1973 2.0L Rustoration, Restoration turned OT garage build Options

[Superhawk996]

I purchased my first 914 back in 1987 (1973 1.7L) and had that car for nearly a decade and I personally put over 100,000 miles on it before it ultimately fell victim to a negligent driver that drove into the back end of it at about 40 mph while the vehicle was stopped at a red light. That rear end crash totaled the vehicle but what is amazing is how well it crumpled (early crush zones!) due to the kink in the frame where the halfshafts are. Everyone walked away unharmed.

I replaced it with a 1991 Miata. Great car in its own right but I've always missed my 914.

Purchased this "replacement" in May 2018 as a known poster child for a complete right side longitudinal rustoration.

This vehicle had been put into storage inside a pole barn around 2004 as far as I can tell.

Vehicle initially purchased in non-running condition:
Engine couldn't be started.
Transmission shift linkage was disconnected
Half shafts and CV's were in pieces, and the wheel stubs were not installed therefore the vehicle couldn't even be rolled without risking having the rear wheel separate from within the bearing.
Fiberglass laid into the floorpan . . . that can't be a good sign.

Vehicle looks great . . . until I got under it.

I spent the better part of the summer putting the items above back together and trying to confirm that it would:
1) Run under its own power
2) Drive though the neighborhood and shift though all gears.



Looks pretty nice eh?

Here is what is lurking underneath once the rockers came off.



and when I started cutting back the rust. Oh my . . . .

[Superhawk996]

Have not posted in a while but I've been working. Not terribly exciting visual progress.

At this point I'm basically struggling with too many degrees of freedom on placement of the inner wheel house panel.

I was finally able to settle on that and have since Cleco'd it into place after I was satisfied that the panel is in the right fore aft direction and also that the basis of the interface to the inner and outer longitudinal are at the right Z height and are basically level to the other driver side rail as a reference.



Spent the last couple weekends on two tick points:
1) Jack post location & prep
2) Getting outer suspension trailing arm mount prepped

On the jack post front I ran into a interesting issue. Since I've been using Jeff Hail's Thread as the basis for getting me started and rationality checking what I do I found that the dimensions he had noted didn't match to my vehicle for the jack post location.

Jeff has kindly posted so much information and he's a much better artist than I will ever be. I think this one may have been a typo.



Dimension of 43 1/4" didn't match my vehicle though all of Jeff's other measurements for things like the suspension console mounts did match exactly.

This lead to much double checking and trying to figure out if I was doing something wrong. Ultimately the measurements from my car need to be considered "master" for my project.

In my case my jack post needs to be at 47 1/4 inches as measured from the very front of the front fender lip that the outer rocker locates from. It was the same for the driver side on my car.



I can't reiterate the importance of doing mock up work just to double check.






In my case, installation of the outer rocker confirms that 47 1/4" is the right measurement for me.



So satisfied that I had things in the right place, I've welded the jack post to the Wheelhouse panel.