Learning about Porsche 914s

Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) said:

In 2015 this guy listed this car on CL.

I bought the engine and gearbox.

After a few weeks he got tired of no takers and had a metal collector haul it off.   

See, to me, that looks like the World's Most Beautiful 914.

Starting to clean up the yellow one. Trunk and engine lids are removed and I'm scraping out the biological debris. I'm going to pressure wash it after the solids are removed. The condition of the hell hole is better looking than I thought, but still not good. High pressure water will clear off most of the surface flakes for a better view.

Battery box. The battery had been moved to the trunk at some point.

Blasting off the hood patina.

Engine lid moss.

There are over 1.100 photos in the album for the '73 914 onto a Boxster. I just spent almost an hour looking through them. It really shows the process and structure of the cars well. I like seeing what they did and how they did it, but the final product is not what I would want. It has had almost all of the 914-ness built out of it. Is that a good thing? I need to search for a write up to see why they made some of the choices they did. I expect that for what they intended, they nailed it. I'd rather see a Maschinenbau version of the build.

Here's the album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/wickedgarage/albums/72157649025270824/with/16792990786/

A few key pictures:

0085 by Wicked Garage, on Flickr

0190 by Wicked Garage, on Flickr

0181 by Wicked Garage, on Flickr

0771 by Wicked Garage, on Flickr

1117 by Wicked Garage, on Flickr

I'm not saying that I'm going to try this. I'm still exploring where this project can go and even a roadworthy rebuild might be asking too much from what I have available.

the moss has taken a lichen to your engine cover

In reply to Patrick (Forum Supporter) :

That was so bad I had to give you a thumbs up.

I don't really get this. Why not just put any number of 911 components into a 914 body. I know you get upgrade interior and mechanicals but the modifications required to fit over a Boxster dont improve the look IMO.

I'll take this!

What about putting a 914 body on top of a 928 instead?  Should be a quick weekend project full of fun.

rustybugkiller said:

I don't really get this. Why not just put any number of 911 components into a 914 body. I know you get upgrade interior and mechanicals but the modifications required to fit over a Boxster dont improve the look IMO.

I totally agree. I have Boxsters. I do not want to make a 914 into a Boxster. I want a 914 to be an oil smokin', low to the ground, air cooled machine. The black one is most likely going to be rebuilt as a proper 914. My problem is that when I look at the yellow one, I see this where the battery tray used to be:

...then I see this clean rear frame from a Boxster right behind it and know that I have two more rolling parts cars.

Shall I just cut the yellow one up and dispose of the body?

Don't cut the yellow one up until you see what you need for the black one.

One of the most exciting cars I've ever driven was a beautiful 914 with a 3.0 in it. It drove beautifully and felt tame when driven normally but terrifying when driven hard.

And now... here's video from today:

Pull the outer rocker covers off on each side of the car so we can see the inner rockers. More than likely the suspension console is bad on the pass side.

Anythings reparable but that's going to need a lot of work to save. Hoping the black car is better.

maybe duplicate this? 

    The yellow one could be fixed....   The right rear suspension mount will have to be replaced, the right frame box will need repair after the suspension mount is taken off.  This will likely need to be repaired on a slightly better one anyhow.  What are the rocker / frame boxes like, they tend to rust from the inside, the bottom will fall off.  You can get repair parts for all the rusty parts.

   The right rear suspension mount is available, along with the frame / rocker boxes.  The difficult part is holding whats left in alignment while cutting and welding all of it.

    The right rear suspension mount goes to the top of the right frame box.

It's my understanding that an Audi 4.2 v8 bolts rught to a Boxster transaxle.   Would be an easier swap than a Chevy V8.

A guy on 914world is making one with a twin turbo Cayenne v8 in it.

Reading your comments and looking more underneath the yellow 914, I know that I don't want to rebuild it. It's too far gone to be practical to fix, but there's a lot that it has left to offer for other projects. These outer rockers are just held on with small rivets. There's not much left underneath them, but they will look good on the black 914.

I finally took a few minutes to check over the black one. I'm pretty happy with what I found:

   The black one looks a lot better!   It looks to have some kind of after market A/C  interesting.   I wouldn't expect much from that single carb, might be able to make it run, but a twin carb set-up will be much better.   If you only have to cut out sections of the frame box, that is much simpler than replacing the entire frame box assembly.  Could make patch pieces, or could buy the replacement frame box and cut out sections as needed.

If you keep the original engine go back to fuel injection. Chassis looks pretty amazing, I saw worse 35 years ago.

The black car looks surprisingly solid. If you stick with the 1.7, I'd probably just stay with the carb. Finding a complete fuel injection system and making it all work would probably be cost prohibitive.

Without going out to look, I wonder: Would the CIS from an 80s transverse 4 VW transfer onto this?

My engine plan so far is to just get a 1.7 running with a single carb, then look at dual carb setups. For the black one I definitely want to stay with the type 4.

  A good twin carb set-up should be better than the old injection system.  One tricky thing with the twin carb is having a good linkage.  CB racing sells a good linkage, separate from the carbs.   You should be able to find some used carbs much cheaper than a new set-up.  Any down draft twin choke, weber or dellorto.

   There are adapters for setting up other engines, but the original type 4 can be fairly good.  Adding water cooling could be a little complicated.

    I wouldn't bother putting work into the bumpers or hood, back when I had mine, I just replaced those parts with fiberglass.  I forget where I got those, but I bet that stuff is still available.

      There are plastic fuel lines going thru the tunnel, those should be replaced, before you put much gas in it.  There is a little access hole under the gas tank, under the car.  But you might end up taking the tank out to get better access.

   I just remembered one more interesting thing.  When you get the brakes to work, the pedal might feel soft, there might not be anything wrong with the brakes.  The brake master might be moving a little, making the pedal feel a little soft.  There were a few different ideas for fixing this, one was to add a bracket and bolt in front of the master, and run the bolt tight against the front of the master.   You access the brake master from under the car, after taking the access panel off.

Getting way ahead of things but since TED mentioned fuel lines plan on moving the fuel pump to the front. The original pump in the engine compartment will vapor lock. The factory changed this on the later cars. Fuel tank removal is easy peasy.

Absolute no on the CIS system. The original was D Jet. Basically an analog version of Megasquirt. It worked pretty well once you understood it, but parts are long gone. I would only use the manifolds and maybe the injectors with more modern sensors and said Megasquirt.