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]

Great to see the car get out on the track, that is a big day. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/piratenanner.gif)

Time to get to sorting all the issues out, nobody nails this right on the money. Everyone likes their cars setup slightly different.

Modify the shifter. Extended the lever to increase the perceived throw, move the cable points so that it increases the throw, that is pretty easy one. Lots of 818 guys run this setup with out issue. BTW, in two different shifters where made from Toyota, early cars had a longer throw, the later cars got it shortened up. If you used after market short throw kits they are not know to be the best quality and can add some error to the movement.

Suspension start with alignment, and worn components. To make an educated guess we would need to know what you're running for all the various bits and pieces.
Spring rates in the back
Running a rear swaybar? If yes size
Running a front sway bar? I hope so, If yes size
Torsion Bar size
Shocks - settings come into play, and valving.
Bushings in the Front
Bushings in the Rear
Tire sizes front and rear also come into play

My one suggestion is document everything as it sits now, and build out a list from there, and change one thing at a time, then recheck the alignment.


You most likely know all this stuff, just wanting to help get the car sorted fast here is a simple cheat sheet, image quality is poor.