Richard's progress thread Options

[Richard Casto]

A little history first...

This is my third 914 and it will be a keeper. First two are from my college days in the late 1980's but both of those are gone (1st was totalled in a crash, the second had terminal rust and eventually became a parts car) Fast forward roughly 20 years. Got married, had two kids and I decided I could not continue to put off building my dream car. While I had always wanted an original 914/6, I also wanted a general purpose fun car (Street, Autocross and Track) that would have had more power and safety features than a stock 914/6. I can't afford to have multiple 914s (a stock 914/4, a 914/4 with a modern Type IV, a stock 914/6, a 914/6 GT Clone, a track only 914, etc.), so rather than molest a "real" 914/6 to build my dream "six", I decided to start with a regular 914/4 and do a six swap.

This car was purchased in 8/2005. Over the past two years I have disassembled the entire car and am now at the point of doing repair and refurbishment. Which is why I picked now as the time to do the progress thread (who wants to read about the dis-assembly of a car!)

Goals for the car...

• While I appreciate 914/6 GTs, I have no desire to spend the time and money to make this a "GT Clone".
• While I appreciate 914s that have SBC or Subaru engine swaps or even big modern Type IV engines, I wanted to keep the spirit of the 914/6 which means a Porsche flat six. I am looking for "safe" power and torque. So this excludes building up a wild 2.x engine. So I either going to do a 3.0 or 3.2 (90% sure it will be a 3.2).
• Again, with the spirit of building something like a 914/6, I will be doing a five lug conversion. I already have a complete front end including 3.5" struts.
• I will be using a 901 transmission in the near term and when I can afford it, I will be moving up to a 915 transmission.
• I don't think the wide body look works for every car and I tend to like the narrow body style better, but I am a big fan of plenty of rubber on a car. So I am doing steel flairs.
• I am not a huge fan of the 916 front and rear bumpers, so I am keeping the stock style front and rear bumpers.
• This will be used at track events, so I want a full cage. But at the same time I want to be able to put the top on the car. This is going to be a challenge as I am also 6'5". So getting me into a seat, with helmet on that fits under the top of the cage and with the top fitting is going to be a challenge.
• I really want to minimize how much I modify the body itself. I wanted mods to be "bolt on" vs. cut and weld. This is currently stopping me from doing a "GT Style" front oil cooler. I most likely will put a cooler in the rear with ducts and thermostat controlled fan. I know that in a way this is more complicated than the front cooler, but it is what I want. The only exceptions to this rule so far is the flairs and the installation of the cage. The flairs I think are in the spirit of the car as they are the steel repro of the factory flairs and the cage is a safety item. I haven't decided about things like cutting an access hole for the engine (set timing, etc.), mods to the floorboard to get the seat to fit as well as "stiffening" or "reinforcement" kits. I want this car to be SCCA SM2 legal for autocross. But I may just say "screw it" and do some of these factory stiffening kits even if it puts me into XP class.
• I want to keep the "bling" factor down on the car. So the interior and exterior will have a very "stock" look (no rear wings, etc.) I am also going to go with the factory color of "Irish Green" as you don't seem to see many in that color.
• Ideally I would like to refurbish or replace as much as I can as I reassemble the car, but due to funds, some stuff may be put back that I will replace at a later date. The dash cover is a simple example of this. Mine is cracked, but I may not be able to get it recovered until later.
• Do as much of the work myself as I can. For me the trip there is just as important as the destination. I want to know this car inside and out when I am done.
• I want to do any rust repair "the right way". What I mean by this is that I will only be in doing surgery on this car once. So if I see rust, I am going to fix it once and fix it right. And the resulting repair will hopefully look as close to factory original as I can make it.
• I would like to be done by the end of 2008. As with anything, time and money have a big impact on this.

I have my own website that contains a higher level of detail on specific sections of the car as well as a more detailed general Blog. I currently host this at home and sometimes the server is down, but it is up most of the time. You can find that here...

http://motorsport.zyyz.com/project_914.htm

[Richard Casto]

In 2005 when I decided to get back on the horse, a local friend who autocrosses with me who had a 914 (jdogg on this forum) put me in touch with this car. It is a 1972 1.7 The body is generally in good shape for an East Coast car. Might be a parts car on the West Coast. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) It had some visiable hell hole issues, but the longitudinals generally seemed strong and the biggest issues with the body was front and rear trunk rust in the usual places. The PO also had backed into it a few weeks previously and hit the driver side front fender. I bought the entire car as well as his parts stash for $800.

Car as I purchased it in August of 2005.





I spent much of late 2005 and early 2006 totally redoing my garage. This included additional 220v wiring for air compressor and welder as well as additional 110v for additional outlets around the perimeter of the garage, a new heavy duty work bench, epoxy covering for the floor, on the wall (above head) storage for tools, etc. I basically didn't want to do the work in a junk pile.

By August of 2006, the garage work was pretty much finished and I started on the car. Photos below show car on jack stands, but mostly complete. Within a few weeks the engine and transmission was out and I was busy tearing into the car.



Here is the kids in the front trunk. Hopefully they will not be in High School when the car finally is on the road.

[Richard Casto]

Fast forward to June of this year. Over the spring I took a welding class at a local community college and learned how to weld. My first project was to build my rotisserie.



Car is totallly stripped by this point. I decided to really start looking into what I would need to do from a rust repair perspective. I know I have to replace part of the rear and front trunks and will work on those later. but I didn't know how bad the hell hole issue was as well as potential damage to the outer longitudinal on the passenger side.

At this point forward I will be standing on the shoulders of giants. While there are a huge number of web pages and threads on various forum that I have bookmarked as resources, I have found two that stand out. The first is Michelko's repair thread has been a huge inspiration to me and others...

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?showtopic=16748

The second is Armando Serrano's site. It has been great as I share his apparent desire to do the repairs to as close to factory spec as possible...

http://www.pbase.com/9146gt

Armando has many photos that show work in progress just like in Michelko's thread and a picture is truely worth a thousand words. My goal is to do work as nice as they have as well as document what I have done to help others. I am an Admin over at http://www.roadglue.com/ and my focus there is on the 914 wiki http://www.roadglue.com/wiki/. I hope to eventually document some things I have learned along the way on the wiki.

Like Michelko, I cut out the area of the body above the passenger side jack receiver so that I could get better access. I may eventually need to do the same on the driver side when I replace the missing jack receiver.







After using my knotted wire brush on my angle grinder I found that the small bubbles on the longitudinal was more like significant pinholes. How bad will it be on the inside? I will find out.

[Richard Casto]

Sometime earlier I had realized that in addition to the regular hell hole rust, the inner suspension console for the passenger side had terminal problems. Also in the spirit of this being more like a 914/6, I decided to "delete" the 914/4 specific engine mount pods. The one on the passenger side was toast anyhow, so instead of rebuilding it from scratch (replacements do not exists as far as I know), I would just remove both of them anyhow.





A short time later, I had some friends help me mount the car on my rotisserie

[Richard Casto]

This past week, I decided to dive in and really start cutting out the rusty spots.

The car is supported on the rotisserie. I also have the standard braces between the shoulder seatbelt mounts and door frame, I also built some extra long jack stands to support the front and rear of the longitudinal while I work on the passenger longitudinal and hell hole.

It was kind of scary and exciting to cut into the car. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)



It is about as bad as I expected. With the car on the rotisserie and doing 360 barrel roles you could hear all kinds of rust rolling around inside. A lot of this flaky rust also comes from the hell hole area and it has just migrated to the lowest part of the car. Still, I am not happy because I am pretty sure I am going to have to rebuild the bottom part of the inner longitudinal. I have the outside repro part from Restoration Design, but I see a lot of fabrication work in my future.



This photo really shows what I am trying to fix. You can see my fingers through the gap behind the straight edge. This is behind the jack receiver point (jack receiver was mostly removed by the PO) and under the hell hole. The double walled section here has rusted through enough that the bottom is no longer strong. The car has been jacked up on this and because of the weakness, it has collapsed/crushed part of the box section here. That is what is causing the gap. Much of this area needs to be replaced.



Here we are looking inside of that hole (I actually cut more of the area off around where the jack receiver mounts after the photo above). We are looking back toward where the rear suspension console mounts. There is some debris up in the top as a result of doing barrel rolls on the rotisserie. But after I vaccumed that out, it looks like the inner corrugated wall of this section is in good shape other than the very bottom that you can't see in this photo

[Richard Casto]

In the hell hole area, as mentioned earlier I have deleted the 914/4 engine mount pods. This section is nearly all double walled on the inside. The inner wall also has a corrogated style stamping (I assume for extra strength). I am hoping that this inner part continues to remain in good shape. As you can see, I have already cut along the corrogated section to help me peel of the outer skin. The outer skin is spot welded in place and I am using Blair Rotabroach spot weld bits to remove the spot welds. It is a hard job in rusted/pitted areas where you don't know exactly where the spot well is.

I have also marked out my cutting plan. I am looking to keep as much "good" metal as possible. But at the same time I would like my cuts to be straight lines as much as I can to make it easier to fabricate the replacement parts.



View from the bottom looking up. Donut and backing plate have already been removed.



You can see more of the outer suspension console in this photo. I am 99% sure that the outer console is in great shape.

[Richard Casto]

More cutting. I probably am going to be cutting a bit more out and then I may media blast the entire area back to grey metal to get a better idea how bad the rust is. I want to determine what is just surface rust that will clean up and what is cancer. Then do some more cutting to remove any cancer I missed the first time and then start fabricating my replacement parts.







This is pretty much it for now. Hopefully I will be able to update about once a week or so. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Wish me luck!

[rick 918-S]

Good start. we'll be watching (IMG:style_emoticons/default/popcorn[1].gif)

[TeenerTim]

You REALLY need to tack in some bracing with the car on the rotisserie and the longitudinal cut like that. The doors may not fit when you're done or it might even buckle in the middle. Good Luck.

[iamchappy]

What an ambitious start, I wish you the courage to continue and persevere...

[URY914]

Great job so far. But yes add some door opening braces. It's about to fold up on you.

[jdogg]

Richard-
Great progress!!! With the patient, methodical approach you've demonstrated so far, this project is going to be outstanding!!!

Great job so far. But yes add some door opening braces. It's about to fold up on you.

He did mention he had bracing from where the shoulder belts strap in to the door hinge area.

[Richard Casto]

Richard-
Great progress!!! With the patient, methodical approach you've demonstrated so far, this project is going to be outstanding!!!

Great job so far. But yes add some door opening braces. It's about to fold up on you.

He did mention he had bracing from where the shoulder belts strap in to the door hinge area.

OMG it broke in half last night!!! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/headbang.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Actually thanks for the warnings guys. Sorry, I should have shown the braces as I wouldn't want anyone to read this and then cut like I have without something to hold the car up. They just don't happen to be visible in the photos above.

In addition to the braces shown in the photo below, I also have two support columns on the floor. One for the front and one for the rear of the passenger side longitudinal. As I go I keep checking to make sure everything continues to be tight and well supported.

[roadster fan]

Richard,

Awesome pics of your progress, keep em coming! I really like the simplicity of your rotisserie and looked at your construction photos on your progress site. Could you take pictures of your rotisserie with a tape measure next to different parts and maybe the specifications of the round stock you used for the pivot axles? I am getting ready to build one the measurements could speed up the design stage.

Keep up the great work, you are saving another one from us California heathens who cut up cars with bad hell holes! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Jim

[Richard Casto]

Richard,

Awesome pics of your progress, keep em coming! I really like the simplicity of your rotisserie and looked at your construction photos on your progress site. Could you take pictures of your rotisserie with a tape measure next to different parts and maybe the specifications of the round stock you used for the pivot axles? I am getting ready to build one the measurements could speed up the design stage.

Keep up the great work, you are saving another one from us California heathens who cut up cars with bad hell holes! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Jim

Jim,

As I designed and built it I tried to keep track of all of that stuff and I think I have 90% of it already. My plan was (is) to put a complete "How To" up on the 914 wiki. Problem is that the closer I got to finishing it, the more I thought about moving onto the next stage vs. documenting the design. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/unsure.gif) This is probably a good kick in the pants to get me to finish putting that together. I will try to get that done this weekend and when I do that I will post the link for the entire thing with all measurements, cut plans, etc.

I am pretty happy with it so far. The only thing it is missing is an adjustment to balance the car. but that would add more material/complexity. And as it is right now, it is pretty easy to rotate and lock into position.

Richard

[tdgray]

Great Start (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/piratenanner.gif)

Keep it up... believe me been there and done that. See the tag below my signature for the proof.

Remember slow and steady wins the race.

I'll be checking this thread often! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beer.gif)

[dfwteenerpr]

This is fascinating to see. I have a 74 and a 76 that both have some accident damage on the right rear and the doors don't fit right. I would love to be able to fix them as you're doing, but I'm petrified of getting it wrong. But I also have a rusty shell, I could cut into that to learn without fear of ruining the car, I may have to do that to boost my confidence.

[jaminM3]

Nice!!

I am starting a very similar project, my car even has the banged up front fender. I decided to start with the fender instead of the longs and jack points. I will be updating my thread too... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/thumb3d.gif)

[Rand]

Way to go Richard! I love the way you're thinking with your goal list. I will enjoy following your progress.
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/smilie_pokal.gif)

[Richard Casto]

Richard,

Awesome pics of your progress, keep em coming! I really like the simplicity of your rotisserie and looked at your construction photos on your progress site. Could you take pictures of your rotisserie with a tape measure next to different parts and maybe the specifications of the round stock you used for the pivot axles? I am getting ready to build one the measurements could speed up the design stage.

Keep up the great work, you are saving another one from us California heathens who cut up cars with bad hell holes! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Jim

Jim,

As I designed and built it I tried to keep track of all of that stuff and I think I have 90% of it already. My plan was (is) to put a complete "How To" up on the 914 wiki. Problem is that the closer I got to finishing it, the more I thought about moving onto the next stage vs. documenting the design. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/unsure.gif) This is probably a good kick in the pants to get me to finish putting that together. I will try to get that done this weekend and when I do that I will post the link for the entire thing with all measurements, cut plans, etc.

I am pretty happy with it so far. The only thing it is missing is an adjustment to balance the car. but that would add more material/complexity. And as it is right now, it is pretty easy to rotate and lock into position.

Richard

I finished my "How To" article earlier this week. I need to read through it again as I am sure it needs a few tweaks. Here it is...

"How to build an automotive rotisserie for a Porsche 914"

http://www.roadglue.com/wiki/index.php/How...r_a_Porsche_914