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]

Drivers Side Longitudinal - Part 4 (1/6 - 1/7/2024): Made decent progress on the longitudinal this weekend. I started where I left off with the two patches that needed to be ground down a bit. Nothing too fancy here, I just needed the repaired section treated so it doesn't flash-rust. We've had a bit of rain lately and being outside isn't ideal for bare metal.





A quick look at the remaining damage on the longitudinal. After some thought, I decided it would be easier to do the next part of the repair from the other side.



So, I rotated the car around to the 45 on the drivers side and removed the inner support metal, since it was in the way. This support metal will be restored off the car and welded back in later. Here you can see the repairs to the front and the remaining rust holes in the rear of the longitudinal. You can also see the marks where I plan to cut the bad metal.





After working a good while on the fit, I started tacking in each patch. It took several passes, stitch-welding around the perimeter of the repair, to get it all done. Note: I had to use a lot of compressed air to keep the metal from getting too hot. You may notice the slight warp in the longitudinal edge in a few of the photos. This is due to me removing internal bend of the longitudinal and not from me over-heating it. I did have to make several minor adjustments with my hands as I went along to make sure I had the correct width to the opening of the longitudinal in the end.







After all four patches were finished, I took a "first pass" at grinding down the welds that will need to be flush for the support metal to lay flat. Not done with all of this yet but it's getting there (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

With rain expect tomorrow, I did a quick etch along the entire inside of the longitudinal and then covered the car.