Safari 914 project, “Sufari” Options

[East coaster]

I’ve been out of the 914 game for quite some time. The last 914 I built was back in 2006 and was quite a build. I’ve had about a dozen 914s over the years and my 2006 build was to be my ultimate 914 (for me at least). It was a GT flared 3.6 six conversion and was a great car. I sold it in 2015 and moved to other things. I’ve been getting the itch to build another teener for a while, but to go in a different direction. I’ve seen a couple Safari builds and that seemed interesting.

I picked up pretty well worn ‘72 914 for the base of my project. My plan is to build a budget conscious (it’s all relative) Subaru powered Safari mod. I plan to go with a normally aspirated 2.5 Subaru from a 1998 Forrester along with the Subaru tranny.

I’ve been working on removing rust and getting the tub suitable for my plans. This will by no means be a concours resto type build, but should prove interesting.

Here’s the base car being picked up for the project start



I stripped it down and sold the engine and tranny (it was a partially completed V8 conversion). Then started cutting out rusted areas a welding in new metal.

Some Radom rust repair pics in no special order….

[East coaster]

Decided to lower the rear control arm mounts to account for the 2” lift. This will help regain camber and help with trailing arm length (wheel center in wheel arch). To accomplish this I decide to lower the mounts 1” (compromise between complexity and strength of end product). I lengthened the the innner mounting ear and will be adding a 1” spacer to the outer mount point.

Started the process by cutting off the box section of the mount (saving for attachment later), then adding a section to the internals of the “ear” (not shown in pics). Then added a 16ga layer that ties to upper ear and extends 3/8 lower than existing end of ear.