Derek’s Willow Green, ‘72 914, Restoration Thread Options

[dereknlee]

Inspired by others on this forum, this thread will document the restoration of my 1972 914 1.7.

I bought it in summer of 2008. It was supposed to be my daily driver that I would make minor improvements to while keeping it drivable. There was a memorable couple of weeks where I was using it for my commute in the winter, with no heat (heat ducting/valves removed for paint), and then the ignition switch went out and so I was parking at the top of hills until I got that figured out/fixed. I don't know how 914s got on my radar or what drew me to this car. Le Mans was, and is, one of my favorite movies - so I thought 1970s Porsches were cool. 911s were a bit out of reach, so I guess the 914 was the next closest option.





[Side note, cell phone camera technology has come a long way since 2008....and these pictures make me feel old.]




The plan for this car to be a daily driver changed (not so much by choice) when I bought a house in the fall, and upgraded from apartment carport to an actual garage. I set aside a couple weeks to drop the engine and tend to some oil leaks, and of course - discovered rust. The car hasn’t driven since (12 years as of this writing).

The worst of the rust was in the hell hole. I bought a MIG welder and did a fair job of patching things up. I also attacked the rust at the driverside jack point and in the rear trunk.





Then the house remodeling got serious. The car sat for four years before I decided I wasn’t going to learn body work and the car deserved better. I hired Eurotech Bodywerkes to finish the rust repair and repaint the car. When I bought it, the car had been re-sprayed (and poorly masked) in a John Deer green. The plan was to go back to the factory color: willow green.

Eurotech found more rust in the doors, so it got new doors. They also fit factory sway bars. They fixed miscellaneous rust all over the place, filled dings, re-sealed the seams, installed a new battery tray, stripped the underside, fitted new rocker panel valances, restored the old front and rear valences and then laid down a very pretty paint job. The cabin and front tank bay are the only areas with original paint.








At the same time I had the engine rebuilt by NW connecting rod into a 2ish L displacement (not sure as of this writing whether it is a 1911 or 2056) with a carb cam. The plan was to fit dual Webers (more on that later). I also had the transmission rebuilt to fix a chronic 1st gear grind. And I had some parts re-plated.

And then the car sat for six more years while I permitted and built/finished an addition to the house, as well as picked up some sports to occupy my time.

Spring forward to Dec 2018, and a freshly separated shoulder from a cycling crash. I started working on the 914 again. Re-sealed the tank (the kits available for this are amazing).



And refurbed the wiring loom in the front trunk:



...before getting side-tracked again by a Vanagon. The Vanagon was a 2018 acquisition that suddenly needed a motor replacement in 2019, following a catastrophic failure that occurred a few days after this picture was taken.



Which brings us to the current covid quarantine times and cancelled vanagon trips. But on the bright side, work has restarted on the 914 again. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/piratenanner.gif) Will this be the final push that sees the car on the road? Track record says no, but only time will tell.



I will add additional posts to document progress. But at the outset I’d like to state my intentions with the project I would like this to be a stock 914 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/prop.gif) - at least outwardly. This presents a dilemma relative to my current 2L engine. I'd like to coax as much performance out of the engine and 1.7 L Djet system as I can. But a new cam is in order to even consider that, and as long as the engine is coming apart then I can re-think heads and displacement - with the aim to go as big as possible without ditching everything for a 2.0 L Djet or going microsquirt.

-Derek

[dereknlee]

@bbrock Thank you for the advice! That gives me hope and a few more things to try. Much appreciated!

I had a terrarium heater attached to my main chromate mix thinking that a little warmth might help - but I never measured the temperature. That heater doesn't draw much power, so it took a long time to cause the container to feel warm. I noticed that as the day went on adhesion got better and better, but I was changing too many other variables to attribute it to any one thing - maybe the mix was finally getting warm enough to work.

Do you find that the process is very sensitive to residue or cleanliness of the part? I picked up that it was important for the parts going into chromate to pass a water break test. But it seemed no matter what solvent or detergent/water /rinse I could not get the water to sheet on the freshly plated parts - it always beaded up. Maybe the light etch you recommend will help (whether or not water break is necessary).

I might have to break down and buy some of the Casewell supplies - they do seem highly regarded. I was looking at that Sunday night but saw shipments are on a two week delay. I would really like to get a homebrew mix to work - videos on youtube lead me to believe that it is possible and can produce good results- but I wish there was a greater body of knowledge available on the methods.

-Derek

[bbrock]

@bbrock Thank you for the advice! That gives me hope and a few more things to try. Much appreciated!

I had a terrarium heater attached to my main chromate mix thinking that a little warmth might help - but I never measured the temperature. That heater doesn't draw much power, so it took a long time to cause the container to feel warm. I noticed that as the day went on adhesion got better and better, but I was changing too many other variables to attribute it to any one thing - maybe the mix was finally getting warm enough to work.

Do you find that the process is very sensitive to residue or cleanliness of the part? I picked up that it was important for the parts going into chromate to pass a water break test. But it seemed no matter what solvent or detergent/water /rinse I could not get the water to sheet on the freshly plated parts - it always beaded up. Maybe the light etch you recommend will help (whether or not water break is necessary).

I might have to break down and buy some of the Casewell supplies - they do seem highly regarded. I was looking at that Sunday night but saw shipments are on a two week delay. I would really like to get a homebrew mix to work - videos on youtube lead me to believe that it is possible and can produce good results- but I wish there was a greater body of knowledge available on the methods.

-Derek

I'm going to tag @doug_b_928 on this because he's been DIY plating too and gotten more consistently good results than me. He's also done both epsom salt and Caswell zinc baths. Also, don't get the idea I have this all figured out. I'm still learning and have failures, but did get to where I was mostly succeeding with the yellow chromate.

On the chromate temp, I shot for around 90F. I think I read that on the Caswell forum. My understanding was that the water break test was for the zinc plating. I know if the parts weren't perfectly clean and grease free, the zinc plating would fail. After the zinc I would immediately rinse the part in distilled water, then a brief dip in 5% HCl, then into a separate bucket of distilled, then finally to the chromate. My thinkining was if the part was clean enough to get a good zinc plate, it should still be clean for the chromate.

I'm with you on wanting the home brew but in the end, I couldn't resist the simplicity of just diluting the Caswell products per instructions. There is still a learning curve and art to it. Right now I have a contaminated zinc bath I think from plating cast iron. I need to figure out the best way to filter it if possible.