Intro from Montana: '73 2.0L rustoration thread Options

[burton73]

Posted twice

[JOEPROPER]

Sorry, but I gotta ask...

Are you gonna be a dental floss tycoon?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSsCU1Dym-Y


--DD

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/av-943.gif) I was thinking the same thing!!!

[bretth]

+1 Zappa! (Whips out old vinyls)

[KELTY360]

Hi Brent,

I love your story and the picture of you and your wife from the 80s I was married around then as well.

I do not want to come off as rude but I was born in California and lived here my whole life and have had a number of 914s from my 25th birthday on. I have bought and sold cars over the years and mostly rust free cars have spoiled me. I think you should see if you could get a roller from a dry state and get it delivered to you.

I think you will be ahead of the game. If you do not get a full car look for parts like hoods and doors. I know that I have an old hood and doors with little to no rust. Bruce Stone here can help you get good body parts if you need. Patching panels may save one more 914 but there are still a lot of them. You could get a pallet of parts sent to you from California. “California knows how to party” I was a huge Frank Zappa fan. It should not cost you that much if you combine a bunch of parts.

See what you can find as a roller. I paid $3,500 for a primo roller from Palm Springs that had been repainted really well and had a fresh interior in real leather. Radio, lots of great stuff. New windshield ECT. Carpet. I got the car in my Avatar from Camp914 and he had it delivered to me for $500.

This will all add up plus your time to do all of the work. There will still be plenty to do and you will be on the road much faster if you find the right roller. A fixed rusted car in my option is not as good as an original car. It would take so much more work to fix the rust that you do not see. The sail panels in side are crying. Lots of body panels inside that you cannot see are crying. The problem is if you do not get it all it comes back to haunt you. The perfect paint job 5 years later gets bubbles in it in some areas.

I had a 70 Challenger convertible that I bought in 1983. Looked premo. $3,000. back then. It was Hemi orange, fresh paint. Bought it at a car show in Pomona from 2 guys that brought it down from Canada. Sold it 5 years later for $4,000 after the rust started to creep back through the rockers.

One mans option. But one man that loves these cars as well as you do and as a businessman I look it all over.

Welcome to the board. Great guys and lots of knowledge. I hope I am not out of line.


Bob B
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/welcome.png)

I respectfully disagree. The man has a car he's obviously attached to that is also desirable in the 914 world. He's got the skills and desire to bring the car back. Why would you recommend he go chasing after the mythical rust free roller? We've seen many cars in worse shape than this restored and driven happily. I think you overestimate the number of restorable 914s out there and you certainly denigrate the value of those that are left. You're correct, you are spoiled by the rust free 914s you've owned.

All the best to bbrock for his determination to bring his 914 back to the road.

[bbrock]

Welcome to the board. Great guys and lots of knowledge. I hope I am not out of line.

Thanks Bob! Not out of line. Just honest. I realize there are much easier, and most likely cheaper, paths to getting to a nice 914. But that isn't what this is about. If I didn't have this car, I wouldn't be in the market for one. I love these cars and look forward to having one on the road again, but I live in the boonies, 3 miles from the nearest pavement, with 9 months of winter. It's not the worlds most practical car here. But it's the car I have, and I have two choices: restore it, or sell it for parts. Only one of those puts me behind the wheel of a 914 in the future. The other just leaves me with fond memories of how much I enjoyed driving these cars back in the day. But that would be the end of my 914 story.

I realize I could probably get more for just the engine and Fuchs than the whole car is currently worth. I was just joking with my neighbor about that the other day. He has a 71 Challenger BTW and my brother has a 70 Charger. But I work with my brain by day and really enjoy working with my hands in me free time. I love building things, and even more, I like restoring things that have fallen into disrepair. I've also been wanting to take my metal working to another level and I think this car makes a good project. I have very little $ invested. $500 for the car and about $1,500 in the engine. Both paid when the Soviet Union was still a thing and parts were much cheaper then. I know enough about rust on these cars to realize that what is seen on the outside is only a fraction of what is hiding inside. I've been able to get a good look inside the members that would have been a deal killer for me. I think this car is in better shape than many of the projects in rebuild threads I've read through. So I'm moving forward. My only real trepidation is that I know my shop space is woefully inadequate. The plan was to build my shop and THEN work on the car. But time is not this car's friend and I don't have the funds to do both right now. That's just the way it is.

[Rusty]

Welcome to the board, just a little bit late.

With unlimited time, money, and patience all our little cars could be restored.

I've been down the road you're traveling - you have more skills than I did when I started. I wish you lots of great memories. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[aggiezig]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/welcome.png)

Really admire your passion for your 914. Best of luck, will be watching this thread!

P.S. - I had those same HF casters on my first body stand and ended up trashing them. The "swivels" got loose over time with the weight of the car and I became concerned one of them would topple when trying to steer around. Granted, my stand was much higher off the ground and made of wood.

If you have access to steel, consider building a rotisserie or octisserie (see mine). Really wasn't too much more work and being able to flip the car over has made it incredibly easy to do underside repairs.

[bbrock]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/welcome.png)

Really admire your passion for your 914. Best of luck, will be watching this thread!

P.S. - I had those same HF casters on my first body stand and ended up trashing them. The "swivels" got loose over time with the weight of the car and I became concerned one of them would topple when trying to steer around. Granted, my stand was much higher off the ground and made of wood.

If you have access to steel, consider building a rotisserie or octisserie (see mine). Really wasn't too much more work and being able to flip the car over has made it incredibly easy to do underside repairs.

Thanks! You've confirmed what I suspected with those casters. They are cheap HF after all and not top quality. I figure at $15 a pop, I can replace as needed during the project. I'm probably going to swap 2 of he casters out for fixed casters which will take a couple of those cheap swivel bearings out of the equation and give me spares. I think that will help enormously with being able to steer this when rolling in and out of the garage.

A rotisserie is definitely in the future. My plan is to get the longs repaired while it is on this jig with car supported by suspension mounts and doors braced, then cut the jig up to repurpose some of the steel for a rotisserie. I sized the tubing with that in mind. I looked at your octisserie option and like it a lot. But decided with my tight garage space, it wasn't going to work. I found a neat rotisserie design that uses a couple of HF worm drive winches to raise and lower the car. I will probably go that route.

I'm giving your rebuild thread another read to see how you tackled some of the repairs I'm getting ready to dive into.

[worn]

Off topic. But I too admire the plan.

I am thinking of driving out to that region this summer. Are there any Montana Wyoming Idaho etc group events such as drives? Made it to Arizona last year and had a blast.

[cary]

But I work with my brain by day and really enjoy working with my hands in me free time. I love building things, and even more, I like restoring things that have fallen into disrepair. I've also been wanting to take my metal working to another level and I think this car makes a good project.

That's what got me started. It's now become my semi retirement career.
I too hate to throw things away. Keep up the good work.

As for the $$$$ portion of the deal. You have figure your time has no value. It's a hobby and it's all about the learning. It's not for everyone. Keep track of your parts and project consumables. The $$$ you would have calculated as wages will be gobbled up with painting the car. Maybe you'll get lucky on painting. I had my Carrera RS replica project painted for $500. I did all the bodywork, he did the paint. Montana pricing.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911...rs-project.html

Which morphed into this :


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911...s-begun-13.html

[bbrock]

Off topic. But I too admire the plan.

I am thinking of driving out to that region this summer. Are there any Montana Wyoming Idaho etc group events such as drives? Made it to Arizona last year and had a blast.

I think mtn flyr would be the one to ask. I'm not plugged into any Porsche scene, if there is onel. A nickname for Bozeman is Bozeangeles, Montucky for its split personality between Hollywood and Deliverance. The Porsches do come out in summer but I rarely see a 914. I can tell you that there is not one 914 in any salvage yard in the state.

But the Beartooth Highway is one of the most spectacular drives in the country and a must do. It feeds right into Yellowstone NP where you can challenge the bison with your teener.

[bbrock]

Fun Diversion

Here's just a quick little side trip. Thought it might be fund to show the owner's manual package for this car. The tech specs booklet is something I bought when I started this deal. Am I correct this is NLA? I dug into the maintenance record and receipts for the first time. Learned the car was originally purchased in PA in June, 73. Then in 76, the car moved from PA to Kansas City. The receipt trail begins with the woman I bought the car from. Earliest receipt is from the same KC dealership for an owner' manual and car cover. That seems like a new used car owner purchase to me. There is no hint of when the car got its slathering of bondo and nasty Maco-quality paint job. My guess is that the original owner beat the crap out of the car for 3 years, then did a cheap makeover before unloading it. Maintenance receipts then go all over the east half of the continent: KS, DC, Houston, Fort Worth, MI, DE, Denver...



And a couple more docs in my files that have been gathering dust. One from a familiar member here, the other a letter from Bruce Anderson from Excellence Mag answering a bunch of dumb questions. If you can't read the date of that letter, it's Aug 15, 1988. Kids, before the Internet, this is the way people communicated long distance... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/slits.gif)

[Porschef]

Sorry, but I gotta ask...

Are you gonna be a dental floss tycoon?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSsCU1Dym-Y


--DD

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/av-943.gif) I was thinking the same thing!!!

Sometime in the fall of 1978, I ambled down the street of my folks house, up over the LIRR tracks onto the campus of SUNY Stony Brook University and went the Zappa show at the gym. No one I knew was interested in going so I went solo (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smoke.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smoke.gif) . As was typical with most shows there, ticket was a whopping 5 bucks.

Some pretty wild stuff. At 17, I only had an inkling of what I was gonna see. Sufice to say, it was an experience. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

[bbrock]

Weekend Update
Saturday I swapped out the rear swivel casters on my dolly jig and swapped out the pneumatic tires on all four corners for these HF wheels . The fixed casters were a big improvement but the flat free wheels were a bust. They are not solid rubber and create flat spots after a few minutes of sitting with weight on them which makes the car really hard to get rolling. So I switched back to the pneumatics and was able to roll the car out of the garage and across the gravel drive by myself on Sunday. I haven't given up on better wheels though. I want to try these solid wheels but they are not in stock at my local HF.

Most of Saturday was spent cleaning the tiny garage to reduce the trip hazard and continuing to strip the car. I sealed the deal on a bunch of sheet metal from donor cars. KevinW is sending me front and rear trunk floors, passenger side engine mount, and both sail panels for a very reasonable price that slashes my sheet metal bill substantially. Other progress on Saturday was scrubbing up the engine case that had become grungy and tarnished in storage as best I could, and applying Tectyl 846 to protect it. I don't know if this stuff was originally put on Type IV engines but from reading here and on Pelican, it is what Porsche used to protect 911 engines and trannys. I like amber look and will treat the carbs and tranny the same way. I will also be ordering new yellow zinc bolts and nuts for the spots that will be visible when the engine tin is on.





Door Braces

Sunday was door braces day and I would really appreciate if the experienced pros can check my work here and offer some wisdom. I stood in from of the heim joint bins at the hardware store for a long time because that's how I wanted to build these braces. But I couldn't justify doubling the cost for braces that will probably be used only once. So I went the turnbuckle route.



That door card and glass will come out before any more work is done.







Do these braces look okay? Is that lower nut placed in a good spot? It seemed like that inner long provide a bit more meat for pushing and pulling and is in more of a straight line with the roll bar mount point than the speaker grill area. But I could be wrong.

And now, more questions. Before doing any cutting or putting any tension on the braces, the door gaps are flaring wide at the tops.



The car was too close to the garage wall to get a shot of the passenger side, but it is only slightly better. 10mm at the top and 4mm at the bottom. This one is 13mm at the top in case you can't read it.



I think the hinge side gaps look good. I'm guessing about 5mm all around is a good target?


I'm not surprised the gaps were off but thought the flex would be in the other direction. The car has been supported by its wheels for 13 years and is not supported by the A-arm mounts in front, and trailing arm mounts (where the alignment shims go) in the rear. So now for the questions:

1. Are my braces adequate or should I add more?
2. Should I add more support under the car?

I have not taken adequate frame measurements yet but will do so. Apparently Montana has outlawed the metric system and I'm having a hard time finding a metric tape measure or steel rule locally. One more hardware store to try. But I will find those and make up a couple of measuring rods for the critical dimensions. I have also not leveled the car yet. There was no point since I needed to roll the car out of the garage so I could do some maintenance on the wife's DD. But before tearing into the longs, I want to make sure I have my ducks in a row - adequate bracing in place and the car supported properly. It seems like adjustable door braces from hinge post to lock post would be handy but then I lose the ability to keep the doors on, which seems like a huge plus. So any advice here is appreciated.

Finally, I'm going to order a boroscope from Amazon today. I want to get inside that driver's long to see what is going on. I may wind up taking that off too.

[bbrock]

I haven't posted any progress in awhile but, despite a quick trip down to the Grand Canyon, there has been some. While waiting for sheet metal to arrive, I've spent most of my time continue to strip the car, organize parts, and begin cleaning and refurbishing. All the interior pieces got a scrubbing with Garrot's Garage interior cleaner followed by a wipe with 303 Protectant. The dash and knee pads are in rough shape but it is amazing how much nicer they looks with just a good cleaning. I will try my hand at crack repair later. Once the parts were cleaned, I bagged them in bags purchased from a local dry cleaner and tossed in some desiccants to hopefully keep the parts in good condition in storage. Our family room was beginning to look like a parts warehouse.



I spent some time refurbing the rusty and neglected instrument cluster that included repairing and resetting the odometer, repainting needles, and repainting bezels and mounting plate. The old mount rings are still in decent shape so I just cleaned them and gave them a wipe with 303 protectant. The worst job was refurbing the trip odometer cable which had been seized as long as I've owned the car. It took a lot of soaking with PB Blaster and heat, but I finally got everything apart, cleaned, and working again. Unfortunately I snapped one of the ears on the tiny little set screw that holds the knurled reset knob on so I'm trying to source a new one. When I was finished, my wife asked if I bought a new instrument cluster, which made me happy.



Just like Sheldon Cooper's spot - zero, zero, zero, zero... and one extra zero.



Next I turned my attention to the heater/ventilation control panel which was in really rough shape.



But with sanding, paint, and refrabricating a missing piece, I think it's an improvement. I googed a couple spots that can be seen close up. I'll probably try to fix them but they aren't noticeable at the distance a driver or passenger will be sitting, so I'm probably the only one who will ever notice. I even restored the glow in the dark finish to the up/down arrows. The chrome bezel will get replated eventually.



On Friday I picked up my first batch of sheet metal! A big thank you to KevinW who gave me a great price on these pieces which goes a long way toward keeping my restoration costs under control. He also was meticulous in cutting these pieces to my specifications and leaving me plenty to work with for final trimming. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)



On Saturday I was occupied cleaning up our family room and garage so didn't make much progress. My plan on Sunday was to start working on the front trunk floor but snow from the day before and two burst inner tubes on my cheap HF pneumatic casters prevented me from rolling the car into the garage, and guaranteed it would be less than pleasant to work on the trunk outside.



Instead, I pulled the sail panels I bought into the garage for prepping. Later in the afternoon, after the snow had melted, I started chopping on the car.





I was happy to not find any nasty surprises inside the roll bars. Mostly just surface rust to be cleaned with some minor repair work to be done on the passenger side. That's where I ended the day.

I'm going to leave the sail panels off until I complete the long and hell hole repairs since the holes provide some extra access to the inner fenders and door jambs. I've also decided to replace outer longs on both sides instead of just the passenger side. I just want to open up the driver's side to make sure the job is done right. But I'm leaning away from replacing the rear section of the floor. Most of the metal is intact but the bottoms of several bead channels are rusted out. I'm going to try making a hammer form to create good patches. If it doesn't work, an RD floor kit will still be an option. Finally, Cary was right that the rear trunk lid is trash. Not only is the rust more extensive than I hoped, but it was caused by a thick layer of cracked bondo over a shitty damage repair. So the trunk lid will be donating its sheet metal to other parts of the car.

[KELTY360]

Nice progress. Great to see another resurrection.

[LowBridge]

welcome (IMG:style_emoticons/default/welcome.png) and wow... you nailed that gauge cluster, it looks new, well done and gl

[bbrock]

welcome (IMG:style_emoticons/default/welcome.png) and wow... you nailed that gauge cluster, it looks new, well done and gl

Thanks! I forgot to mention that I also replaced the plastic lens on the tach with glass. The other two gauges were already glass so my car must have been built during the transition to plastic. A local glass shop cut it on the spot.

The Testor's fluorescent orange I used on the gauge needles is just a barely perceptible hair more orange than the original, unfaded color. I wish I would have picked up a bottled of fluorescent red to mix in just a few drops to get the match perfect. Nobody will ever know the difference but I'll always know there are a few drops of barely more red paint under those silver needle centers.

[burton73]

It is coming among well. Gauges look super. Did you put in a new plastic gear in trip meter as they all die after a long time?

Bob

[bbrock]

It is coming among well. Gauges look super. Did you put in a new plastic gear in trip meter as they all die after a long time?

Bob

No. But I haven't re-crimped the bezel on that particular gauge yet so it is not too late. Where is the best place to get one?