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]

Where have I been lately?

Weeellllll.... not working on the car nearly as much as Id hoped. But there has been progress!

• Rebuilt a set of Carrera rear calipers to use instead of 914 calipers which will allow me to use vented disks in the rear.
• Bought new front suspension arms (mine were damaged, grr), sent all the suspension pieces off to the powdercoater
• Started mock-up of the lightweight custom LED (cheap) tail lights Im building
• Welded in the lower rear firewall and rear pan section
• Bought Wilwood pedals, MCs, and bias adjuster. Now I can start fab / install of the front pan section
• Put a new header and oil pan on the WRX engine. The old header was rusty and the pan had a crack.
• Bought a new Momo wheel and hub. Looks so good in the car, loving it.

I spoke with the local blaster / powdercoater and he'll blast and prime the chassis for around $1400 so I may go that route. It'll be a real challenge to get the car over to him, but we'll see. Its going to be a busy couple of weeks coming up (dad in town, Monterey Car Week, work, etc), but ill find a way to get some work in.

This weekend I'm aiming to:
• Fab a plate to mount the pedals to the floorpan
• Cut open the header tubes to run the coolant hose
• Weld in the front section of the floorpan
• Finish fab work on the rear pan and firewall