BUILD-OFF CHALLENGE: New 914 owner...what have I gone and done! Options

[Darren C]

Hi everyone,

I have been looking for a 914 on and off for a couple of years now and late one evening I bid on ebay for a car in Desert Hot Springs CA. A real leap of faith for me as I live in Chichester UK!
My first car was a VW Beetle and I’ve owned quite a few air cooled VWs and always wanted a 914, so now almost 25 years later I finally took the plunge and with sweat on my brow placed a last minute bid on ebay on a car I’d only seen in 4 small photo’s on line.
To my surprise I won the 914.
Problem was it lay 8000 miles away from me here in UK. I got hold of the sellers phone number and gave them a call. The car is a 1974 2.0L one owner from new sold in Palm Springs 914. The seller was the owners daughter. The gentleman passed away several years ago and she’d had it parked up on her driveway for 5 or 6 years. From the description in the listing it had a Salvage title due to sand storm damage on the paintwork. It looked reasonably solid in the few pictures I saw, but very sorry for itself with flat tires and bad paint. It was a gamble, but sometimes these things pay off.
I got the car picked up by a shipping agent and taken to Long Beach for shipping.

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2 months later it arrived in Southampton UK

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Last week I went down to Southampton and collected my new project just in time for Christmas.
I was recommended this site from another 914 owner and it's a great relief to find such a large active community. 914's were never sold in the UK, so all are personal imports and a rare thing to see on our roads.
I’m pleased to now join you guy’s and post my restoration progress in getting this little car back on the road.

Regards
Darren

[Darren C]

START OF BUILD-OFF CHALLENGE

I decided last month to enter the Build off Challenge. I’ve had a rollercoaster of a year with my little 914, my health and thought I’d share the story with you.

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My names Darren Collins and I live in Chichester UK.
I spent 18 years in the Armed Forces as an engineer and lived and worked in the US for a good proportion of my time on various Services exchange programs. I worked with the US Coastguard out of Port Everglades & Patrick USAF base with the search and recovery operation of the Challenger Shuttle wreckage, had a tour at Gitmo and served in the first Gulf War, “Operation Desert Storm” helping provide air cover for the USS Eisenhower in the Persian Gulf.
Unfortunately I was invalided out of the services due to injuries sustained in the conflict.
Throughout my life I have always been interested in cars, and in particular VW’s. It was natural progression to move over to Porsche and after going through the range fixing them up, I decided the time was right to go back to grass roots and buy my first little 914.
Like most participants in the Build off, I have started before October, but I have genuinely tried to complete the restoration within 12 months. I’ve been working on the car pretty much everyday apart from a period in Hospital, which turned my life upside down last month.
Like most UK tv shown in the US and visa-versa I thought it would be cool to post in real time (but slightly back dated) by month number. In this way it should play out over the Build off in time with everyone else.
The only exception is the photo of me above which was taken today and jumps ahead with the condition of the car as I have it up to now.
So if you guy’s are ready, I suggest you buckle up and get ready for the ride!

Month 1

The car arrived in UK looking very sorry for itself.

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My first task was to try and turn it over. Having not run for 6 years the seller had over filled right to the top, yep until level with the filler spout, with about 15 litres of oil to put the car into hibernation!!!!
This stopped all the seals and internals drying out but it had got everywhere, I took the plugs out and yes, oil came out the plug holes.
I then noticed all the crusty bone dry hoses and wires. A bit like the Skittles advert where everything the guy touches turns to Skittles; that was the state of all the rubber hoses. One touch and you had a 1000 little fragments. Totally sun baked.
There was nothing for it but to strip it all down.
My next nemesis was SAND….buckets and BUCKETS of the damn stuff. The relay board cover was cracked and when I lifted it off, a perfect sand castle the shape of the cover buried the relays entirely! I got 3 x Hoovers FULL of Desert sand just out the engine bay alone. The “hell holes” in the forward corners were 6 inches deep in sand alone. Surfice to say it took all of a Saturday and a Sunday just cleaning it out of the engine bay.
I could then see that the cooling flap link bar from 1&2 to 3&4 cooling flaps was missing???? Obviously removed in some foolish attempt to get more cooling when the Thermostat had failed.
Hey ho, that meant the engine had to come out.
This gave me a chance to drop all the tinware off for bead blasting and powder coating. Whilst I tracked down a new Flap assembly and thermostat. This was found at Mega Bug (a UK breakers), who sold me all the parts, flaps, rods, spring, pulley wheel & shouldered bolt, plus brand new thermostat, wire and bracket.
While working in that area I dropped all the oil, fitted a new filter, and dropped and cleaned the strainer and plate. Next a new fan belt went on. The old one simply snapped in two when I pressed on it so was very easy to get off. Especially with the tinware out of the way. Again when under the car I found some interesting wiring and a second starter solenoid self tapping screwed up under the boot floor. Twisted nasty extra wires just had to go. A new starter sourced from VW heritage and the wiring left to tidy up should hopefully make it reliable.
Poking around underneath my list gets bigger of stupid stuff required. Handrake cable boots, rubber boot on starter main feed etc etc.

Next the Battery tray. The only real rust I found and to be fair was told about buy the seller was the battery tray. The two funnel rain water ducts from the boot lid had long lost there tubes having gone brittle as you like, and the battery side one was missing completely so any rain in the desert, plus battery leakage had eaten the corner out of the battery tray. I roughly sanded the tray to reveal the spot welds and drilled them out.
Old battery tray
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Tinware

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A new tray was found on ebay.de for about £40, and duly arrived in the post. During the 3 days it took to arrive I got another hoover full of sand out from under the tray and started to clean up everything ready for welding back in.
A very small job that quickly turned into a MONSTER TASK.

The original soundproofing pad had fallen off the bulkhead onto the engine where it had draped in the intense desert heat until it was transformed into a rock solid shape the profile of the engine (never to be fitted again). This was stripped out and some new material obtained. Cut to shape with a combination of Stanley knife, tin snips, my best scissors and a gasket punch set; I made a new one. 10mm thick I sealed the fibrous back and edges with black engine paint, followed by Tiger PU bond (squeezed into an old margarine tub & applied with a filler spreader) to replicate the tar type finish on the edges of the original. This took a few evenings to make, was very messy, but well worth it I think.
Next I stripped out the wiring loom so it was hung vertical over the rear window onto the roof and cleaned ALL wires with cellulose thinners to remove years of grime.
Followed by taking off all the cable clip protective vinyl sleeves and cleaning them too, followed by all grommets and clips.
I stripped the engine bay bare while the motor was out, and then set about sanding it all down. The paint was very thin and white primmer showed through from old scratches and battle scars. The Hell holes had surface rust as did the battery tray frame support, so all had to be cleaned off with rotary wire brush, sand paper and scotchbrite.
4 days work solid, back breaking. I took the boot lid off too, and spent two days sitting in the boot leaning over sanding and cleaning up until my fingers bled.
Once clean to bare metal I spot welded in the new battery tray and painted everything with rust encapsulating primer. Next I got some Alaska Blue base coat mixed up and sprayed the entire bay. Two coats over two days followed by a light clear (fuel resistant) lacquer.
Only then could I start the nice grand assembly, starting with lifting the motor back in.

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High heat resistant adhesive and new retaining plugs (still available from Porsche) hold the soundproofing on, along with freshly painted tabs (rock hard rear window seal removed to aid painting properly). New grommets from Porsche & VW Heritage. Freshly powder coated tinware with stainless slotted screws.

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Engine lid lock was removed, soaked to removed sand jamming it up, cleaned and replaced with a new grommet where the wire pokes through the tube. Boot light, stripped, cleaned and replaced as are the two bowl cups each side. New engine seal around the tinware (the old one was torn and perished badly on the drivers side)
The list goes on & on.

But this is not even the first month of the cars new ownership and I’m only just beginning the long journey ahead to right the wrongs and I hope to share it with you in this thread.

The following weekend I managed to get a few more jobs done.
I repaired the cabling to the starter and got a new rubber boot from Porsche Centre Portsmouth to go over the main starter feed.
Next I replaced the feed cable to the fuel pump as it had been cut out and badly joined by the PO. All the spade connections I cleaned up on the engine loom (top tip, I use a spray can lid with “Wonder Wheels” alloy wheel cleaner in it. Dip in any spades or bare wire and after 5 mins it’s as clean as new) Ready to take solder, new crimps or just connect up!
The last bit of tinware was fitted (rear hoop) what a fiddly job trying to line up the lower tinware threaded holes. Tries the patience of a saint…
Next I fitted a new fuel pump and new hoses up to the engine bay with some nice proper fuel hose clamps (found some stainless ones on ebay) not jubilees. All with new genuine Porsche grommets into the engine bay and new rubber feet on the pump.
I cleaned up the area under the car before fitting the pump & a new filter, then gave it a nice clear waxoil so you can just see the Alaska Blue beneath.
Took the dizzy out (had a good clean up under it) and fitted new points, condenser rotor and cap.
After the one step forward I had two back…my nice new leads from VW Heritage for a type 4 were too SHORT… what a pain. I’ll have to get them changed over next week.
Also had a new original ATE brake master cylinder turn up. It’s hanging on a wire over my radiator in the kitchen, after a nice coat of paint. Hopefully this’ll keep it looking good in comparison to bare cast iron when its fitted.
My relay box in the engine bay had a smashed up cover.(or should I say "what was left of it") I managed to get a brand new replica one (quality a bit suspect) and the knurled retaining nut plus the two horse shoe cable retaining clips from Auto Atlanta, but I'm missing the post that screws into the relay board, passes through the cover and the knurled nut attaches to.
I turned one down from some stainless bar on my lathe, since I cant find one for sale anywhere I kinda invented what I thought it looked like. I made two soft rubber washers to go under and over the cover where the knurled nut fits to hopefully stop the new cover cracking.
Next I managed to google a good Beru part number x-ref for the ignition leads and called in at my local Motor Factors during my lunch break and ordered a set. 2 hours later a phone call to say they were in so picked them up after work.
I also had a nice stainless coil clamp arrive in the post along with a “battery mat” from Frosts. (£9.14 made me smile at the apt price) Ready to slip under my new 063 Battery to protect that new tray. Cut it to size and added 4 slots about 2” long on each side towards the centre. The battery tray has a lower pressed section in the middle with a drain hole, should the mat not have slots any level of rain water couldn’t get to that drain hole, so sit ¼” deep in the tray.
The blower fan in the engine bay, like most of the car, was full of sand when I took it off. After emptying it out, it made a god awful grinding noise and was hard to turn. I stripped it down tonight and found that after taking the 3 nuts off that hold the motor and fan into the housing, it was obvious the impellor was rubbing the motor base. When I pulled on the impellor it came away about 3mm, so it looked like an end float issue. Once the impellor was off, I could see that there was a small wire circlip that limits the taper fan fit to the shaft and a worn thrust washer that the circlip runs against, plus yes more sand!
The only solution I could think of was to make a new thrust washer about 2mm thick to “shim” the impellor away from the motor mount. This I did on my lathe to the exact sizes (very fiddly making a washer 2mm thick with a 1.5mm difference between id and od) Anyhow, I cleaned out the motor casing (washed it through with electrical cleaner to remove yet more sand) and re assembled it with a smear of grease in the bearings. Hey presto spins silently. Next I cleaned up the terminals and bench tested it on my new battery. It surprised me as its more powerful than you’d think; but it ran well.
I treated the motor to a buff polish with a brass wire wheel, and T cut the dull black fan casing. The whole blower motor came up like new and still retains the white printed 914 part number!
I took off what was left of the paper/ali air hose a few weeks back when I removed the fan for the engine bay paint. It was a hard task trying to find a new bit of hose, but last week half a metre came in the post that was a perfect fit. I’m still not 100% happy as I couldn’t find it with a paper outer finish, only ali/paper/ali sandwich rather than visa versa. (its an odd size id to find also) Anyhow it’s a bit shiny ali-bling bling looking but will be functional at last. I finished off tonight cleaning up the original hose clips and under the gunk, found they are engraved with VW badges that made me smile. They’ll certainly be going back on in all their new found clean glory.
Heres a picture of turning down some stainless bar on my lathe to make the missing relay board cover post. Not having one to copy, I just used Imagineering, and made a support collar (threaded and locked onto the shaft) at the height of the cover. From an old car inner tube I used my punch set to make a rubber cushion (water seal) washer to go on the collar (shown on top of the regulator)

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As I said earlier in this thread, the new Auto Atlanta relay board cover quality is not good. The originals weren’t that clever anyway. However the problem I have with the new one is that in places its wafer thin. If you hold it up to the light you can see clean through the crucifix crossed top part. If you pressed more than very lightly in this area you’d push a hole in it. It’s almost as if someone poured the resin into a mould, swished it around a little and let it set. All the resin flowed into the low parts and the raised parts got barely coated more than the thickness of a coat of paint!
Anyway, to resolve this I have spread a layer of Tiger PU bond on the inside to strengthen it all up. Hopefully this will do the trick.
Outwardly though it does look far better than the old broken one that came with the car.

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While I was waiting for the PU bond to cure I fitted my new water drain hose to the new funnels I got from Porsche Centre. The hose I found is quite a good visual match to the no longer available original and has a spiral re-enforcement and yet is smooth on the inside so wont hold water.
The clips I got are a perfect match, if a little tough to fit. ( I used mole grips to pinch and lock them open, screwed the tube into them then pushed in the funnel ends before letting go) Also I have the clip ends facing outwards, since there is little room in the engine bay I didn’t want them to scratch or cut the back of my hands when working in there.
My second set of HT leads (the 1st were too short) were a perfect length but the rubber grommets on the plug end were moulded on to the leads in a set position. This gave me a right old struggle. In the end I had to turn them inside out and very, very carefully (with a scalpel type craft knife) cut the grommet free from the lead without damaging the plug sheath. 2 hours later I had the leads finally fitted to the car with the grommets seated correctly in the tinware. It’s important to take time to get a good seal as it allows better cooling over the barrels without leakage around the plugs.
The three clips for the leads neatly were clipped in. I had one original and two missing so these were sourced from VW heritage.
I then fitted the new coil and connected the wiring loom to it and the head temp sensor and Oil switch. Not happy that the loom just laid across the engine I fitted some nice stainless steel rubber lined P clips to various original bolt & tinware screws along the route. I’d had the distributor (undid the nut to block NOT the clamp so that I could lift it out and put it back without messing up the timing) to replace the points and condenser. Its much easier to work on and get at the condenser plug clamp screw where it goes through the dizzy body.
One point of note is that the new set of Bosch points was difficult to fit. The vertical pin that the points hinge on extends down by about 1mm and locates in the vacuum advance plate. I tried twice to fit them before I realised (only because I had the dizzy out and it was easy to see) that the base of the new points was about 2mm wider than the old one. The vacuum advance diaphragm has two screws holding it onto the dizzy. The tip of the righthand screw extended about 1.5mm into the dizzy when tight. Because the replacement points were marginally wider on its base than the old set, the vertical hinge pin of the points wouldn’t locate properly in the hole. They were being pushed into the centre by the screw end. This if I hadn’t of noticed would have also stopped the vacuum advance working! The solution was to remove the diaphragm screw and put a second washer on it (or file it down so it was shorter) I opted for the latter. With this done I could locate the new points correctly and set them up before refitting the distributor.
I also fitted back
The Blower Fan and hose.
New Oil Breather pipes (with stainless hose clips)
The New Battery
And the relay board.
I cleaned up every pin/connection and the fuse holder on the board and used a loose Stanley blade to gently push down in the cross slots in each and every pin on the relay board connections just to carefully “open” up the pin diameter to make it a tight fit in the wiring loom plugs.
I then found out why my old relay board cover was all smashed at the front end….you cant get the bloomin thing on and off very easily. It hits the bulkhead before you can get it over the regulator….great design eh!
For fear of breaking the new cover I had to take off the regulator (two screws) fit the cover then put the regulator back on afterwards.
Having finished working in the engine bay now, I decided to take the fuel tank out. Several people had recommended replacing the fuel hoses on the bottom of it. Boy were they right.
I took the cover plate off under the car and reaching through the hole underneath “snap” the hose broke clean in two. Baked rock hard. No need to struggle with the pipe clamps I could simply lift the tank out, no pipes attached!
Once out I took this picture…Both hoses snapped into about 4 pieces each, these weren’t cut.
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I then noticed that the “T” shaped drain tubes from the vent box were shattered and lying in pieces beneath the tank, all brittle again. Good job I found both these issues as come the first time out in the rain, the water would have just filled up the boot.
Adding this to my list of things to do, I began to vacuum up even more sand from inside the boot that had built up 2” deep under the fuel tank. Plus a whole load of California Spider nests.

Once out it was clear that there was zero rust under there so I was very pleased. Next I turned my attention to the Master Cylinder. The reservoir was empty! So obviously there’s a leak somewhere from the car standing. Everything looked dry under the car, so at the moment it’s a bit of a mystery.

I took off the old Master Cylinder and cleaned the bulkhead before fitting my nice new shiny ATE one. I purchased some new blue hose to go on the bottom of the reservoir. It is very important to get the right hose here as brake fluid will dissolve normal hose.

I refitted all the brake pipes with new copper washers on the banjo pipe, and had a right old run around with the two tubes that push in from the reservoir. Jeez they don’t half make it tight to get in there!

After putting it all back together I cleaned out the air inlet box drains. What is it with California cars and pine needles? The bloomin thing was full up with needles and sand. (It’s my second Californian car and my first was full of pine needles too)
Anyhow, once cleaned up I fitted my new drain hose and fed it correctly through the hole in the very bottom of the car. Fortunately it was the same hose and wire hose clips as used on the engine bay funnels so I had over 2m left spare and a bag of clips to use.
Next I gave it all a good second clean then turned my attention to the Fuel tank.

I fitted new hose to the pipes in the car with stainless hose clips and even managed to find some new unused fuel hose in my shed at 9.5mm that was just long enough to fit.

I took off the fuel vapour expansion tank and gave everything a good clean up. Again all the vent/breather 4mm hoses just snapped off when you touched them, so I’ll have to buy another metre of that. The metal plate around the filler cap with the 8 x M5 bolts was a bit scabby, so I stripped and sanded it down, painted it and its hanging on a wire currently over my hall radiator!
Next I shone a flash light inside the tank and saw bits of an old level sender gasket down in there, so after a bit of a large cocktail shaking exercise I managed to get all the bits out. (Must have been changed by PO at some time as the sender has a new one on it)
Another shine with the flash light and….hold on a minute, that doesn’t look good.
The Fuel pump suction pipe copper mesh suction strainer looked like someone had reached inside the tank and painted it with underseal???
I quickly whipped it out for a look and found this.

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Completely blocked!

This was bizarre as the tank inside looked very clean, just the strainer seemed to be covered. Presumably since it’s the pump suction it just drew 40 years of muck onto it.
Any how, it needed a good soak in cellulose thinners to soften it, followed by a very soft paint brush to lightly agitate it to clean it all off. Finally a wash through from inside out to clean it all off.
I wonder how it ever managed to suck fuel in that condition?
I then refitted it to the tank and finished cleaning off all the spiders webs and sand with a damp cloth.
When I lifted the tank out a couple of the felt pads fell out, so these were cleaned and glued back in with the remains of the glue I got for the rear bulkhead soundproofing.
The tank had a rub mark on it, above the passengers feet, on the vertical plane, and another rub mark on the car, so I got some new felt pad and glued a bit there too.
Finally I cleaned up the clamps and blocks, gave it all a damn good WD40 under there (since there was no rust I didn’t want any starting) and dropped the tank back in place.

So that was month 1 of my build…….