Time to un-DAPO the "new" car, Bad things happened to a nice car Options

[BillC]

So, I bought a "new" 914 a few weeks ago (a '73 2.0). When I received it from the shipper, I noticed was the seller was quite artful about his pictures, with what was and what wasn't shown. And, now that I've had a chance to start taking things apart, I have uncovered quite a bit of DAPO-done-damage, and I'm sure there's more hiding somewhere (oh boy! something to look forward too....). Some of the damage appears to have been there for a loooong time.

I've already received a piece from a scrap car to fix this hole:


Once I took the rockers off, I discovered this:

Yes, they hole-sawed through FOUR layers of sheet metal, including the heat duct. Not sure what they were thinking, but there it is.

In the trunk, I found three hole-sawed holes. I think they might have been thinking about mounting the fuel pump in a 75/76 blister, but they never finished the work (and also picked the wrong location).

[BillC]

I took advantage of the federal holiday to spend a little more quality time with the car today. Today's task was to fix the six bolt holes (3 per side) used to attach the bottom side of the rocker panels. I was hoping that all I would need to do was drill them out with a left-handed bit and everything would be good, but nope, the DAPO had other ideas.

Every single hole had a broken bolt stuck in it, and every single broken bolt had a hole drilled off-center through it. Like this:

You'd think after boogering up one or two holes, the DAPO would take a step back and try to get better instructions and/or tools for this job (or an f'ing clue), but nope, they charged forward and screwed up all the holes (only one shown for brevity).

For five of the holes, I was able to use my dremel tool with a tiny carbide bit to grind out the remnants of the bolt. Then, for each hole, I drilled the hole oversize, tapped it and installed a helicoil.


However, one of the DAPO-holes was so far off-center, I had no choice but to grind the hole oversize and weld it up. I then drilled, tapped and installed a helicoil in this hole so it would be consistent with the others.