Richard's progress thread Options

[Richard Casto]

A little history first...

This is my third 914 and it will be a keeper. First two are from my college days in the late 1980's but both of those are gone (1st was totalled in a crash, the second had terminal rust and eventually became a parts car) Fast forward roughly 20 years. Got married, had two kids and I decided I could not continue to put off building my dream car. While I had always wanted an original 914/6, I also wanted a general purpose fun car (Street, Autocross and Track) that would have had more power and safety features than a stock 914/6. I can't afford to have multiple 914s (a stock 914/4, a 914/4 with a modern Type IV, a stock 914/6, a 914/6 GT Clone, a track only 914, etc.), so rather than molest a "real" 914/6 to build my dream "six", I decided to start with a regular 914/4 and do a six swap.

This car was purchased in 8/2005. Over the past two years I have disassembled the entire car and am now at the point of doing repair and refurbishment. Which is why I picked now as the time to do the progress thread (who wants to read about the dis-assembly of a car!)

Goals for the car...

• While I appreciate 914/6 GTs, I have no desire to spend the time and money to make this a "GT Clone".
• While I appreciate 914s that have SBC or Subaru engine swaps or even big modern Type IV engines, I wanted to keep the spirit of the 914/6 which means a Porsche flat six. I am looking for "safe" power and torque. So this excludes building up a wild 2.x engine. So I either going to do a 3.0 or 3.2 (90% sure it will be a 3.2).
• Again, with the spirit of building something like a 914/6, I will be doing a five lug conversion. I already have a complete front end including 3.5" struts.
• I will be using a 901 transmission in the near term and when I can afford it, I will be moving up to a 915 transmission.
• I don't think the wide body look works for every car and I tend to like the narrow body style better, but I am a big fan of plenty of rubber on a car. So I am doing steel flairs.
• I am not a huge fan of the 916 front and rear bumpers, so I am keeping the stock style front and rear bumpers.
• This will be used at track events, so I want a full cage. But at the same time I want to be able to put the top on the car. This is going to be a challenge as I am also 6'5". So getting me into a seat, with helmet on that fits under the top of the cage and with the top fitting is going to be a challenge.
• I really want to minimize how much I modify the body itself. I wanted mods to be "bolt on" vs. cut and weld. This is currently stopping me from doing a "GT Style" front oil cooler. I most likely will put a cooler in the rear with ducts and thermostat controlled fan. I know that in a way this is more complicated than the front cooler, but it is what I want. The only exceptions to this rule so far is the flairs and the installation of the cage. The flairs I think are in the spirit of the car as they are the steel repro of the factory flairs and the cage is a safety item. I haven't decided about things like cutting an access hole for the engine (set timing, etc.), mods to the floorboard to get the seat to fit as well as "stiffening" or "reinforcement" kits. I want this car to be SCCA SM2 legal for autocross. But I may just say "screw it" and do some of these factory stiffening kits even if it puts me into XP class.
• I want to keep the "bling" factor down on the car. So the interior and exterior will have a very "stock" look (no rear wings, etc.) I am also going to go with the factory color of "Irish Green" as you don't seem to see many in that color.
• Ideally I would like to refurbish or replace as much as I can as I reassemble the car, but due to funds, some stuff may be put back that I will replace at a later date. The dash cover is a simple example of this. Mine is cracked, but I may not be able to get it recovered until later.
• Do as much of the work myself as I can. For me the trip there is just as important as the destination. I want to know this car inside and out when I am done.
• I want to do any rust repair "the right way". What I mean by this is that I will only be in doing surgery on this car once. So if I see rust, I am going to fix it once and fix it right. And the resulting repair will hopefully look as close to factory original as I can make it.
• I would like to be done by the end of 2008. As with anything, time and money have a big impact on this.

I have my own website that contains a higher level of detail on specific sections of the car as well as a more detailed general Blog. I currently host this at home and sometimes the server is down, but it is up most of the time. You can find that here...

http://motorsport.zyyz.com/project_914.htm

[John]

It looks like you are making good progress with your project.


I have a few questions:

What are you using to media blast? What protective gear do you need? How much of a mess does it make? How much of the media are you able to recover? I am assuming that you are doing this in an open space in your garage.

[Richard Casto]

It looks like you are making good progress with your project.


I have a few questions:

What are you using to media blast? What protective gear do you need? How much of a mess does it make? How much of the media are you able to recover? I am assuming that you are doing this in an open space in your garage.

Blaster: 40lb pressure pot from HF. I generally like it so far. This is my first pressure pot blaster. I think to make it work right, you have to screen/filter your media, don’t go crazy with the pressure (generally been using 30-60 psi), get a good ratio of air vs. media and then work on your technique. This is what I am using…

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/disp...temnumber=34202

Media: Coal slag 30/60 grit in the areas with rust. I am probably going to use paint stripper as much as I can on the panels and then media blast what that doesn’t remove. I may try some aluminum oxide on the panels as well, but so far I like the coal slag (Black Diamond and Black Beauty are common brand names of Coal slag).

Gear: The protective mask/hood that came with the blaster, leather gloves and respirator. You will require a good shower when you are done as you will have dust and grit in everything.

Mess: I built a tent (PVC pipe and 6 mil plastic) in the garage to keep the mess down. When not blasting, I roll the sides of the tent up and tie them in place. I used 6 mil plastic because that is what I had around, but I think it is overly heavy and at some point I am going to replace this with lighter plastic. I probably will also re-engineer some of it to make it a bit higher, but toward the door of the garage I can only make it so high as I like to be able to open/close my garage door. This entire thing will be converted to my paint booth in the future (will need to clean it all up, new plastic, etc.). If you keep the area pretty clear it is pretty easy to sweep up the media and reuse. In addition to what is in the pressure pot, I have a clean 5 gallon bucket and as I sweep up the media, I filter it and put it back into the bucket. I bought two 50 lbs bags of media and I am guessing that while I have cycled it through a number of times, I probably still have 80% of it left.

Here is a picture of the tent…