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]

Trunk Bottom (12/2023): Another area that received attention with the car flipped on its side was the bottom of the trunk. This greasy, rusty area had to get cleaned and stripped of old paint. Moreover, I also needed to grind down the welds that I made during the trunk pan replacement.

I will say that this area took a bit of time to do. The transmission mount area in particular was extremely hard to get to with it mounted to the rotisserie. I used a putty knife to get most of the heavy off, followed by a wire wheel, and finally a sand blaster to get the hard to reach places around the mounts and sway bar tabs. I also worked a bit up into each of the strut towers to remove the paint and sealant to get at the surface rust.



I then worked the entire area with metal etching for 30 minutes using a 3M scuff pad. This process removed all the rust and contaminants and prepare the surface for primer. I decided to go with a cheaper, non-weld thru primer as a temporary coating. I will likely remove it later and lay down a DTM epoxy once the majority of the bottom part of this car is ready.