Rusty bucket into Solo toy, Some highlights of my budget autocross build from rust to rocket Options

[stownsen914]

Nice setup on the quick release steering adapter. One thing though - are you sure a 1/8" roll pin is up to the task of handling the force you can apply through the steering wheel? It might be, but then again it sure would suck if it broke while you're driving ....

[Han Solo]

Nice setup on the quick release steering adapter. One thing though - are you sure a 1/8" roll pin is up to the task of handling the force you can apply through the steering wheel? It might be, but then again it sure would suck if it broke while you're driving ....

I did think about that pin diameter. I had to pound the adapter on pretty hard due to the imperfect grinding of the shaft down. If I had had the shaft machined and the adapter easily slid on, yes, definitely a larger pin. I will monitor the tightness closely however.

[Han Solo]

I've had a few hours after work the last few days to start installing hood latches. I picked mini Quick Latches for size and cost. There's You Tube videos from the manufacturer but I thought I'd show how well it worked on the 914. On the rear trunk hood I started with the rear two latches because there's a great mounting spot already in the trunk. That's where the rubber stoppers fixed to the hood contact the body. After carefully measuring I drilled those plates out and put in the posts. Now the hardest part is measuring and cutting the holes for the receiver mechanism. There's supporting structure under the hood that has to be cut away. A hole saw will do the job but it's odd because you're cutting a contoured surface. That hole also has to be large enough to get a 20 mm socket to tighten up the retaining nut on the receiver. Once you've done that you can remeasure for the 3/4" hole in the hood top that the receiver fits in. I drilled a small pilot hole first and laid the hood down to see that the pin was in visible. If you've made a small error, you can correct as long as it's within the 3/4" area. After drilling that out, I put the receiver in and found a design flaw. The threaded portion of the receiver body doesn't allow the locking nut to tighten on thin metal. There's a 1 or 2 mm shoulder. That's dumb! Anyway, I found some large copper washers that fit fairly well and added the thickness needed to tighten. I'll get some proper washers when I do the top latches. Those will need some structure added inside the front and rear trunks for a mounting position for the posts. I'm thinking 1" x 1/4" flat stock cut to fit in the corners. The front trunk pins had a nice mounting point where the rubber bumpers are pushed in. Running out of garage time I got the engine lid and targa top on. The engine lid is a nice fit but the targa top will need that molding along the windshield top frame to fit tightly.

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[Han Solo]

I've finished up the mini latch install. Last Monday I did the top two on the front hood and today I did the top two on the rear hood. I had to weld in bar stock for those posts. I'm fairly pleased with the results but it turned out to be a little more difficult than I thought it would be. I also opened up the supporting under-structure to install large flat washers. That's some real butchery but the receivers are now very tight. Note the rust inside of this structure. That just gives everyone an idea exactly how far one would need to go to have a truly rust free 914. I also installed a new throttle cable and the OEM seat belts. The new throttle cable has help settle down the idle even more.

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[Han Solo]

I hit a set back last night. Over the last few evenings I finished the prep and paint on the rear calipers. Last night I got those installed and started bleeding the system. I was using a power bleed but progress was slow. The rear calipers bled out fairly quickly but I was really struggling to get fluid out of the fronts. Then I found a loose fitting on the master cylinder. After getting that secure, finally I began to get fluid out of the front bleeders. After getting all the bubbles out bottom and top, I'm thinking "oh boy, stiff brake peddle" - not so much. It's apparent that the OEM master cylinder isn't creating much (if any) pressure. So I'm biting the bullet and ordering a new master cylinder. It's going to be a 19mm which I really wanted to see how well the car braked with the OEM 17mm but those are $$$. I'm also not looking forward to pulling the master cylinder and fighting those grommets again. Just a small bump in the road...

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[Phoenix914]

Your calipers look nice. Please post your opinion of the 19mm MC after you get it installed. I am thinking the same job may be in my near future.

[Han Solo]

Your calipers look nice. Please post your opinion of the 19mm MC after you get it installed. I am thinking the same job may be in my near future.

I may not be a good judge having never driven a 914 before. However, we've got lots of other mid-engine Porsches around here and I love the braking on those!

[Han Solo]

I'm waiting on the new master cylinder but I couldn't resist taking the car our on the lawn. I'm glad I did because the suspension settled and the rear tires were rubbing the flares. I shaved as much off the flare inner arch as I comfortably could. It's still really close on the drivers side. I may need to have rear wheel spacers machined down 10mm. I also adjusted toe and ride height on the rears. I think the drivers side is lower than the passenger side. That may be due to the replacement suspension console on the passenger side. I ended up with the rear Bilstiens set 2 notches above lowest on the drivers side and 1 notch above lowest on the passenger side.

1st drive '73 914

[Han Solo]

I also fixed that snarly mouth with a 2 1/4" x 37 1/2" cut of 20 gauge cold rolled sheet metal. $10 in metal and some pop rivets verses the plastic plugs. More cash for go fast parts!

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[malcolm2]

Hey, I just noticed that you are in Middle Tennessee. Me too. There are a few of us around. I am in Mount Juliet. Looks like you have done lot of work, but if you ever need any help, let me know. I have a daily driver, no racing for me. I've had mine in driving shape for about 16 months and put 4500 miles on it.

Clark
615-504-1086

[Han Solo]

Hey, I just noticed that you are in Middle Tennessee. Me too. There are a few of us around. I am in Mount Juliet. Looks like you have done lot of work, but if you ever need any help, let me know. I have a daily driver, no racing for me. I've had mine in driving shape for about 16 months and put 4500 miles on it.

Clark
615-504-1086

Thanks Clark! I'm not far away from Mt. Juliet. Near Gladeville. I appreciate the help offer. I'm getting so close to having this one ready for course testing!

[Han Solo]

Installed the replacement 19mm master cylinder last night. That actually went better than I expected. I loosened the plastic feeder hoses from the reservoir and slid them out with the old MC. I discovered a new trick that make installing those hoses with grommets into the MC much easier. Lightly clamp a vice grip just above the grommet on the metal section of the feeder hose. That will keep the grommet from sliding up the hose as you try to stuff it in the MC hole. The vice grip also gives you some leverage while you use a small flat head screw driver to stuff the edges. Another use for the vice grip is to clamp it on the knuckle of the brake peddle post that goes into the MC. If you're doing this by yourself, that post can be very difficult to feed into the MC while dealing with the feeder hoses and branch pipes. Clamping it where it's positioned correctly will save a lot of cursing. The system bled out well and it took a few pumps on the peddle to get pressure but the calipers are clamping. I'll probably have to bleed one or two more times. I also installed the drivers side e-brake cable and attempted to adjust those. I'm not getting any bite on the e-brakes so I need to read up on that procedure.

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[Han Solo]

So I got a fiberglass bumper and spoiler from gt racing. The purchase price wasn't too bad and they shipped really quickly. I've spent several hours figuring out what would be the best mounting method. Utilizing the OEM dog bones and mounting holes seemed to make the most sense. I started by just trial fitting the bumper and found that the fiberglass brackets were somewhat in the way at the top ends of the bumper. That's where the front bulk head folds into the fender. Sort of a protruding edge. So I trimmed a bit of the fiberglass bracket and continued fitting. Intilally I though I could use bolts through the bracket but not the front of the bumper. However, the geometry there doesn't work and there's no way to get a nut under the bracket with the bumper in place. So I surrendered to having to drill through the bumper and use long 3/8" carriage bolts to mount. I also got some rubber washers for under the bolt heads. I used the dog bones to get my holes properly alligned. After drilling I test fitted again and then took the bumper to my bench and attached the spoiler with the same large head pop rivets with backing washers. Final attachment went well with the top of the bumper coming close to a tight fit to the front hood. I'll remove the assemble again to grind the square shoulders off the carriage bolts, drill some small holes on the spoiler ends and attach those to the body sheet metal so those aren't flapping around. Also, half way through this process I cut two 9" x 5 1/2" sheet metal retangles to fill the fog light holes in the bumper (I might have been able to order those not cut out). Attaching from the rear with small pop rivets proved to be the easiest as the front side has some contours that aren't friendly to a true retangle.

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[Han Solo]

I found a few hours this week to make some improvements. The fuel cell needed a vent so I purchased a little breather filter cap at the auto parts store, used some of the braided fuel line and AN fittings I already had. Today I re-purposed the heater control lever for a engine hood release. That took the place of a bolt that probably wouldn't have passed tech. I'll probably trim that lever handle down least it be stabbing me in the belly whilst working on the engine!

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[Han Solo]

Borrowed some scales and got the 914 weighed. It's really light!
LF - 363 RF - 362
LR - 462 RR- 452
Cross 824 50.27%
total weight - 1638 lbs!

My target weight is 1971 lbs.
Total weight with 190 lb. driver - 1828 lbs.
I'm going to add 75 lbs. to each front corner and see where that lands.

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[Han Solo]

Yesterday I trailered the 914 to my buddies shop for alignment. First we weighed the car with me in it and then experimented adding ballast. When adding two bags of premix concrete (65 lbs. each) to the passenger side floor board here's what the result was...

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That adds up to 1969 lbs. and very close to the target weight.

Then we went to work on alignment. The rear toe is a problem. Perhaps because the car is lowered or no camber plates, we couldn't get the rear toe to spec. We ended up with .77 left and .56 right. The front turned out quite nicely with about -2 camber and zero toe. I had preset the struts all the way back and in on the camber plates and that worked well. Rear camber is -1.9 left and -1.6 right. We don't believe the toe issues in the rear are associated with the replacement suspension console as the left side (original) is worse than the right (replacement). So I got the car back in my shop and started looking closer at the rear adjustment. I had the original brackets (link bearings) because I'd replaced the complete control arm assemble with strengthened parts.

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So I cleaned the rust off those and went to extending the slots to be able to push the bracket more forward for negative toe. I used a body saw (it's made of pressed metal) and file to get an additional 1/4". I installed those after taking some measurements with a straight edge to see if the toe improved. It did, but only slightly. I then noticed that part of the "bell" that receives the control arm end was contacting the chassis mount point. So I ground a bit of that off to get a little more adjustment. It appears to be better but I won't know until I take it back for another look on the alignment machine.

If the weather is good next weekend, I'll be taking this car to a local autocross that's rather small and a good place to test & tune.

[Han Solo]

Today was THE DAY I've been waiting for 13 months. I got the 914 on an autocross course for the first time! This car has probably never been driven like this before. Yesterday was rainy all day and I didn't think I was going to have dry weather. However, there was a break in the morning and I got the car loaded as soon as I confirmed that it would be sunny long enough to at least get four runs in. And that's exactly what I got before rain moved back in. The 914 ran pretty darn well. Usual cold engine stuffiness and I adjusted idle settings several times till it settled after getting to operating temp. The throttle cable needs tightening as it got behind the clutch linkage in the peddle cluster once. Push in clutch and engine revs up WTF? My first run was cautious but subsequent runs I pushed the car a bit harder each run. Grip was REALLY good and I was able to carry speed through turns easily. On the third run I was able to get the rear loose (tires were up to temp) and dropped some air out of the rears for the fourth run. I also hit a cone on the third run and busted the right fiberglass rocker cover but that's probably going to happen a lot. Was it worth all the time, effort, cost and discomfort? Absolutely YES (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

914 First Autocross

[ablesnead]

congrats...now that I don't have to watch you discover rust at every turn , I'm even enjoying the progress !

[Han Solo]

congrats...now that I don't have to watch you discover rust at every turn , I'm even enjoying the progress !

Yea, that did get to me a couple of times. Just when I thought I'd found it all... another rust hole would appear. That's behind me (at least for a while). I did hustle back home today when I saw showers on the radar. I'm going to have to find an enclosed car hauler for piece of mind or only take this one out in dry weather.

[Larmo63]

Gawd, that was a tough thread to get through at times, but well worth it. To make what you did out of that rusty tub you started with, it's pretty cool. The car even looks kind of bad ass in a raw way. Thank you for your dedication to document this build and good luck on it in the future.

Bravo.