914/6 GT restoration and conversion thread
Moderator: Bootsy
-
- I need to get out more!
- Posts: 3081
- Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2006 11:27 pm
- Location: Cheshire, England
914/6 GT restoration and conversion thread
For some time I've been meaning to get a thread on here about my 914/6GT replica. I was reminded about it again recently by someone over Christmas and thought it was about time I got round to it. It has almost been a full time project from buying the car in the USA in late 2006, to getting it on the road for the Classic Marathon in June 2008. Even after I got it on the road I've tried lots of different products & modifications to get the car handling exactly as I want it. These are still ongoing but I'll cover the key ones in chronological order so it makes more sense. It has been a real labour of love to build what has been my favorite car for most of my adult life and no expense has been spared. To date the car has set me back about £68k according to my records with about £24k of this being spent since it was officially completed in June 2008 as I've experimented with combinations of suspension, set up, gearing, engine mods, etc. To be fair this includes a healthy collection of road rallying spares covering everything you could imagine and numerous sets of Fuchs wheels. I've also sold on a lot of the cars original standard equipment that was in A1 condition plus numerous parts I've bought but subsequently changed to get the car just as I want it. This has offset a chunk of this outlay or so I tell my better half !! I hope you find this interesting and maybe gives other owners some ideas. I'll try to fill in the history over the next few weeks.
I'll start off with the pre-purchase photos from the USA taken in Sept 2006. The purchase was a fairly fraught process which I will explain later.
Note only rear GT arches which are actually fibreglass ones
Bumpers were like new. Interesting satin black real panel was an interesting idea. Bit like TR6's
Interior was like new as well and hadn't been messed about with over the years
Underneath was nearly as good. So clean you could eat off it. Note twin outlet exhaust and Bursch headers which were very loud
No rust anywhere to be seen
Floors were like new with no previous repairs or welding anywhere on the car.
What I was told by the seller was a 2.2 running on rebuilt MFI pump
Car looked like it had never seem water in in it's life !
Some things left to finish like the GT sill and valance panel fit
And here.
I found the car on 914World in the US having spent the previous 10 years trying to find a similar car in the UK. The only one I found in all that time with a price and spec I liked was the orange 916 replica that Rob Taylor has now. I shook on a price of £11700 with the guy who built it (Adrian Cairns) back in March 2000 before Adrian gazumped me and sold it to someone else. I wasn't best pleased but that's the way the cookie crumbles. I was so unimpressed I went off and bought a '66 CooperS !
I didn't want to buy a car in the US without inspecting it and at that stage I didn't know enough about 914's to trust myself to do it. I was recommended a Porsche dealer in the US (by a well known import Porsche dealer in the UK) who could inspect the car, collect it and help arrange shipping for a fee. All seemed fine to start with and I agreed a price with the seller before sending him a small deposit to hold the car subject to the inspection. Because the Porsche specialist planned to inspect and buy the car on my behalf at the same time, subject to the inspection matching the sellers description, then I had to wire the purchase price of the car and the fees for the inspection/collection. This is where it all started to go wrong. Once the dealer had my money his communication almost evaporated. He took weeks to get around to visiting the car so the seller started to get frustrated. When he eventually visited the car he somehow 'fell out' with the seller and returned home without buying it.
It was only by talking with the seller that I found out what happened and at that point the seller was refusing to talk with the dealer. The seller and the dealer were both acting like big children and refusing to talk to each other. I never really got to the bottom of why but it was certainly nothing more significant than a clash or personalities. All the time of course the dealer had all my money and wasn't replying to my emails.
After much mediating between the 'children' they eventually agreed to meet again. The dealer had a comprehensive inspection checklist to go through based on the sellers description and he was supposed to call me when he had inspected the car and before buying it. He never called me and I couldn't raise him on the phone. Again I had to call the seller to actually confirm I had bought it !
The dealer simply wasn't replying to emails so I ended up calling him. Regularly !! Most of the time I ended up speaking or emailing his wife who always made his excuses and assured me everything would be fine whilst giving me bits of information on progress. I never got the completed inspection report from the dealer despite repeated promises. He just described it on the phone weeks after he collected it and said it was all good. Something that turned out to be far from the truth with respect to the engine.
From the outset I had planned to get a lot of the GT conversion parts I needed in the USA and ship them with the car. This included all the fibreglass body bits, GT body & trailing arm stiffening kits, refurbished S front calipers and 914/6 rear calipers and discs, genuine steel flares and a few odds and ends. It took a further 2 months for all these bits to arrive by about mid November, but it was clear that the dealer was making little effort to sort out the shipping. I eventually had to ask a local shipping agent to help me get the car and parts out of his possession. When I did eventually get the car out of his garage it turned out he had actually taken title of the car. It took some legal shenanigans to sort this out.
This wasn't the end of the disasters. The shipping agent then sold his business to a new gentleman who quite frankly knew nothing about shipping. It was incredibly frustrating. I ended up having to sort it out myself and almost tell him what to do. When the car was eventually containerised it set sail from near NewYork in February only for the ship to breakdown about 500miles off shore and had to be towed back to port !! The container sat on the ship and it took a further 6 weeks for them to repair the ship before it set sail again in March and arrived in the UK on Easter Sunday 2007. Having agreed a price with the car's seller in September 2006 I eventually got the car in April 2007 !!! What an ordeal.
And that wasn't the end of the problems !!
That's it for now. Next pictures will be the stripped car when I eventually got it back to the UK in April 2007 and could check it out for myself !!
I'll start off with the pre-purchase photos from the USA taken in Sept 2006. The purchase was a fairly fraught process which I will explain later.
Note only rear GT arches which are actually fibreglass ones
Bumpers were like new. Interesting satin black real panel was an interesting idea. Bit like TR6's
Interior was like new as well and hadn't been messed about with over the years
Underneath was nearly as good. So clean you could eat off it. Note twin outlet exhaust and Bursch headers which were very loud
No rust anywhere to be seen
Floors were like new with no previous repairs or welding anywhere on the car.
What I was told by the seller was a 2.2 running on rebuilt MFI pump
Car looked like it had never seem water in in it's life !
Some things left to finish like the GT sill and valance panel fit
And here.
I found the car on 914World in the US having spent the previous 10 years trying to find a similar car in the UK. The only one I found in all that time with a price and spec I liked was the orange 916 replica that Rob Taylor has now. I shook on a price of £11700 with the guy who built it (Adrian Cairns) back in March 2000 before Adrian gazumped me and sold it to someone else. I wasn't best pleased but that's the way the cookie crumbles. I was so unimpressed I went off and bought a '66 CooperS !
I didn't want to buy a car in the US without inspecting it and at that stage I didn't know enough about 914's to trust myself to do it. I was recommended a Porsche dealer in the US (by a well known import Porsche dealer in the UK) who could inspect the car, collect it and help arrange shipping for a fee. All seemed fine to start with and I agreed a price with the seller before sending him a small deposit to hold the car subject to the inspection. Because the Porsche specialist planned to inspect and buy the car on my behalf at the same time, subject to the inspection matching the sellers description, then I had to wire the purchase price of the car and the fees for the inspection/collection. This is where it all started to go wrong. Once the dealer had my money his communication almost evaporated. He took weeks to get around to visiting the car so the seller started to get frustrated. When he eventually visited the car he somehow 'fell out' with the seller and returned home without buying it.
It was only by talking with the seller that I found out what happened and at that point the seller was refusing to talk with the dealer. The seller and the dealer were both acting like big children and refusing to talk to each other. I never really got to the bottom of why but it was certainly nothing more significant than a clash or personalities. All the time of course the dealer had all my money and wasn't replying to my emails.
After much mediating between the 'children' they eventually agreed to meet again. The dealer had a comprehensive inspection checklist to go through based on the sellers description and he was supposed to call me when he had inspected the car and before buying it. He never called me and I couldn't raise him on the phone. Again I had to call the seller to actually confirm I had bought it !
The dealer simply wasn't replying to emails so I ended up calling him. Regularly !! Most of the time I ended up speaking or emailing his wife who always made his excuses and assured me everything would be fine whilst giving me bits of information on progress. I never got the completed inspection report from the dealer despite repeated promises. He just described it on the phone weeks after he collected it and said it was all good. Something that turned out to be far from the truth with respect to the engine.
From the outset I had planned to get a lot of the GT conversion parts I needed in the USA and ship them with the car. This included all the fibreglass body bits, GT body & trailing arm stiffening kits, refurbished S front calipers and 914/6 rear calipers and discs, genuine steel flares and a few odds and ends. It took a further 2 months for all these bits to arrive by about mid November, but it was clear that the dealer was making little effort to sort out the shipping. I eventually had to ask a local shipping agent to help me get the car and parts out of his possession. When I did eventually get the car out of his garage it turned out he had actually taken title of the car. It took some legal shenanigans to sort this out.
This wasn't the end of the disasters. The shipping agent then sold his business to a new gentleman who quite frankly knew nothing about shipping. It was incredibly frustrating. I ended up having to sort it out myself and almost tell him what to do. When the car was eventually containerised it set sail from near NewYork in February only for the ship to breakdown about 500miles off shore and had to be towed back to port !! The container sat on the ship and it took a further 6 weeks for them to repair the ship before it set sail again in March and arrived in the UK on Easter Sunday 2007. Having agreed a price with the car's seller in September 2006 I eventually got the car in April 2007 !!! What an ordeal.
And that wasn't the end of the problems !!
That's it for now. Next pictures will be the stripped car when I eventually got it back to the UK in April 2007 and could check it out for myself !!
-
- I need to get out more!
- Posts: 3081
- Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2006 11:27 pm
- Location: Cheshire, England
First inspection and strip down in the UK
When I got the car back to the UK I eventually had a chance to inspect it properly and strip it before begining the GT conversion.
When I eventually got the container open it wouldn't start and it wasn't just a flat battery. At that stage I didn't realise the extent of the problem. But the body lived up to expectation. Not a spot of rust anywhere apart from a legacy issue from a leaking battery. Somone had dealth with this previously and the battery had been moved to the front (no bad things from an access and weight perspective), but it was going to need some welding to make it perfect. It was clear that the car had never seen rain in its life. That was obviously going to change being in the UK !!
Remains of historical battery acid corrosion in the 'hell hole'
GT panles all ready to fit
Car off on it's way to Trevor Farrington for GT body conversion work
When I eventually got the container open it wouldn't start and it wasn't just a flat battery. At that stage I didn't realise the extent of the problem. But the body lived up to expectation. Not a spot of rust anywhere apart from a legacy issue from a leaking battery. Somone had dealth with this previously and the battery had been moved to the front (no bad things from an access and weight perspective), but it was going to need some welding to make it perfect. It was clear that the car had never seen rain in its life. That was obviously going to change being in the UK !!
Remains of historical battery acid corrosion in the 'hell hole'
GT panles all ready to fit
Car off on it's way to Trevor Farrington for GT body conversion work
-
- Nurse, I think I need some assistance
- Posts: 18970
- Joined: Mon Mar 10, 2008 6:26 pm
- Location: West Midlands
-
- DDK rules my life!
- Posts: 1318
- Joined: Mon Aug 15, 2005 6:46 pm
- Location: staffs
-
- I need to get out more!
- Posts: 3081
- Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2006 11:27 pm
- Location: Cheshire, England
No idea what the circular hole above the 'hell hole' is for, but it did look original. No doubt someone will me that isn't possible, but it did look it. It's still there !! Engine mount bar was a Patrick Motorsport item which was on the car when I bought it.fourteener wrote:Sounds like a nightmare to start with. I'm interested what the hole behind where the battery would be was made for. Also what engine mount bar is that?
-
- I need to get out more!
- Posts: 3081
- Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2006 11:27 pm
- Location: Cheshire, England
Cutting & welding steel GT arch
When we cut off the rear arches we found a ton of fibreglass and filler.
Took a lot of effort to get it all off
Arch profile was recut to suit the new steel arches from Patrick Motorsport. Here is is ready to weld
All welded and ready to fill/profile
During filling/profiling process
Front arch ready to cut
In place and welded up
The arches were the pattern ones reproduced by AutoAtlanta. The fit and quality was prety good. This is a very expensive job to get someone else to do properly so be warned
Took a lot of effort to get it all off
Arch profile was recut to suit the new steel arches from Patrick Motorsport. Here is is ready to weld
All welded and ready to fill/profile
During filling/profiling process
Front arch ready to cut
In place and welded up
The arches were the pattern ones reproduced by AutoAtlanta. The fit and quality was prety good. This is a very expensive job to get someone else to do properly so be warned
-
- Nurse, I think I need some assistance
- Posts: 18970
- Joined: Mon Mar 10, 2008 6:26 pm
- Location: West Midlands
Very nice job ,i like the GT's projects !!!!
A link from armando website,my friend Wilfrid GT project...
http://www.pbase.com/9146gt/other_porsc ... _phase_one
http://www.pbase.com/9146gt/other_porsc ... _phase_two
A link from armando website,my friend Wilfrid GT project...
http://www.pbase.com/9146gt/other_porsc ... _phase_one
http://www.pbase.com/9146gt/other_porsc ... _phase_two
-
- I need to get out more!
- Posts: 3081
- Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2006 11:27 pm
- Location: Cheshire, England
Chassis reinforcement & welding
First of all I replaced the Patrick Motorsport engine bar mounting with a Rich Johnson bulk head mounting that better replicates the original 914/6 mounting and gives identical engine location.
Aligned and boted in place before welding
Stitch welded on and primed
Rear suspension arm mounting chassis reinforcement. GT kit + a little more
Rich Johnson trailing arm reinforcement box section
Welded on and ready to powder coat
Hell hole repair before
and after
No other welding was required on the chassis. It was solid as the day it was made !!!
Aligned and boted in place before welding
Stitch welded on and primed
Rear suspension arm mounting chassis reinforcement. GT kit + a little more
Rich Johnson trailing arm reinforcement box section
Welded on and ready to powder coat
Hell hole repair before
and after
No other welding was required on the chassis. It was solid as the day it was made !!!
-
- I need to get out more!
- Posts: 3081
- Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2006 11:27 pm
- Location: Cheshire, England
Cage fitting
I decided not to go for the readily available Safety Devices cage. Main problem with it for me is that the brace bars for the rool hoop block the rearward travel of the seats and being 6'3" I need ever inch of seat travel.
You can see what I mean in the picture below. When using seats with a wider head rest the effect is even worse.
Instead I went for a lightweight chrome moly steel cage from Mittelmotor that mounts higher on the firewal using a reinforced plate section. Much neater and the brace bars are further back so you are less likely to hit your head on them with the seat fully back as well. In FIA terms these are the equivalent of the rear stays. At least in this design they are sloping backwards a bit !
Rear stay reinforced mounting
Front foot mounting
Rear foot mounting
Roof is braced with a bolt in bar. The whole fit of the cage is excellent, maximising space in the car
The cage is then bolted in
There are also strong door bars
You can see what I mean in the picture below. When using seats with a wider head rest the effect is even worse.
Instead I went for a lightweight chrome moly steel cage from Mittelmotor that mounts higher on the firewal using a reinforced plate section. Much neater and the brace bars are further back so you are less likely to hit your head on them with the seat fully back as well. In FIA terms these are the equivalent of the rear stays. At least in this design they are sloping backwards a bit !
Rear stay reinforced mounting
Front foot mounting
Rear foot mounting
Roof is braced with a bolt in bar. The whole fit of the cage is excellent, maximising space in the car
The cage is then bolted in
There are also strong door bars