914S Badge, Not OEM But Interesting Options

[914Sixer]

HPH has this badge for sale on Ebay for the LOW Price of $199.99. It states that they do not know who manufactured it. SO, if your have a little money you want to burn.

[Tom_T]

About the "914-S" badge shown:

IMHO it's aftermarket or homemade.

It doesn't look like any of the ones being made by members here in recent years, who die-cut or CNC cut them, as they don't have the pebbling on the cross-connecting bars, as with the originals.

In fact the pebbling looks more crisp than the metal 914 & 1.7, 2.0 badges from Porsche had, but more like the 74 MY & later replacement plastic badges, in which the plastic forms & holds the pebbling much better from the molds.

My guess is that whomever made these - for a dealer, for private use, for aftermarket sales - who knows!? - used a plastic 914 badge + an "S" from a 911-S badge, to make up a metal casting mold to make these up.

Some dealers were said to have used these on the early delivery 914 2.0 "914-S" cars, which were delivered without the 2.0 badge - & only had 914 with no way to ID them different from the early 73 1.7s - also with only the 914 badge.

Those early 73 cars can be ID'ed by the fact that they have rear walls with the 2nd pair of holes drilled in for the 2.0 or 1.7 - rather than punched holes at the sheet metal factory/works. My 8/31/72 build date 73 2L has those punched + drilled holes back wall, as do many others built with Aug & Sept 72 VINs & Chassis Nos.

The way to tell later drilled vs factory stamped/punched holes, is the drilled ones will have the conical "push-through" deformation from the drill bit on the inside wall, whereas the factory ones are clean & flat on both sides due to the factory tooling & jigs keeping the sheet metal flat with clean cutouts/holes.

From the 1st pic of the back, it looks to be a cast pot metal badge due to the dishing seen - worst on the far right at the "9" - but the factory metal badges are almost always clean & flat on the back (although also cast metal). So the backs of factory metal badges are smooth & flat backed, without the dishing & ground/filed down overage areas seen on this one.

Also, the factory badges would have non-threaded cast-in studs (indicating a full 2-sided mold was used) - while this looks to be either screws or bolts embedded into the cast then poured (with or without the heads cut-off) - which points to a small hand laid-up production run - or a 1, 2, 3 or so off homemade job.

Since the OEM supplier of the factory metal badges would've used a 2 sided mold in order to cast in the mounting studs also made of the same cast metal (ergo why they often break), which are then mounted with the Porsche rubber & brass clips which are still available today (thanks to 911s' popularity) - this one with screw & nut studs would 99% sure be an aftermarket piece.

I've also seen others made up from the 2 actual factory badges "914" + the "S-with-Bar" from a 911-S badge - but you can usually see the "S-to-4" joint welded or soldered on the backside &/or front of those "composite badges."

> Note the deep dishing of the pot metal on the backside, with some edges of overfill ground down - indicating a 1-sided mold only; & note embedded screws/bolts - & not factory cast mounting studs; & note no soldered "S-to-4" joint of a composite badge:


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> Note the possible slight upward curve or arch to the badge (also at pic above) - that the factory metal badges don't have - but the plastic ones often do, which could indicate some deformation of a plastic factory badge used to make the casting mold (but it could just be lens effect in the pix too); & note no evidence of a "S-to-4" joint at the front either - indicating it was cast from a fully formed & cleaned up mold; & there may be some roundness or curvature on the front of the "9" face to the left of the crossbar, which could be from an oval-head screw cast in at that point (as seen at the back pic above):


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All in all - it's a pretty clean cast metal badge, which looks like a couple of similar badges which I'd seen on dealer "914S" cars back in the day of the summer/fall of `72, when I went to LA & San Diego Porsche dealerships to drool over them - even if I couldn't afford one then while working my way through college!
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Cheers! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)
Tom
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