74 914 Rustoration Options

[eatpez]

I picked up this roller last year and my brother picked one up as well. The original intension was a pair of Hayabusa builds, but I'm not so sure anymore, so I'm starting a new thread. The car was more or less complete and cheap. The longs and suspension points were solid, so I figure it was something I could work with.

Late this summer, I finally got back into the car, and the plan now is to take my time and make decisions as I go. Naturally, that means the first thing that needed to be done was to strip the car down to the bare chassis and tackle the rustoration first. This is especially interesting to me because the last time I restored a 914 was 25 years ago and I never got the chance to learn how to do body/suspension work. I'm using it as an opportunity to learn how fabricate and weld.

This will be my new thread and I'll be digging up pictures and posting updates with progress as I dig them up.

[Superhawk996]

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Keep posting. How's this build going?

[Garland]

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Keep posting. How's this build going?

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A Michigan build!

[eatpez]

Okay, pictures that I did take during the teardown and inventory of the chassis are coming with the next post. I wanted to mention the best addition to my tool arsenal for the project so far.

The lugs, suspension, steering rack, trailing arms, etc. gave me fits - the car had obviously been sitting (and rusting) for years. I tried, propane, PB blaster, mechanical leverage (up to 6-7' with cheater), and an air impact gun. No dice.

Once I got this setup, along with the #6 heating tip, all I ever needed to do was heat the stuck nut/bolt until it just started to glow red and every single time the fastener came loose without any issue whatsoever.

I wish I had this sucker 25 years ago when I did my last 914 project. All hail my trusty little HF oxy/acetylene torch!

[eatpez]

Here are the pictures I took during the teardown. The neighbor's cat was interested in what was going on - you can see the car has been through many colors and as I learned in going over it - also had many battle scars.



The rear panel was really weak in a few places, as well as the rear trunk pan, and I decided that I was going to replace the entire panel instead of doing the fabrication work to clean it up. More on that later.

The area blocked in red, more pictures to come, was evidence of an old accident where front half of the inner front fender was replaced but the damage also affected the area where the sway bar comes through as well as the bracket just under it. I've since found a donor piece to patch it in later. Thanks to Garold down in NW Indiana for hooking me up with some hunks off of one of his chassis (more pictures to come on that too).







The longs and suspension points were solid, but it I plan on replacing: rear panel, rear trunk pan, floor plan, front trunk floor plan in addition to the fab work to fix up the firewall and the engine bay (hell hole, battery tray).

Typical lower windshield rust.

[eatpez]

Here are a few examples of what I found during disassembly:

1. At some point someone thought it would be great to just weld in a piece of plate with a few stitches and the seat rails to that. The floor definitely needs to go and I'm considering boxing it in for re-enforcement. Those decisions will be deferred until after I have the chassis restoration done and decide on the powertrain.



2. A view of the inner passenger side front well - to the left of the pink line in the seam where the repair was made from accident damage, but the area circled in orange is also still out of shape and since this is where the sway bars come through and the a-arm attaches underneath, I've got a donor section that I'm going to swap in here.



In general, I'm working back to front on the chassis, mainly because I need to get the rear done so I can use the bumper mount points to get it up on a rotisserie.

[eatpez]

Here are a few more pictures from the disassembly.

A wide shot of the rear fender:



After removing the rear panel, I noticed bomdo and accident damange, removing a little paint to see how bad it was:



And here is a close up, way to much bondo and not enough work with a body hammer by the PO. As a result, if I can find someone who has the rear half of the passenger rear fender around, I'll take it and replace the entire section - especially because the rear section around the taillight is out of shape as well.


That's a lot of bondo.

Also pulling the wiring completely out was a tedious as usual, especially getting the rear section up through the firewall and center tunnel. Why that little turn is in there at the rear of the center tunnel is beyond me.



Next up some shots from removal of the rear panel.

[eatpez]

Here are some pictures from removal of the rear panel which after doing it was a real chore and I probably would have been better served doing the fabrication to repair the weak spots in the one on the car.

First of course are all the spot welds and these were the easy ones.



Then there were the seams where it meets the rest of the car and the area near the cups for the rear trunk tops included some lovely lead body filler making it hard to determine where the seam actually was in the area of the rear trunk seal channel.



I don't have a ton of pictures of this process, but here is a shot of the seam at the side of the rear panel. It appears that the factory put the rear on after the inner panel and then attached the outer fender panels afterwards, creating a sandwiched seam which was a real pain to get to release without creating too much damage.



Finally after a ton of work on spot welds and even more finesse I was able to get the rear panel off. Since I am replacing the rear of the trunk pan, I simply used the oxy/acetylene torch to cut around the mount for the towing hook. I still have yet to clean that stuff up so it can go back on later.



Here are the brackets from the rear panel after they came out of the blasting cabinet. I still have to do the side cups and the towing and bumper mounts. I have those set aside.

[eatpez]

Next up was removing the rear half of the trunk pan. So many spot welds to drill out. This was just the cross member support bracket.



Next up the rough cut to get most of the metal out of the way. Compared to the rear panel, this was really straightforward.



Laid down some tape to mark the cut line for the final cut after trimming the Restoration Design panel.



Test fit of the new section - not bad at all.



Next up is sealing the cross member channel with POR-15 now that it's open. And it's hard to tell from the pictures, but I'm also going to replace the front part of the trunk pan using a section from a donor car. Somehow, it got really banged up and bent from underneath at some point - hammer and dolly work won't cut it. And besides, I could use the welding practice.

Things are going a little slower now that it's cold in Michigan; all I have is a propane heater in the garage - sure wish mine were heated.