to document what i do in this thread. anyways im new at this and i'm working on a limited budget, so anything you can contribute would be greatly appreciated. especially knowledge and parts on a subaru swap. i'm a full time student so its mostly a weekend project, i hope to get done by summer.

picked up the 914 from dale in lake elsinore. who still has a red roller for sale.


heres how it sat when i showed up. it was sitting at the top of a long uphill dirt road which my car could not make it up. dale drove me and dlo up the hill to check out the car. very nice guy.



heres the front trunk and gas tank.



the rear trunk


here we are towing the car down the dirt road with dlo in the cockpit.



finally next to the street. along with my car and onto the tow truck!

here it is sitting at my house.

Guy's this car was a bargain! It's a 74' with front and rear sway bars, minimal rust. Battery tray is toast, but underneath is solid, rust bubble at right rear next to taillight, longs are solid, surface rust in front and rear trunks, and get this all for just $300.

Our next goal is to find a suby powerplant, sideshift tranny, OEM engine bar and KEP adapter plate. Then we can begin to mock up the engine and tranny to fab the engine mounts.

heres a picture of the battery tray, we're probably going to relocate it to one of the trunks.
the other side


rust on passenger rear quarter panel




ps. can anyone find the face in the first picture from my first post!

and that dog in the picture with the van pulling the 914, it belonged to the neighbors, it followed us almost all the way down the dirt road, it belonged to the neighbors.

heres a story. after we got it down the dirt road waiting for the tow truck driver. that building behind the picture with the 914 and the prelude, belonged to a previous 914 owner. he came out and talked to me, told me if the tow truck didnt make it that night we could roll the car into his property and leave it there til morning if i wanted to. very nice guy, i believe his name was K.C. or Casey. he went back inside and grabbed some framed pictures and brought them out to show me. a 72 white with red accents with a 911 6 swap. he said he sold it once he moved out here to a kid who was an audiophile (maybe one of you?) anyways what an experience owning a porsche

If you go with a turbo subaru swap and decide to use renegade's intercooler relocation or your own solution, you'll have to move the battery anyway. Even if you don't plan on turbo, you'll eventually want more power, I always plan for an upgrade. I like to keep my targa in the trunk, so a front location makes more sense to me. In the front, you'll be closer to the fan relays anyway.

Your new car is a 1975 .


Can open , WERMS all over the place . GET ready for that experience Of your life .

BUDGET and 914







Ledzepplin
Jumboe shrimp
Bigysmall




OK ?

ok ??

Cool! good luck with your project.

By the looks of all those doors he has had a few of them . might be a good parts source also.

There is alot of info on Subi swaps in here.

really it's a 75? But the door jam says 74?

Your new 914 might make a good race car start but all the missing little stuff is going to kill a little budget unless you have lots of friends with 914 parts.
Also all that cracked paint above the battery tray is not original paint it has been painted over and there is probably some filler there. You might want to poke around quite a bit before you spend a lot of money on stuff to make sure it's THE ONE you want to start with. Also using a suby tranny is probably cheaper than the 914 tranny and it's repairs + the kennedy stuff.

prolly manufactured in 74 but a 1975 model. Guages and bumper mounts are definitely 75-76 items.

The vin prolly starts 475.......right? Still looks like it might be a good start, but as the man said it is missing alot of parts that can eat the budget up fast. Oh, and it looks like it may have had a six at one time, since the drivers side inner fenderwell has the cutouts removed for the oil tank. Post the vin, someone may know this car.

Good luck with the project, the suby conversion has alot of support here.

Jim

spent the weekend cleaning up and started on the rust. the black you see in the engine bay is actually a paint on top of the yellow, which wasnt done very well because the black is flaking off real fast but the yellow underneath is still there.

i believe u guys are right, the car is a 75 made in 74. and how would a subaru tranny be used? more info on that would be great.


the start of the day after cleaning out and vacuuming.

items removed from car



before during and after battery tray removal.




sound deadning removal and rust removal from floorpans.


longs

Boy it's tiring chiseling away at the sound deadening material on the floor pans. We managed to Por-15 the passenger side. We hope to find what we're missing on the car at the G&R swap meet later in April. Next weekend we'll finish the driver side pan, then clean up the hell hole and por-15 and if time permits we'll sand down the rear trunk and por-15 that as well. Yeah the car was manufactured 10/74 and sold as a 75. Also discovered today that the passenger side jack slot has rust on the bottom shown above. We're gonna remove the jack slot and see if there's any extensive damage. As far as the driver side goes that long is actually rust free.

There's actually no layer of tar or deadening in the wheel wells, was that original? There's only a crispy layer of black paint that chips off and reveals the original yellow.

Also, as far as interior goes it's going to be very bare. One aftermarket bucket seat, one original seat for passenger, simple door pull panels covered in vinyl, dynamat of some sort entire floor pan, then some carpeting for entire rest of interior, tear out stock dash and create one out of sheet metal, delete the air controls and radio, and that's all i can think of at the moment. But all this will be done after we finish the the power/drive train setup.

Might have found an powerplant. We've got a choice of an EJ20 (non turbo) or EJ22. Both are rated around 145-150hp. Any pointers as to how to tell what year car these engines came from?

NASIOC is the place to get subaru driveline answers

Did you guys prep the metal before you put the por15 down? Ospho? Metal Ready?
If not, you'll have surface rust bubble through in no time.


Anyways, glad to see another one saved!
Andy

I didnt know about that. What brand of Ospho or Metal Ready should we use? And that means we have to grind away the first layer of Por-15 and then apply the Ospho or metal ready, right? Thanks for the help...oh yeah lemme enter this VIN# into our database.

Por15 does not interact with the rust, it just seals it off. Unless the metal is spotless, the rust will eventually work it's way through the Por15 again. It just slows it down.

I prepped all my metal with Metal Ready, which chemically turns the rust. Others have used Ospho with good results.
Once that is dry (you should wipe off all excess), apply a layer or three of Por15.

Also, i would not use black Por15 again if i had to do it all over again. You can't see anything on black. Their silver would have been a much better choice in spotting cracks and such.

And lastly, Por15 is a bitch to prep for paint, so don't use it anywhere you might want to add real paint later.
Andy

Cool...we went with Por-15 black b/c i had a pint leftover from my previous 914. There's this other rust preventer that was mentioned on this site, but i dont remember what it is. I PM'd TonyAKAVW for the name since i recall him being the one who used it and said he prefers it over Por-15.

Thanks again Andy

Will be picking up a powerplant tomorrow for a smoking deal, b/c the engine importer i normally go to is going out of business. Lets hope that engine is still there. :crosses fingers:

so after we put everything away last weekend, i closed front hood, and now i cant seem to get it open. any ideas on how to get it open? the pull lever inside isn't working.

There is a hole in the center of the front panel that is in front of the hood latch mechanism where the cable attaches. This is visable in one of your pics.

You can reach in the hole with a screwdriver & pop the lid open.

WTF???!!! I just re-read my own post & it doesn't make any sence.

Sorry for the lousy description: I could show you how to do it better than I can explain how to do it.

Look in the hole & you will see where the cable end attaches to the arm on the latch mechanism. Get the screwdriver on the passanger side of the arm & move it towards the drivers side of the car. This should release the hood & it will pop up.

Thanks flippa!, i'll give it a try this weekend.

Cool! We'll try that this weekend, when we resume rusteration.

We have powerplant: EJ22 (pretty light engine)

Can't wait to resume rust-oration on the 914 this weekend. Also James and i have decided that we're gonna use the Small Peformance engine mount since it can be used for an assortment of Subaru engines, and we plan to upgrade the engine later on to a turbo'd EJ25T or EJ20T.

The more I see these subie swaps, the more I think I should have gone that route.

This might veer you even more to the Suby route, a friend's engine importing shop is going out of business. And the EJ22 you see up above we picked it up for $250 out the door and he's got a few other EJ20 non-turbo and 1 other EJ22 non turbo.

If my t-4 engine was not so fresh, I'd go this route, $250 is a sweet deal. Maybe in the future.

Deals are out there!
I picked up a 2002 Suby 2.5L N/A motor, 5-speed Suby Trans, and complete wiring harness w/ECU $600!

But, that's the cheap part of the build

Good luck!

We've also thought about using the Subaru transmission, but not sure how to fab the shifting linkages that are required to adapt it to the the 914.

so opening the front hood, screwdriver worked great. thanks.

another question, whats the best way to remove the old paint? i hear the use of aircraft paint removal to be the best, but im worried it would leave residue and once i paint over it, it would ruin the finish. is there a different bit that would grind out the paint? we've been using the steel wheel but its not working as great as i had hoped.

went out and got some Jasco paint remover from home depot and worked on the car for awhile today.

heres the before


heres after about 3 mins of letting the stuff sit and then scraping at it for a minute

heres the stuff working, it starts bubbling up the paint


worked at it by hand like a dummy, an hour later i thought to myself, there had to be an ezier way of removing the paint, so i brought out the power drill with the steel wheel.
heres how it is now



i hope to get the cabin stripped and cleaned by the the end of tomorrow with some help. so i can metal prep it then por-15 the whole cabin.

Everywhere the stripper gets in seams it will screw up the new paint. You can try to wash the stripper out of the seams but usually it doesn't all come out.

:doh: o wells we're not gonna paint it any fancy color, just Por-15, then some type of dynmat, and carpeting.

Looking good keep up the good work. Looking forward to the eng. swap part if I can come out and offer tips on fabing anything let me know.

any help, or pointers would be greatly appreciated! i'll be sure to let you know when we begin mounting the engine and fabbing up the mounts.

Thanks Leamon

Also would you happen to have a spare side shift engine bar, shifter, shift linkages and bar, side shift transmission we could buy off of ya? Feel free to drop by, we're gonna be working on the car tomorrow.

nice work! keep it up. =o) It's good to see some progress being made.

did some more work on the 914, cut out some left over bits of the battery tray, and cut out a chunk of the hell hole. jasco'ed grinded, then soap water, then dried, then used some rust converter on the entire cabin. probably come back next weekend and por15 everything.

my prelude can fly.

or not.


took off my fujitsubo exhaust and put the stock back on.

I can't see the pics yet (stupid work blocks some stuff) but I will cehck it out when I get home. Where are you guys working on this? I could come by and check it out, give you some pointers, some test rides in my suby conversion to get the motivation going a little more

-Tony

We're working on the car at James' house in Rosemead, mainly we can only work on the weekends when he comes home from school @ UCR.

A ride in your suby conversion would be awesome! I'll PM you my cell.

tonight me and my uncle welded up the hole in the cabin, first time using the welder, welds look pretty crappy, but it will do, theres no light leaking through to the other side.

What James forgot to mention was that there was welding done in the following circled areas & then Por-15'd the entire floor pan and firewall (prep'd with Duplicolor rust fix):


Next weekend, i plan to weld up the sidemarker holes, and patch up the spot where the battery tray use to be (deleted battery tray).