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]

Now comes the fun that I have been looking forward to for a long time. I have had a Caswell powder coating kit and a junk yard oven for over a year, but have not had a chance to try it all out yet. So my first powder coating is with my strut dust covers as well as the special gland nuts that allow you to use a Koni insert in the OEM Koni strut

First I stripped the old paint off with Jasco. Then I washed them with soap and water and solvents to get the grease and oil off. Then I glass bead blasted them. Then I treated them with Metal Ready. I then washed them in water one last time then oven dried them.



Powder goes into cup.



Hang part. Ground it to your corona gun. Make sure you have a swivel so you can rotate part as needed.



Gun all loaded and ready to go.



Part is now coated with powder. Sorry no action shots as I couldn't take photos and use the gun at the same time. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) Powder can just be wiped or blown off at this point. So you have to be carefull as you...



...transfer into the oven. I drilled holes in the top of the oven to install some loops that I can hang parts from. Oven was pre-heated to about 400 F prior to me putting the part in.



Powder spec says 392 F for 10 minutes. Within just a few minutes that part has warmed up to 390-400 F and the powder will melt. Crack open the oven just a bit and check temp with IR thermo. Once you are sure part is at cure temp, let it bake for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, turn off oven, crack door a bit and allow it to cool down slowly.



Finished product looks awsome! Especially as this is my very first part!



Other cover that has been stripped with Jasco, but prior to media blasting, etc.



Here is one of the gland nuts. I used high temp green silicone tape to cover the threads. You can see some of the cured paint on the tape, but once you pull the tape off you can see that the threads are untouched by paint.