Fred's Backyard LE Restoration Options

[friethmiller]

So, I finally decided to create a build thread for my 2nd 914.

Quick Story: Last summer (6/2022), I found this car listed on FB Marketplace and it intrigued me. It was listed as a ’72 but some of the pictures were telling me that this thing was probably a ’74 and possibly an LE. Against my better judgement, I decided to call. The man who owned the car told me that it was, in fact, an LE and that the “72” was a misprint. I told him I’d come pick it up and pay him his asking price of $1000. So, I rented a U-Haul trailer for $68 (incl. insurance), and drove 4 hours from Austin to Leonard, TX, which is about an hour northwest of Dallas. Got the car home without issue and shoved it into a storage unit for a month while I got thing prepared at my house/garage. Unfortunately for me, I had promised my wife that I wouldn't restore another car "in our garage". So, I'm stuck in the backyard [for now] attempting to restore a very rusty, old car. It’s kind of a pain when it rains and have to cover everything up, but I prefer being outside.

Condition: Poor! To say that the floor pans were a little rough, was an understatement. The car had been sitting in a field with all the doors/hoods off for years. This is never a good thing. When I saw the car in person, it had about 5 inches of wet leaves in the bottom. The trunk replacement was a "hack" with no welds to the transmission support. I can’t imagine driving the thing with the backend loose like that. The hell hole was in horrible condition with about ¾ of the passenger side longitudinal ripped open with rust. The list goes on. However, it did have its original 2.0L (minus FI) + transmission, and the dealer installed A/C. To be honest, the condition didn't bother me at all. I love restoring and repairing these cars. Plus the COA (or whatever they call it now) came back as a CanAm package car. This thing needs to be saved! I’m going to do my best to bring back this bumblebee. I've got a lot of pictures to post but here are some of the initial pics.

[friethmiller]

Passenger Inner Suspension Console Replacement - Part 1 (11/2023): With the back panel welded in on the trunk, it's finally time to replace the passenger side suspension console. I started by making a single cut to each gusset along the pinch weld seam. By doing this I can focus on removing just the inner console. I will reweld the gusset together at the end. Note the rust damage to the part.



Before moving forward I cannot forget to weld in something that will facilitate the realignment of new part. I accomplished this by using 3 pieces of angle iron securely welded to the body of the car. You can see the metal piece is tangent to the face of the console ear with a hole drilled through to allow the bolt to be aligned to the console. This is obviously a very important step. Note the cuts made to the gusset to begin the process of removal.



With the internals more exposed, you can begin to see that a mouse has lived here. Good grief! Having a water trapping nest only promotes the rust. With the bottom section of the console removed, I cut the rusted metal from the support rail skin for replacement.



Like before, I used construction paper to develop the template which was cut from 18 gauge sheet metal. The following photo show this process. Note the one rosette weld that looks funny. This is what happens when you break for lunch and forget to turn the gas back on the welder (IMG:style_emoticons/default/051103-stupid4.gif)