Weekend One

Certainly a typical 1976 914! Some faded paint, switched out wheels but the body is still straight. Notice the rear trunk lid with a typical broken trunk hinge cup. The front hood fits well, left headlight easily adjusted to fit. Where is the "914 2.0" decal? A dead giveaway that this one has been repainted. First we needed to asses the car. The car has straight lines, no visible damage on initial inspection. The car turns over, but does not run. No missing pieces. The wheels make me cringe, and the plain-jane tiredness of the auto was apparent, but overall the car is in decent shape.

And now the bad news - The engine is removed, and just in time!  Look at this rusted engine mount! Also a typical poor patch repair on the often broken clutch tube. They even hose clamped the front of the tube, pinching it! No wonder the clutch did not work properly. A hole in right into the center tunnel. Our magician mechanic dropped the engine out in no time. This allowed for further  assessment and work to begin. The idea of this project has snowballed, so our expert welder was anxious to put his hand in the car and make the magic happen as quickly as possible.

Wow! What battery acid can do. With rusty passenger rear floorpan cut away the rusty inner firewall is exposed, passenger rear longitudinal rust damage. This is the back bone area of the car. When this area rusts, the car sags. Typical crossmember rust away.  Notice the rake for the seat tilt adjustment. Old front half joined the new rear sections. Wow, this car is already needing more that I thought at first glance. This is typical of 914 restoration. Open one area to find out you're going to have to open another. Though this rust may look severe in these photos, it really isn't that bad as you'll see from our repair process

Here you can see the center weld where the two halves are joined. Our new floor pan is Installed. The driver's side and and passenger halves are joined in the center and welded securely. The left rear is then installed. Notice the spot welds just like the factory did. The left driver's floorpan showing the emergency brake pivot can be seen here. Floor pans are number one on the agenda. We have to make sure that our body is going to be strong enough for the rest of our extreme makeover.
Close-up of the repaired drivers inner firewall along with a top view of the installed floorpan section. Clear view of of the newly installed passenger floor pan, looking towards the rear. While we're at it we tackled the firewall with some patches. My welder, Matt, was flying through this repair and having a blast. These reproduction pans are perfect for this 914.
Clear view of repaired longitudinal and outer firewall. Lower passenger frame reinforcement and repair around the heater tube. Tacked-in rear floor pan section. Tacked in place floor pan quarter. (yes they are available in quarters now! Dr. 914's expertise is very valuable in this rust repair. The cancerous rust is removed a piece at a time.
Nicely finished outer firewall with the right floorpan quarter mated to it. Also a close up of the rusted right cross member.  It is amazing what battery acid can do! We also repaired the outer firewall.  We always use the minimal needed even though the outer firewall repair panel is much larger. The exposed center tunnel with its guts hanging out. (both fuel lines and the wiring harness). We recommend our new floor pan quarter sections. Right Front: B914 501 937 RF ; Left Front: B914 501 937 LF; Right Rear: B914 501 937 RR ; Left Front:B914 501 937 LR
We see the light! It is nice seeing the makeover become stronger before our eyes. We patched longitudinal and worked further on the rusted out cross member.  Battery acid strikes again! Always remember that the control unit comes out with the power plant. Notice the four pipe after market exhaust system and the California equipped EGR valve.  Not all California cars are rust free! The outer firewall needed some care also. Click B914 501 119 20 to see more information on our part offering to you. The tide is turning on our war against battery acid!
Notice the original air pump still installed and the never changed alternator belt. (out of sight out of mind!!!) It is easy to remove the power plant all in one piece as you can see here. Notice the ugly red spark plug wires and the water hose substituted for the vacuum line!!!! I'm thinking of simply repairing this 2.0 liter engine that came out of the car while we all work on our dream high-performance engine. This engine has only dropped a seat, so it should be nothing to get this back up and running. The talk and chatter about the new engine, which we're starting from the case up, and the plans we have for it are starting to make Dr. 914 nervous...