BUILD-OFF CHALLENGE: MichiganMat Options

[MichiganMat]

Hey er'body, Im MichiganMat from San Jose and Im building a 914.

Backstory:
This summer I had the pleasure of picking up a '75 914 chassis here in San Jose for a mere $300.
It came with with virtually nothing:
no driveline, no interior, no pedals, etc. Stripped, but solid, with minimal overhead and cost.
I've been building 911s for many years now and had an extra set of wheels and 911 front struts in my shed, so I thought hey, lets do this.
My brother and I are just finishing up putting an STi motor into our '67 912 too, so with that project wrapping up Im ready to jump into another.


The Plan:
Well, I got the car for cheap, and I've already got a perfectly good '75 911S to daily/rally/etc with, so the plan is to build a stripped down 914 racer for AX and track fun.
The car will be getting:
- Tangerine Racing rollcage, tied to 8pts, with nascar door-bars
- Rennspeed fiberglass body (fenders f&r, hood, trunk, and both bumpers)
- Mad Dog chassis reinforcement kit and hell-hole repair
- Resto-Design floorpans, seat areas dropped by 2", with custom tunnel
- Tilton pedals
- 5 lug conversion
- 16x7 Fuchs all the way around with 2nd option of 15x7ATE's with canti slicks
- /likely/ wrx drivetrain, but Im exploring my options...


Where sits today:
I picked up the car in May and I've since then I've put it on a home-built rotisserie, cut the pans, tunnel, trunk, headlight buckets, and front fenders out of it, and fixed the hell-hole area.
The pans were totally rotted, the battery tray was nonexistent, the fenders on all 4 corners had damage. Pretty easy to make the decision to start fresh, haha.
Today, most of the chassis kit is installed but I can't finish it until the roll-cage is put in. Tangerine is almost done with the cage so it'll be another week or so until I see it.
In the meantime, the plan is to clean up the wheel-wells, fix the rust in the longs, put in the trunk cross-sections, and primer the reinforcements.
Then I'll get to work on the tunnel, mod'ing the pans, installing the fiberglass, etc.


Anyways, hello, nice to meet you guys, and Im looking forward to the challenge!

[MichiganMat]

Bought a radiator!
The eBay Celica Gt radiator that was suggested to me is a *perfect* fit.
Mounting was easy enough: Bend metal, drill hole, weld in, repeat.
The feet are welded in, the top tabs are backed by riv-nuts



Also got around to mounting the new hood. The latches are basic eBay models, super affordable, nothing special. I really like the look of them though, they look like business. Getting them all squared up on the hood was probably the hardest part, welding the backing plates wasn't too bad.



My friend Alex gave me all his parts to build the rotisserie that the 914 is on right now. He needed one to put his Z project on, and he refused to ask me to take the 914 off the stand, so we bought a whole new set of parts and built another one. The new red one is so much better than the orange one my car is on, its got probably $100 worth of casters on it, its so easy to move around. He's happy, so Im happy.


I was also able to get the passenger side body work /mostly/ done. The fender and quarter are 95% mounted up and I've started in on the drivers side. I need to take more pictures, not taking nearly enough.

So yeah, next update will be all the driver-side bodywork, then I'll probably cut the hood open and route the radiator cooling out of it. I'll probably work up some aluminum shrouding, something simple to keep the water out of the tub when washing the car. It'll take some time but I think it'll be worth it. Then the rear trunk, going to use J-West mounts and the same black racing latches. Eventually tail-lights too, I plan to make my own.

Ughs, bodywork takes so long...