Thanks for the kind comments guys. It's nice to be able to write up the process and share the project with everyone here. When things are good, it's definitely part of the fun. When they're not, it's good therapy.
Not much going on with the car lately. I went off to the US for work for a week, which was a good compulsory time off from it. Whilst there, I got another drive in 356 that I mentioned at the beginning of this thread (three years and 66 pages back...). It belongs to my friend Hayden and he uses it as test-bed for his Wevo products. The car still has the full Ohlins damper setup from when I last had a go, but now features his own 5-speed box. It's quite a thing. Took it down the same road to Half Moon Bay, via La Honda. Goes great, looks great. That road - wow. Please excuse the phone photos...
After I had done the work I needed to do (SF to LA), I had to drive north to another thing in Reno. I have a friend who assists me when I need it, and he'd never seen Death Valley before, so we took a slight detour through there. This was my, fifth or sixth time. I think it just gets better and better.
Tried to dive into Yosemite on the same day, but the US is just too massive and we hit it in the dark. Stayed overnight in a hotel which looked like something from the Shining - genuinely scary place. The next day we carried on to Reno. Arriving a few hours early, after an IHOP breakfast, we were able to get a quick look around the National Automobile Museum. $10 each, well spent.
This is on the dream car list:
So is one of these, copper or not:
This isn't, but it's weird and I like it:
Ferrari engine:
After Reno, we drove down to the Bay Area and stayed a couple of days with Gray. Gray is the guy that stored my car in his garage after I bought it. A legend. He has owned his green 70T for 34 years:
He leant me this thing to get around in (the one on the right):
Then I came home, moved half an aeroplane into a friend's garage:
... bought a new bike:
... and made some brake lines:
... and dropped my phone flat onto the garage floor, cracking the screen and meaning that I couldn't take any more crap photos.
Not that any of this has much to do with the 912.
Anyway, for now I'll have to make do painting pictures with words...
The brake lines are in. They look very smart against the black powdercoat of the rear swingarms etc. I used Copper-Nickel (aka Cupro Nickel, aka Kunifer) pipe, as it is much more resistant to work-hardening that standard copper. Just a much nicer product. The same friend that was with me in the US leant me a posh lever-action Sykes-Pickavant flaring tool, which made the job 10x easier and quicker than using the crappy screw-down thing I had in my collection of shitty tools.
Meanwhile, the engine gets closer to going in. The gearbox is on, the mounts are attached. The last thing to do is the throttle linkage. Back when The Dude had the engine, he prepared a very nice dual pulley system for the throttle control. In short, two pulleys on the end of the carb spindles, with a bowden cable from each, leading to a 2-into-1 unit, then a single bowden cable to the throttle pedal. All made from scratch and pretty amazing.
It looked great, but on assembling and testing it I was having problems with the carbs not returning to the closed position. Just too much drag from all the cables, not enough spring, whatever. I tried oiling the cables, but it just didn't operate smoothly enough.
As much as I liked the system, it didn't feel right. It also worried me how long it would last, and if it failed in the field, if I could ever get home. The carbs need to work perfectly in unison otherwise the engine won't run. When one of those control cables breaks, you're screwed. No Mr-Bean-ing yourself home with a length of string.
The Dude is now out of the picture on this project - he lost interest after I had the tinware powdercoated, declaring the results poor. I think it looks OK, but the guy operates on another level that not many can reach. Me included. So I'm on my own from here.
Whilst in the US, I picked up a couple of pulleys from a Sync-Link kit. The Sync-Link is intended for use on a VW Type 1 engine, but the bits fit the Weber IDFs that are on my 912 motor.
Once home, I began experimenting with the pulleys. The Dude was all about a clean engine bay, and I'd like to maintain this ethos. The Sync-Link looks clean, but not clean enough - it needs to be clean, like 'non existent' clean. So I looked at putting the pulleys on the back of the carb spindles, out of sight. That worked, but would be a pain to adjust. So I pondered a million different configurations, all of which I can't really be arsed to try to recall here, and concluded that the best solution would be to put a single pulley on the rear, with a rose-jointed crossbar linking the two carbs either on the front (which still looks pretty clean) or on the back (non-existent).
Easier to explain with photos, if I hadn't dropped my phone.
) of hindsight and doing a few of these now, me and Mr. Hall often reflect over a coffee or a shandy on the mixture or optimism and inexperience that someone somewhere exhibits on some fora or other re the cost/time/(in)sanity dimensions of taking on one of these restorations. 
