Projects on my new, to me. 1974 914-6 Options

[jerhofer]

Forty years ago this past April, I joined PCA with the Michiana (Michigan-Indiana at that time) region in the South Bend area. One of the first people I met was a fellow name George Scott, a true southern gentleman living in the north. Not long afterwards I met his son Ed who was all of twenty years old and still in college. George passed away some years ago but Ed and I have remained friends ever since.

At twenty years of age he had already owned his 1965 356SC for five years!! And still has it!! His father brought him up right! A few years ago Ed began having some problems with his legs. The diagnosis was a neurological disease that has affected his lower body. I had heard about his early issues some years ago but just before Christmas last year, I heard he was in a wheelchair.

So I called him to see how he was doing and discovered that his attitude towards life was still way on the positive side. As usual the conversation turned to cars where I discovered that he had recently sold the turbo-look 911 that he had inherited from his dad. He had also sold a real 914-6 to one of his best friends that he had worked with for many years.

But he had another 914-6, the one I bought from him. As you all know, being a 1974, it was a conversion. The motor began as a 3.0 euro Carrera motor that now is a 3.2 with PMO carbs. The car was built for John Swanson by Perry Kiehl. Perry added the reinforcement panels to the rear wheelwells and to the rockers. He also added the GT flares that were butt welded so well that you cannot feel a seam inside the wheelwell. They began with a car that was rust free.

While John was building the motor at Perry's shop, Perry built a box in the front trunk for the oil cooler. Brad Mayeur built the 901 tranny with a Quaife differential. Since John was moving to Texas, he had the interior done in a light gray so it would be cooler as AC was not in the plans.

All of this happened in 2001-02 ( I have tons of records). John was an avid autocrosser who trailered the car to events with his Cayenne. In 2005 John decided to retire. His wife wanted a more modern Porsche with an automatic so they bought a 996 with Tiptronic and put the 914 up for sale. Which is where my friend Ed came into the picture.

Ed likes to autocross as well as do track events so the car was perfect for him. Unfortunately, at the second track event in 2005, he broke the transmission. Out the motor and tranny came with the tranny sent back to Brad for a rebuild. This time he changed out the intermediate plate from magnesium to aluminum for additional strength and did some other tweaks. The motor and the freshly rebuilt tranny never made it back into the car.

Ed and his wife have lived in their Michigan house for over 30 years. Because it is a tri-level, they purchased a ranch so that Ed could get around better. They want to sell their old house but it was full of their lifelong belongings as well as various cars and car parts. The deal I made with Ed was to buy the car and to take all of his car parts as well, as a way of helping to clean out their garages. Among many other parts, I now have an additional twenty-three wheels w/old tires, a couple of racing seats, an extra transmission, etc.

In mid-May i traveled to Michigan from my North Carolina home to get everything ready so my son and I could come up a couple weeks later with a small moving truck and a car trailer. My good friend Dave drove over from South Bend, Indiana to help at that mid-May gathering. We spent about six hours going through everything and getting the wheels back on the car to get it off the jack stands where it had been setting for thirteen years.

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Ed is an engineer as is my son. While they are about ten years apart in age, they have always had this friendship based on their mutual love of figuring out things. My son was very pleased to see Ed again. Because of Ed's condition, it takes him a while to get going so they gave us the key to the outbuilding and the garage door opener to their garage so we could begin the loading process. We began loading around 3:00 and finished up by 6:00. After a quick shower, we all met for dinner which was spent reminiscing about past PCA event as well as my son talking about some of his experiences with his job at Toyota Racing Development. It was a long, pleasant dinner and the perfect end to the day.


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Now the car is in my garage, the parts have been stowed and I am ready to put it back together.

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The photos below were taken soon after Ed had bought the car, which will give an idea of what it will look like once it is back on the road.


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[jerhofer]

The instructions called for adding a second return spring on both throttle bodies. The recommended way was to drill a 1/8" hole into the air cleaner base. A 1/8" cotter pin is inserted from the bottom and spread out on the top of the air cleaner base. The excess metal on the cotter pin is cut away. The bottom of the cotter pin becomes the eye for the upper mount for the return spring.


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Because I was concerned about the vacuum line on the left side being close to the throttle linkage, I decided to clamp it to the fan shroud.

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To install the cam sync adapter, the plug on the end of the cam housing must be removed. As recommended, I used a dent puller for removal. I drilled a small hole off to one side, inserted a screw into the holder and screwed it into the plug. By pulling on the slide weight on the puller, the cap was easily removed. I placed some grease on the drill bit to catch most of the shavings.


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The next instruction said Rotate the engine through a cycle stopping 90 degrees before Z1 on the compression stroke." When I had installed the new fan pulley, I had the engine set at TDC. As I began to rotate the motor, I was interrupted. When I came back I realized that I didn't know where I was on the cycle. No problem. As I have done in the past, I would pull plug #1, insert a 1/4" wooden dowel, mark it and then see when it was pushed out the maximum at Z1. And this is when my day went sour. After cranking through a couple cylinders, the dowel was snagged by something and a piece was broken off. The broken off piece was about an inch long and about half the dowel width.


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I got a piece of clear hose and attached it to my shop vac and tried to suck it out. When that didn't work, I called Richard Clewett at Clewett Engineering, the guy who sold me the EFI kit. His first thought was to see if the #1 exhaust valve was open. If so, he recommended using air to blow it out. Since the exhaust was on, I removed it or else I wouldn't know if anything came out. The exhaust valve was open. Blowing air into it do not work. I have an engine camera scope. After inserting it through the plug hole, I could not see the piece of wood. I also looked up through the open valve and it was not visible there.

Since my skills stop at building motors, I will have to take the motor somewhere and have the head removed to see what is going on. Not the way I wanted to end the day but sometimes things happen. My son works with Todd Holbert (Al"s son) at Toyota Racing Development (TRD). My son texted him about shops that he would recommend. I will be contacting them tomorrow.