my grandads '74 restoration project Options

[FlacaProductions]

@wonkipop -

No tune up sticker or engine tin paint - i'm sure it went away when the original engine was swapped with a 2.0

my car was originally sold at:
Distributor: UC = VW North Central Distributor, Inc., Porsche Audi Division, Northfield, IL Dealer: Tom Chaney Porsche/Audi, Harvey, IL

Here's the factory info I have:
Model Type: 473434 914 Targa 1.8 with Standard Trim NA
Model Year: 1974
Production Date: 1974 01
Production Number: 529540
Karmann Body number: 529540
Engine Number: EC016573
Engine Type: EC engine 76 HP (DIN) NA except CA
Gearbox Number: not recorded
Gearbox Type: 914/12 5 speed manual
Color: L51P (J8) Olympic Blue with black Targa roof
Interior Trim: 11 Interior panels & seats Leatherette Black, Seat inlay basketweave, Carpet Black
Distributor: UC = VW North Central Distributor, Inc., Porsche Audi Division, Northfield, IL Dealer: Tom Chaney Porsche/Audi, Harvey, IL
Country Equipment: C02 Equipment for USA
Options:
M002 USA supplied sealed-beam headlights
M652 Intermittent windshield wipers 6 sec pause

[wonkipop]

@wonkipop -

No tune up sticker or engine tin paint - i'm sure it went away when the original engine was swapped with a 2.0

my car was originally sold at:
Distributor: UC = VW North Central Distributor, Inc., Porsche Audi Division, Northfield, IL Dealer: Tom Chaney Porsche/Audi, Harvey, IL

Here's the factory info I have:
Model Type: 473434 914 Targa 1.8 with Standard Trim NA
Model Year: 1974
Production Date: 1974 01
Production Number: 529540
Karmann Body number: 529540
Engine Number: EC016573
Engine Type: EC engine 76 HP (DIN) NA except CA
Gearbox Number: not recorded
Gearbox Type: 914/12 5 speed manual
Color: L51P (J8) Olympic Blue with black Targa roof
Interior Trim: 11 Interior panels & seats Leatherette Black, Seat inlay basketweave, Carpet Black
Distributor: UC = VW North Central Distributor, Inc., Porsche Audi Division, Northfield, IL Dealer: Tom Chaney Porsche/Audi, Harvey, IL
Country Equipment: C02 Equipment for USA
Options:
M002 USA supplied sealed-beam headlights
M652 Intermittent windshield wipers 6 sec pause

tops mate. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

so re your emission sticker - its probably a repro over the original.
but its the right one.
i think only AutoAtlanta make those repro stickers and they only seem to have the EC-B one.

there is enough data there for me to enter you into the data table i have.
good on you for the info.

its basically the same as my car. base 1,8 with a couple of extra items.
mine got ordered with front and rear sway bars by the original owner.
the original owner was smart. spent his money well.

out of interest, did yours happen to get the sway bars?

[FlacaProductions]

Not sure why it would have a repro over the top - I may try to dissect that next time I'm with it.
No sway bars, originally but it has a front now.
Also has a center console now.

[_stickykitty79_]

learning alot here. didnt even know there was a sticker in the engine bay

[wonkipop]

learning alot here. didnt even know there was a sticker in the engine bay

ok sticky - i can really fill in the picture for you now.

your grand dad's car was originally a california car.
thats what an EC-A engine was.
california compliant.

very interesting.
would have been a lot less rustier at one point in its life.
probably why your grand dad picked it up when he did, he was after a californian non rusted car (they rusted back then pretty quick in the snow belt. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) )

which means if it still has its 3 digit paint stamp on the engine tin (and its still the original engine) the number there will be 606 for a standard spec 1.8 or 607 for an appearance group 1.8 with the guages/console package.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

the difference between an EC-A and an EC-B was very subtle.
on an A the hose from the advance can on the distributor was not hooked up to the throttle body port above the throttle plate. meant the car did not vac advance its timing over and above centrifugal timing at cruise but ran slightly retarded at constant speed cruise. meant it ran hotter but produced less NOx.

all the 1.8s (A and B) had retard can hooked up to throttle body with a green hose.
this meant they all ran retarded at idle in stand still traffic. less NOX but hotter head temp around the exhaust valve.

looking at the photos of engine bay it is clear that presently your engine is hooked up with the advance can via as per the B. someone did the mod. which might have been easier to do with the 74s. not entirely clear to me what the throttle body was like on the 74 california cars. so few reliable original survivors exist. they might have just had a plug over the port you pulled out and hooked up the hose. or they might have had a throttle body without the port at all. in 75, the 49 states cars duplicated the 74 californian cars and those cars had no port on the throttle body.

useless trivia i know.

but your car was originally a california delivery. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

[wonkipop]

this is the hose i am talking about connected to the throttle body upper port and the vacuum advance can on the distributor. see attached photo arrows.

in photo you posted at start it looks like its continuous to throttle body from distributor can.
but you know what i could be wrong looking hard at the photo.

its possible the other end i am looking at is the hose from the fuel pressure regulator over on left side of engine.

normally the hose from the distributor can is laid over the top of the inlet plenums and up to the throttle body. this one is tucked under on yours.

its entirely possible that its actually an EC-A still in original condition.
if so that hose from distributor can is just tucked under the inlet plenum near the distributor and has been left open which is what the factory did.

if thats the case then the throttle body has no port on the back side of it (ie facing rear of car). be interested to know. if a) the port is there and has a plug capping it or b) no port at all. have a look when you get some spare time. its just that there are so few intact EC-A cars to know what was actually done by factory. your car might just have the original set up. if it does we can set it on the record. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

[wonkipop]

@wonkipop -

No tune up sticker or engine tin paint - i'm sure it went away when the original engine was swapped with a 2.0

my car was originally sold at:
Distributor: UC = VW North Central Distributor, Inc., Porsche Audi Division, Northfield, IL Dealer: Tom Chaney Porsche/Audi, Harvey, IL

Here's the factory info I have:
Model Type: 473434 914 Targa 1.8 with Standard Trim NA
Model Year: 1974
Production Date: 1974 01
Production Number: 529540
Karmann Body number: 529540
Engine Number: EC016573
Engine Type: EC engine 76 HP (DIN) NA except CA
Gearbox Number: not recorded
Gearbox Type: 914/12 5 speed manual
Color: L51P (J8) Olympic Blue with black Targa roof
Interior Trim: 11 Interior panels & seats Leatherette Black, Seat inlay basketweave, Carpet Black
Distributor: UC = VW North Central Distributor, Inc., Porsche Audi Division, Northfield, IL Dealer: Tom Chaney Porsche/Audi, Harvey, IL
Country Equipment: C02 Equipment for USA
Options:
M002 USA supplied sealed-beam headlights
M652 Intermittent windshield wipers 6 sec pause

there is an interesting little statistic i can get out of the numbers on both our cars flaca.

so mine is vin 13361 and yours is 13488. thats 124 cars apart by vin.
although vin doesn't necessarily equate to the order they commenced construction in or the moment in time they got the number and plate. its closeish but the cars did not necessarily stay in order as they went down the production line.

the production plate numbers place me at car 43 on friday and yours at car 40 on the following tuesday. = 2 full production days apart. looking at the numbers i have across the data i collected i can see they usually did around 90 cars per day during this period. so its probably like 180-200 cars apart.

the engine numbers are the next stat.
mine is EC015941. and its the original engine.
yours is EC016573. and thats off the COA date you have and is original.
so we can trust them.

which is 432 engines apart.

so roughly half the EC engines being produced at that particular time were going in 914s. the other half were being fed to the production of 412 USA spec cars.
which is slightly surprising as the overall production of 74 412s to 914s is about 4 to 1.
which means that most 412s must have been being sold in europe and the market had really shrunk for 412s in the USA.
it seems in jan feb 74 its a pretty even split between engines for 914s and 412s.

i suppose if i was to take into account the first three months of EC engines was strictly for 412s from aug 73 to late oct 73 that makes sense, they built up a good stock of 412s then and after that the production of 412s must have dribbled out at the rate of production of 914s.

kind of an interesting insight into the end of the air cooled cars.
they just stopped selling.
apart from the beetles that is.

i'd love to find two 74 914s with vins right after each other and with original engine number info. just out of curiousity. i have got two cars like that in the data, one right after the other, but unfortunately don't have the engine numbers for them. i harvested the data off retail sales ads with insufficient information. i'm think the 914 engines must have been batched when being made at hanover because there is just enough difference in the throttle body set up and engine tin of course is quite different that they must have been batched. and it would be interesting to know just what order they ended up arriving at karmann in as well.

[FlacaProductions]

Seriously fascinating!

[_stickykitty79_]

totally fascinating! found some mildly interesting stuff in the owners manual, i know where the car was picked up and it NJ. must have been imported to CA and sent to this distributer?

[davep]

totally fascinating! found some mildly interesting stuff in the owners manual, i know where the car was picked up and it NJ. must have been imported to CA and sent to this distributer?

I find it hard to believe it was imported into California, and shipped to a dealer in NJ!
But we can find out if needed. The Factory data in post 21 is an example of what I can obtain. The dealer is generally only available from the maintenance record book as above. Transmission numbers and Karmann body #'s have to come from the cars as does the completion month from the decal on the car.
This car has a lot of extremely useful info on it and it would be very nice if it can be restored.

[wonkipop]

totally fascinating! found some mildly interesting stuff in the owners manual, i know where the car was picked up and it NJ. must have been imported to CA and sent to this distributer?

ah this story is interesting.

i've got one other one in the data that was an EC-A but delivered new in the 49 states.
that one is a 06/74. vin20438. delivered in ohio.
that one was an intact A with the throttle body dist hook up all still original.

all the other EC-As on file that i have delivery info for are california delivery.
also i have the CARB emissions certification which only approves the A.

BUT. it was completely legal to deliver an EC-A new in the 49 states as the emissions set up exceeded 49 states standards. it just could not be done the other way around, you could not deliver a B to california.

so this one is the second one to pop up that is an A sold in 49 states.
could be obvious reasons for that.
available stock to match a customer desire. ie color and spec.
both of these that pop up are late in the production run model year for 74.
and as far as i know all the cars came in on eastern seaboard ports and were train shipped out to the west coast. so easy to divert stock at port of entry or an east coast warehouse.

we should dig deeper.
take a close look at the throttle body.
its there on the lhs of intake plenum with the flexible hose piece up to the air cleaner.
on the rear upper side of it will be a little tube pointing upwards and backwards at around 45 degrees. ie it points backwards to rear of car. if its a B then there will be a hose plugged into it around the 5 to 7 mm diameter dimension. but see what is there and take a photo of it. if there is a hose plugged into a port track the hose back and see if it runs to the distributor. alternatively look at the hose that is coming off the vacuum can on the side of the distributor. there will be two hoses. look at the hose attached to the upper part of the outside can. ie the can portion to left hand side of car. where does that hose go. is it just a hose that is tucked under the intake plenum.

you could also look for that three digit number. it will be white paint and kind of crudely stamped but it might be pretty faded on this car. 9 times out of 10 its on the left hand side of the upper tin towards the front of the engine where the tin bends down.
by front of engine i mean front of car. normally you do not notice it as it is hidden by the heater blower hose. now that is more often than not where the paint stamp is on an EC-B engine. what i have noticed is a lot of times on the EC-A engine the white numbers are on the right hand side. ie the battery side. and because of battery acid water splash in that area the tin can be surface corroded and the numbers very hard to see or even just plain gone. if they are there and you can make them out see what they are.
i believe looking at the photos of the engine bay you posted originally to start the topic that the engine bay is very original. so i do not think the tin has been painted or restored.

i'm starting to think this business with EC-A sold in 49 states links up with something else we have discovered previous. that is that porsche revised the emission sticker for the EC-B shortly after or around the time of this car. i'm thinking they had been slipping the odd EC-B across to california because the cars had a very ambiguous emissions certification sticker up until may 74 that suddenly got made very unambiguous.

KEEP DIGGING FOR THE INFO.
i am entering all your data as you find stuff into my tables.
its turning out to be important scraps of data.
you never know with these 1.8s when a car will show up that adds real interesting info.

[wonkipop]

Seriously fascinating!

and your double emission sticker is very interesting too.
because thinking about it for a day or two i agree with you flaca.
someone restoring the car or refreshing it is hardly going to stick a new one over the top of the old one. they would go to the trouble of removing it before placing the new one.
it just does not go with the mindset that would put a new sticker on as a clean up.

also it looks slightly careless in that factory or distributor/dealer way in terms of its placement.

there is a lot of mystery around the EC-A and EC-B engine that is simply not accessible or known any more.

a lot of history skips over the EC engines and just says that it is an engine that was universal across the entire USA - california included.

it was not until we started digging in with a bit of research prompted by jeff bowlsby that we stumbled over the fact that the general history did not stack up with the cars.

the first and main point to make is that the difference between an A (California) and B (49 states) is pretty minor. its just the hook up of the hose to the vac advance can side of the dual vac can on the dizzy. thats all it is. no difference in anything else except in the throttle body. the parts book implies that the throttle body on an A is different than on a B. has a different part number. but the closest i have come to sighting what i think was an A throttle body was a photo of another members car here. that throttle body had the vac port on it same as the B but it had a little rubber plug seal over the end of the port and was still set up as per an original A in terms of vac hoses. that could be all it was.

now if that was the case that the throttle bodies were the same on both versions and all they did was plug the port that would mean at the main distribution centres or even at the dealer ships they could easily turn an A into a B or the other way around a B into an A.

and for most of the model years the cars had an emissions sticker that did say if the the engine was an A or if it was a B. and it also said in both cases that it was USEPA certified and California certified. as if it was a sticker that would cover both cases - all you did was connect or disconnect hose.

but there is one problem. the CARB certification said strictly it was the A for california. and the A only. ie it had to have that emission sticker. the certification also described that the distributor vac advance was disconnected. so a distributor or dealer could have pointed to that description in CARB documents and shown the engine bay with the hose disconnected as a way to put a B on the road in california.

anyway all that is the case until around may and june of 74.
right then and there the emissions sticker for the B suddenly changes and notes it is only USEPA certified.

anyway. thats all a bit long winded. but there is something funny going on for sure with the USEPA and CARB and VW north america. and i am sure it was some kind of strategy to have flexibility with stocks of the cars in north america in terms of being able to send them all over the country if necessary including california to satisfy any customer who walked in off the street and wanted a 914 a particular way.

and.
so.
your car might have been an A with an A sticker and they stuck a B sticker over it and made it into a B. without the original engine we can never know for sure.

its not clear to me exactly when and where those emissions stickers were stuck on the cars. was it at the factory or was it done at the USA distribution centres after they had arrived at the port of entry. but what is absolutely clear and is verified by the data is that the engines were identified as either an A or a B at the factory in hanover where the type 4 engines were made. so even before the engine gets shipped to osnabruk and the karmann factory its marked as one or the other. the 3 digit paint stamps went on the engines at the end of assembly in hanover. so the cars were definitely built either for 49 states or california delivery from the factory door. (however as i remark above it was not too difficult to make one into the other even at the dealership point of sale).

i have a feeling that at some point either the USEPA or the CARB (california air resources board) put its foot down over the emission stickers and this happened late in the model year. somebody in the bureaucracy probably spotted that they were not distinguishing the cars with the stickers or were failing to state that a B as set up as a B would not pass CARB smog.

anyway its esoteric stuff .

[FlacaProductions]

Seriously fascinating!

your car might have been an A with an A sticker and they stuck a B sticker over it and made it into a B. without the original engine we can never know for sure.

This.
I'm not worried about removing that sticker and seeing if I can unearth another one under it. I'll put it on the list - I'll be back with it October 11...

[_stickykitty79_]

small update here, sold the Lotus and ready to begin my project.
i plan to start by getting some go jacks, rotating the car and dropping the engine.
then the rocker/longitudinal work begins. honestly i got alot more repair panels than i think i need, but id rather have backup metal i can fab up if needed.

[_stickykitty79_]

heres a digital model im using in VRED to target the final look. im going to repaint the body but i like the bahia red so much in the interior is still good why not keep the theme the same!

[technicalninja]

Thread just got serious!

Nice pile of goodies to start with.

I wonder what the exhaust will sound like.

Double Xs early!

That final rendering is beautiful!

[slowrodent]

i love the rendering.... not much to dislike there at all! looking forward to following the progress.. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/popcorn[1].gif)

[Cairo94507]

Well heck....now that is the way to tackle a project. Good luck and light speed. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

[_stickykitty79_]

im jazzed and also a bit intimidated. looking forward to cutting and welding, and some fun problem solving. looooooots of problem solving