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!

[914forme]

That is looking very nice. Like the hood opening, BTW, you don't need that much of an inlet, and you might want to put a brace between the two front torsion bar mounts. Since they can move around a bit and you cut that vertical section out of the front of the trunk.

Other items I see that might need attention: Not to pick your build, just trying to save you future grief.

Radiator mount should not be hard mounted. From the pictures it looks like you hard mounted at least the top. It needs to be floating, otherwise you have made it into a structural member, and it will over time crack. If your luck is like mine, it will happen at the least opportune time and make your day.

Other than these two items get back to work, love the build.

[MichiganMat]

That is looking very nice. Like the hood opening, BTW, you don't need that much of an inlet, and you might want to put a brace between the two front torsion bar mounts. Since they can move around a bit and you cut that vertical section out of the front of the trunk.

Other items I see that might need attention: Not to pick your build, just trying to save you future grief.

Radiator mount should not be hard mounted. From the pictures it looks like you hard mounted at least the top. It needs to be floating, otherwise you have made it into a structural member, and it will over time crack. If your luck is like mine, it will happen at the least opportune time and make your day.

Other than these two items get back to work, love the build.

Thank you for the feedback, I really appreciate it. You know, I always get a little insecure when I post up pics of the build, there are so many amazing builders and lots of guys on here that have "done it all". Im really here to learn and to improve my skills, so the feedback is so valuable to me.

Re: Inlet. - Yeah, I agree, its a bit over the top but its nice to have the accessibility. I need to clean up the cuts a bit and I do plan to reinforce it.

Re: Radiator - Agreed. It will be rubber-isolated when its done. Chassis-flex actually cracked your radiator? Interesting... I didn't' think it would be much of an issue given the way the torsion-bar suspension is designed.

Thanks again!