1975 914 1.8 Restoration

[RichardJ]

Having wanted a 914 of 20-ish years, I finally bought one almost a year ago now. Having lurked on here for a long time, and asked quite a few of you helpful folks questions since starting my project, I have finally got around to hosting my photos in some web space I already have, so I can start a build thread on here.

Introduction to my 914 project:

After viewing two 914's in detail I ended up buying the third 914 project car I came across on ebay, without seeing it in person first. The seller sent me a lot of extra photos showing whatever I asked for, and some video. I went to collect in person, and pay on the day, so didn't think I was risking too much by not having seen it in person up front. Just recovery truck hire, a wasted day and a lot of diesel. We could always haggle further if the car was worse than described / pictured. I needn't have worried about the body condition, which appeared to be pretty much exactly as described. Never welded (but lots of fibreglass floor bodging), and no accident damage.

The trim condition was worse than expected, with lots of interior pieces missing or damaged. In fairness though, I hadn't asked about that, just bodywork condition, due to the previous two 914's I'd been to view being exceptionally rusty, with patches welded over patches, etc. One was road legal, but has numerous pieces of steel channel welded under the sills to, I assume, stop it trying to fold itself in half! Within minutes of viewing both I knew I wasn't interested in a project of that magnitude. Both too far gone to be practical to restore in my opinion.

Ideally I wasn't after an 'impact bumper' model, but having learned a lot more about some of the other late model changes, I prefer a lot of them (the late dash instruments, two adjustable seats, etc). However, despite being a genuine California car, imported by the guy I bought it from, and needing floor and 'hell hole' bodywork, it looked so much better than either of the other two I had viewed, that the decision to buy despite the impact bumpers was obvious. Compared to other 914 restorations on here, its body condition before restoration has turned out to be somewhere between defianty and chief's projects.

My 914 didn't come with an extensive history. The seller had personally imported it, so had lots of paperwork relating to that. However, it came with enough US history, to prove it's been in California from new, in San Francisco and Bakersfield. There was a gap from the late '70's to the mid '80's with no info, but on stripping it down I discovered a very faded and water damaged piece of paper trapped below a headlight. From what I can see it appears to be a temporary tax / licence document to allow it to be driven home after changing hands. Conveniently it is dated from the gap that I previously had no info for, so it's nice to know it really has been in California for all of it's pre UK life. Jut a pity it's not in as perfect a condition as we in the UK tend to imagine all California classic cars to be!

It had had an exceptionally bad respray in the US. In the original L97B Anacona blue. It looked truly awful. The base coat appeared to have been aerosol-ed, very unevenly (one half of the bonnet had enough paint on it, the other you could see through to the primer!), with lacquer over the top to a better, but still pretty awful standard. I'm guessing it looked like the typical patina'd 'desert car' prior to that - Bakersfield looks almost like desert on Google maps.

Now to see if I can master posting images on here..........

[RichardJ]

These are some of the pics from the seller's ad, and the extras I asked for:











Solid enough looking for me to bid and win on ebay without driving to Norfolk to view it. I was after a project car - just one which doesn't require all sorth of repairs for which panels are not available, and / or too much undoing of other's previous bodged repairs.

[RichardJ]

Deal done in September 2017, and here is is about to make it's way to my workshop:



.... and a few pics of the start of my corrosion hunt:

Extensively fibreglassed floor pan and bottom of bulkhead:





Bonnet weather strip channel gone on both sides:





And at the top corners by the hinges:





It took me many months to discover this mess. It had been skillfully hidden with filler. I only spotted it after removing the door striker plates, and noticing that the RH door wouldn't close past flush with the rear quarter at all, which clearly wasn't right. The filler was what was preventing the door closing beyond flush:



I knew the battery side 'hell hole needed doing:



.....but was disappointed to find the opposite side does too:

[defianty]

Great to see another one being given the treatment it deserves Richard. It does seem to suffer with all the normal issues these cars face.

Looking forward to seeing your progress. If you're going to continue this as a restoration thread a recommend asking the admin to move it to the Restoration section. It will get more noticed there. Unfortunately it's rather quite in the 914 section.

If I can offer any help please don't hesitate to contact me. Where in the country are you?

[RichardJ]

Yes, the plan is to cover the restoration in this thread. I have many pics of the work I've done in the last year, so I'll add a few more whenever I get a spare few minutes until it's reasonably up to date. I've already done quite a bit of the stuff you've posted most recently (headlight mechanisms, targa latches, heater box, etc). Many hours of work in cleaning that lot up, and many parts bought just to get a usable set! A lot of the trim on my car was not in good condition. Once this starts to look like a restoration thread, I'll ask if it can be moved if it'll get seen more in the restoration section.

I'm in England (Staffordshire). Thanks for the offer of help if I have questions - you've already answered a few for me.

[hot66]

great to see more & more 914's have the restos they deserve

Hope you don't mind, but as Stephen suggests, I've moved it to the resto thread section .. everyone love a good resto thread

[RichardJ]

No problem with the move to restoration threads, thanks.

Hopefully this is where people may find my restoration thread start to get a bit more interesting, rather then just another rusty 914 coming apart. Some of you may have seen my thread in the 914 section about stripping body shells (viewtopic.php?f=4&t=61889. As I had decided I would be having the shell stripped, the next decision was how to get the heater pipes out. It seems the norm in 911 restorations I've seen online to cut out the outer longitidinals prior to stripping to get the pipes out. This makes a lot of sense if they're rotten, but them, and the door threshold panels seemed near perfect on my 914, so the thought of cutting them out didn't appeal.
After much thinking about it, I decided to cut the inner longitidinals out instead, using photos from many restoration threads online to workout exactly where to cut, mostly from spot weld locations, to avoid pipe brackets, seat belt mounting points, etc. Before doing so I braced the door gaps with a frame I made from 20mm box section, given how rusty I knew the floor was - I'm not having my 914 fold in half!
I cut the inner sills out with a 1mm slitting disc, so the original removed parts can be welded back in, and ground the heads off the pipe retaining clip rivets:









I was really pleased with how this worked out, and with the condition of the structural bits which can't usually be seen that it revealed.

After this I took a ridiculous number of photos of how the seam sealer all originally was, and finished my shell stillage / trolley, and it was ready to go to be stripped. In my research on stripping processes and companies, someone I know recommended making a bespoke stillage, as he'd had the floor damaged by the shell being moved around on a pallet despite a pallet being the stripping companies preference. This made lots of sense, especially as I have a forklift. Being able to load and unload the shell from the stripping companies truck also made the collection and delivery a bit cheaper, otherwise they would have sent a third party car moving specialist with a race trailer which has a tail lift big enough to load a body shell. The stillage / trolley will later be converted into a rotisserie (it's modular).

This was it ready to go:



..... and leaving for a while:

[defianty]

Great stuff, any chance of bigger images?

[RichardJ]

Took an hour or so of messing about, but, yes, it seems I have mastered making the images bigger. Thanks.

[RichardJ]

Kind of exciting and scary getting the shell back from stripping, wondering what it could have uncovered that I hadn't previously found. It's been in a pyrolysis oven to remove all the paint, seam sealer, etc (turns it all to ash with no flame due to the lack of oxygen), then dipped in a phosphoric acid based solution to disolve the rust. Fortunately there were very few surprises.





Now I can see the exact extent of the corrosion, and it is mostly limited to lowest sections of floor, directly beneath the targa roof, I suspect that car has sat outside with the roof off for a very long time:





























All the stripping process revealed that I wasn't expecting was this row of holes along the LH side of the bonnet weather strip channel, which must have been fibreglassed over:



......... and a small dent repair to the RH rear wing, which has been done so well, the only give away is 4 holes, I assume used to pull the dent out before the days of stud welders, and some faint file marks:



.......... and this rust the the boot floor LH corner, which I knew about, is far worse than it looked with paint on. Typically you can't buy a repair panel for here, but a but of cardboard aided design shouldn't be too difficult - no compound curves:



Overall I'm very impressed with the stripping process, and am very glad i did a lot of resarch into who / what processes to use for it up front. Not a single spec of paint left anywhere, and absolutely no distortion to any panels that I can see. There is only one downside that I can think of, and that is my fault. I knew the process would melt out any lead / body solder, and I knew Karmann were very big users of lead on Karmann Ghias, etc. at the same era. However, as the 914 body shape doesn't appear to feature blends between different panels like a Ghia does, and as I'd never read anything about lead being used 914, so I kind of assumed (wrongly) it wasn't use. However, it is used above the rear light corners, where inside of the top of the A posts blend into the windscreen pillars





There are also a few very tiny spots of lead at the top and bottom of the seam at the rear of the sail panels (the seam which the curved aluminium trim covers up) which I didn't photograph.


Deep inside the sills / heater channels / longitudinals, back towards the 'hell holes', I could see some residue from the stripping process when looking with a torch and mirror. I scraped / hoovered / blew it out with an air line, worried that it may be acidic residue, but not without saving a bit of it:



I certainly didn't look crystalline, but I PH tested it anyway. PH 6, so pretty neutral. I'm pretty sure it's ash from the pyrolysis process, so nothing to worry about.

Until I spotted this, i thought I could say the shell had never been welded. However, it had had some kind of accessory mirrors or something fitted on the front wings, with two holes drilled in each, just behind the indicators (must have looked awful). Strangely the holes had been fibreglassed up on one side, but welded up on the other side:

[defianty]

That looks great Richard, a fantastic place to start. I must admit I didn't expect the floors to be as bad as they were. Let's hope mine turns out ok as it's off to be media blasted in a couple of weeks!

[RichardJ]

Although I knew the rear half of the floor needed replacing, it was far worse then I expected too, not that it mattered too much when I'd already committed to replacing it. The extent of the corrosion had been fairly skillfully hidden with fibreglass, much of which looked remarkably like the original 'tar board' sound deadening. The front half of the floor looked salvageable, even until I'd had the stripped shell back for a few days. Only when looking from underneath, with the sun above, did I realise how many tiny holes there were, so that's a front half of the floor to add to the shopping list. I'd held back ordering repair panels until then just in case, with the plan to order them all in one go. A week or so later this lot arrived:





I know other panels are available which I ideally need (the inner and outer lower bulkhead, and floor crossmember), but as only the bottom inch or so of each is rusty, I decided to repair what I already have instead, as the budget is, unfortunately, not unlimited!

I doubt blasting your shell will uncover much or anything unexpected. With the amount of work already done on it, I wouldn't have though there will be much scope for you to have missed anything? Good luck. I wish my shell was at the stage yours is, with all that tricky fabricating work done!

[jtparr]

Fantastic start Richard, looking forward to watching this one develop

All the best
Jonathan

[Steve Warson]

Nice progress! Must not be keeping the 1.8 with those arches...

[chief]

Hi Richard,
Looks like the process worked just as you hoped. A fair bit of welding to be done, but that's the fun part, right!
I shall be watching with interest. Maybe I should ask Bootsy to move my thread here along with yours and Stephen's. We should be a force to be reconed with. Now we need to persuade LMR Phil to do the same.....