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]

Sometimes you just have to say "screw it", put on your big-boy pants, and get down to work.

I've been toying with the idea of painting the car myself and this past Saturday I got down to business and started spraying. Yes, I used a cheap HF gun (I've got a new Eastwood gun on order). Yes, the panels did not come out as perfect as they would if I had paid someone.

Do I care? Well, yes and no. I figure, this is my project, for better or worse, and the only way Im going to learn is by making mistakes. Im precise all week long for my job, on the weekends I think Im entitled to a bit of /experimentation/ (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I've been using this HF gun for a few years now so Im not totally new to painting with it. The fenders all turned out great actually, while the hood has some pitting that Im not too happy about, but the white paint does a lot to hide the flaws.

The color is Wimbledon White, its kinda creamy. Its the same paint we used on my brothers 912-STi project. The bumpers, rockers, roof, and sail panels will be finished in satin black.