74 Roller rebuild and Subaru conversion, 1974 rebuild and Subaru conversion project Options

[mgarrison]

Hello,

I new around here, but have been lurking for a bit trying to soak up all the 914 knowledge and information I could! I was looking into building a Factory Five 818 kit with the Subaru flat-4, but the cost of entry was a bit too high, and the time & space needed to build a car from scratch seemed overwhelming. But it got me thinking; that's basically a tube-framed 914 with an odd body. I wonder if anyone has put a Subaru flat-4 in a 914? A few Google searches later I learned that a lot of people had, and parts were out there to spend my money on!

Long story short, I found two rollers with no engines or transmissions in Tucson, AZ a couple of hours South of me. Soon I rented a car hauler for a couple of days and my "Craft Project" (my wife's label) was begun.

The rollers were a green 1971, and a red 1974. I wanted to restore the 71 because it just seemed to have more character. The 74 had been partially stripped for an electric conversion project, and seemed less "car like". Sadly, the 71 needed a bit more work than I was setup to handle. So, it had to be the 74 who I have simply labeled as "Red".

I will try to track my build process here as best I can. I tend to get working on things and forget to document things, but will try to keep track.

Here's Red when we got her home on the trailer and tucked away in the back yard for the moment.

Mike

[mgarrison]

I've been taking pictures as I work, but getting them from my phone, to Google drive, then to the laptop, then resized to post...You get the idea!

Finally have the "frunk" mostly finished. I feel like I'm sooooo sloooooow. But progress is progress!

I had to piece in the gap at the front of the frunk floor where too much was cut out. I got some new snips that work much better, so getting the patches cut was much quicker. Half the gap tacked:



And the other half:


I kept hearing the Taylor Swift song "Death by a thousand cuts" in my head, but it transformed to "Death (of my back) by a thousand tacks" in my addled brain!


As I was making progress tacking things in, I ran out of welding wire. I had more in the drawer, but it was the good Lincoln stuff. Oddly enough the Lincoln wire gave me more trouble than the cheap HF stuff I was using! Does anyone with more welding experience know why this started happening when I switched to the Lincoln wire?


Both are .030 wire. I did not change my settings, etc. Just started getting these crazy craters in some of the tacks! I fiddled with the amps and wire speed and finally got things working better. Almost like the Lincoln wire burned hotter and I could not get my welder set low enough for the thin sheet metal...


I sprayed a small section of my test color. Then covered it with clear. Then sanded a bit with 800 grit to removed orange peel. Then finally buffed it out with a random buffer. It looked pretty good, at first. Over time this happened!


For those with more experience; have you seen this happen before? What would cause it to occur? It looked fine at first, but after a couple of weeks its like the paint shrank, cracked, and exposed the primer underneath!

Back to the frunk floor. I started grinding down some of my welds to see how it was going to turn out. I needed a little break from welding, and to catch my breath before I dealt with a few problem spots:


My first problem area was near the drivers side front A-arm mount. They cut out the frunk floor right up against the edge of the mount, which made me nervous welding. Some of the metal just did not seem to want to be welded, or I was not good enough to get it welded, so I ended up using a hole saw to remove the problem section. I then patched it in which was a challenge as it was rather curved.


Another difficult spot was near the hole they cut for the AC lines on the passenger side near the rear of the frunk floor. Metal just did not want to weld together, despite the lack of rust, etc.


Whoever did the AC installation on this car was rather rough to put it mildly! Not sure what in the world they did with these two mounting holes (assuming they were for the strap/bracket holding the condenser down to the frunk floor), but they tore up the steel so bad I just ended up cutting them both out with the hole saw and patching them up!


Getting better at cutting out these little patches!


I read on 914World where someone smashed a copper pipe, and used it as backing while welding thin sheet metal. It seems to work rather well to absorb the heat, and is an easy way to back up these little patches - thanks to whoever it was for that tip! Here's my setup for patching the nasty AC mounting holes. You can just see the flat copper pipe on top of the 4x4, pressed up against the bottom of the frunk floor:


From the top side, it looks like this, and helps keep the patch in place and flush:


Starting to tack the patch in, and had the dang crater issues again! Arrrgggg.


Settled down and it came out ok in the end. Just had to fill those craters with a really quick tack since they went clear through!


Got my welds ground down good enough, I guess - I'm going to use rubberized undercoating on the trunk floors to seal, protect, and give it a bit of texture to hide my less than idea repair work. I made sure to get the paintable kind of undercoating so I can spray it body color if I decide I dont like the black. Gave it a quick coat of primer top & bottom to keep it protected.


Then spent an hour or so starting to remove some of the seam sealer to ensure nothing was hiding under it anywhere. Found an odd spot that I first thought was rust under there, but turned out to be a missed spot weld or some other oddity - you can just see it on the right edge of the seam, about 2" inches below the hole for the AC line.