Restoring my first 914

[Mr Pharmacist]

Impressive work Darren!

[Darren C]

Thanks for the kind words guy's. Reminds me of Sir Henry's famous quote
"Small things make perfection but perfection is no small thing"
Doing stuff like this is why I can't bring myself to part with my cars easily which got me in the 10 car mess I'm in now.

Stuart’s speed resistor block turned up today. The spring resistor missing from my assembly was on the replacement but one end was broken at the securing crimp. This wasn’t a problem as losing 6mm ¼” off the resistor wire would make very little difference.
I’m not sure what state the car was that it came from Stuart, but how the heck did it end up getting red spray paint on it buried deep in the fan housing? Fortunately the resistor was free from paint. The hardest bit was opening up the factory crimps without damaging the wire. I ended up resting it over my vice with the jaws open about 3mm and with a tiny needle punch, opening up the crimp from the inside to free the resistor spring.
Since they get so hot when in normal use, they have a heat shield, sit in the air flow and a thermal bi metal switch to short them out and speed the fan up if they overheat. Consequently you cant solder them in place as it would just melt. They can only be crimped.
Once the resistor spring was out of Stuarts holder I very carefully cleaned up mine and opened up the crimps, removed the two tiny remaining broken strands and opened up the broken end coil of Stuarts donor to make a new “leg” and fitted it in my holder. Using long nose mole grips I re-crimped it tightly into the terminal block and tested it with my meter. 2.5 Ohms. Perfect.
With everything ready to go I rebuilt the lower half of the fan housing with the new fan. Re using the fan seal to casing (still life left in it)
Here’s the finished fan assembly with Stuarts donor terminal block resting on top with removed resistor spring, cleaned up cabling, spades and new yellow heat shrink.



Next I assembled my Uber Brasso polished shiny, shiny Intake box that sits above the fan with my cleaned and painted Omega clips.
With a strip of Isoline foam tape cut down to ½” wide I made a new gasket for the fan to intake box which had just turned to powder.
Finally fitting them together to complete the refurbished blower assembly, ready to go back in to the car over the weekend. You can see the tail ends of the tube reinforcements I added in the photo. These will be concealed inside the hoses when they go back on.

[Mr Pharmacist]

Wow! That looks brand new!!

You should have sent the fan and motor that the resistor came from. Either someone deliberately sprayed paint into it or it was running the entire time it was being resprayed red. That one was off my car. I bought a donor she'll and used the one off that for mine as at least the fan turned freely.

[rhd racer]

Crikey Darren - I know you said early on that this was planned to be a nicely restored daily rather than a show car, but I can't quite see how this can be anything other than a concourse car! The level of detail / finish is amazing! can't wait to see the finished car

cheers
Wayne

[Biggles]

Darren

After posting on 914world, I have learnt that 914rubber is doing a new dash top from a NOS part. After many months of development it looks as though it's nearly ready to go at a special pre-production run $ rate. So I have decided to take the plunge and put my name down. I can only hope that it will be ok because for something so prominent in the cabin, it needs to be good !

When it eventually arrives I will come back and post what the quality is like...

Chris.

[Darren C]

Interesting Chris, I had heard/read rumours about this but I have heard/read many such rumours over the years on various car sites and club meets about remanufacture of what is trending as unobtainium. Without sounding too cynical I would wait and see. It’s bound to be a compromise in some way as tooling costs alone for an original construction technique manufactured product would render it un economical unless you made 1000’s.
Wayne, you did put a smile on my face.
“Concours” is a word that is totally abused today like “engineer or technician”
My car is barely “show and shine” it’s more like a good dose of turd polishing than concours.
I am a concours judge for a few rather pretentious and snooty car clubs and I’ve judge cars internationally for Pebble Beach and helped with obtaining Ferrari Classiche status. Some owners spend several £million on their cars to bring them to what they “think” is concours and I have just had to walk by and class them as unsuitable to be judged as at 50 yards I can see things that would disqualify or minus point them into disqualification. Only last week was I asked to look at a DB5 that had just had a £300,000 so called restoration at a well known “specialist”. My advice to the guy was that it will take £500,000 to sort out the damage the specialist had done and either sell it, start litigation or take it somewhere else to start again.
Unfortunately we live in a democracy and 99.9% of people have the “that’ll do” attitude so ignorance rules and thus people do not understand the true meaning of words anymore.
There are very few car clubs world wide who truly hold concours events despite them all calling it that. They are just “show & shine” with trailer queens seeing how far they can polish up their aftermarket exhaust pipes with a toothbrush on a broom handle, lining up slots on screws and handing each other cheap plastic trophies; followed by advertising their sows ear car the next week for 3 x the market value as a “concours winner”!
To make my little 914 concours (in my opinion) would take £1/4 million pounds in the current state it is in, so as I said at the start of my thread I just want to make it a nice clean useable example.
Let me put it another way, if ever you get the chance go up to a guy who’s just won a so called concours event and ask him what he could do to improve his car for next year. If he’s truly honest with you, he’ll rattle off a list of things that bug him about his car. If his car were truly concours then he’d say “there’s nothing needed the cars perfect”
Ok, my OCD dark side has ranted enough otherwise I’ll spiral back in to dark depression with the imperfections of the world and the folk in it that I have to tolerate, so enough of that.
Anyway today’s progress was short and sweet as it was Friday which true to form was a bit of a nightmare at work. No time for lunch break today and even when I left from work on my way home in Tesco tonight my work called me at 6:30 and basically told me to abandon my shopping trolley half way around the store and rush in to fix a production critical machine. I got back to work at 7pm to find the so called “engineers” had repeatedly reset the low oil level cut out and bodged the machine to run on with no oil in it since yesterday and now it had completely self destructed so there was nothing I could do but say you’ll have to wait until Monday when the supplier in Europe reopens (and if the transport strikes are over) I might be able to locate a new one. They’re going to have some explaining to do I’m sure.
I didn’t get home until 9pm and jumped straight on to the gauges. Using my device and a few other medieval implements I’d sorted out I rolled the bezels back onto all the gauges. They went back on a treat and with only one small casualty; a tiny paint chip that I touched in on the rear of the bezel that won’t be seen anyway.
I’m pleased with how they look now, far, far better than they were and with all the other sprucing up of the dashboard in general they shouldn’t lower the tone at all.

[914 KEV]

Great work Darren, your posts make interesting reading, keep them coming.

I have taken many 914s apart and put them back together trying to get all the detail correct, come across many of your problems, apart from the sand everywhere!

It amazes me that you are able to do a daily running report! That’s the bit I find hard to do! That just doesn’t come easy for me and takes hours to write a paragraph or two! My 914 monthly reports takes many days to write!

The concours rant made me laugh!

Correct detailing and presentation have a lot to do with it. Not many people know all the fine detail between early, mid and late changes on a particular model, let alone between many different models and between makes!
Many judges will miss that and just look to see if there is no damage and that everthing is clean and well presented.

Most 914s that have come in from the States I have found that the cold air blower motor are knackered due to them running all the time and getting filled up with pine needles and other muck!
I have seen many where the brushes are worn down to the springs!
The drain tube attachment on the housing are easily broken if care isn't taken removing it and refitting.

My pet hate is seeing the cold air fan housing with over spray on, as most people won’t remove the petrol tank to get to it!

Still can’t believe that you didn’t take my advice and remove it before getting the 914 got repainted along with the wiper arm motor and crank drive!
At that time you didn’t feel it was necessary! Oh well it could have saved a lot of time in the long run; easy to say now!

When you removed the control lever unit from the dash frame you disconnected them at the wrong end! this was due to the fuel tank still being fitted at the time.

Before you refit the dash frame back into the cab, my advice is now that the fuel tank and cold air blower housing is out of the 914 is to undo the three control cables that connect to the cold air blower and distribution units behind the fuel tank.
Reconnect the cables to the control levers unit where you disconnected them and once the dash is fully fitted, push in the lever unit into the cut out and feed the cables through the grommet that has a separate hole for each cable and then reconnect them with the cold air blower and control valves.

The cables are really fiddley to putting back on and refit the push clamp clips at the dash end because there is very little room to move them about while doing this inside the dash frame!

Good luck!

[rhd racer]

Glad I made you laugh Darren - not sure if it was the iPad auto correct of "concourse" or the suggestion of your car being "concours" which was funnier!

Anyhow - my sentiments stands, the attention to detail is really impressive. And if you want to see a turd close up, I live in Nottinghamshire

[Darren C]

Very good Wayne
I'm sure your car is more "show and shine"

Thanks Kev,
Yes hindsight is a wonderful thing. I did unbolt the wipers and push the spindles back inside the car so only the tips which were masked up poked out 1/4 inch. The original blower mesh was in pieces so I slid a thin sheet of plastic acetate under the grill in the scuttle to mask it off for painting which is no different really to taking the box out and masking it from underneath. Granted taking the blower box out at the time would have found the fan problem earlier. Not sure what you mean about taking the heater controls out the wrong way? I undid the bowden cables under the bonnet on the two levers on the drivers side and pulled out the control unit from the dash and undid the single top lever cable. The controls came out easily with two cables on them and one left in the car (the one under the blower box that you cant get at the clip with it in situ).
I agree with you on overspray, Kev.

Today I made reasonable progress only delayed by 914rubber yet again!
With the blower box out I fitted the dash controls and connected the two cables back onto the levers on the drivers side then checked and adjusted the clamps so that the levers moved all the way across the control unit from left to right and the butterfly flaps opened and closed correctly in proportion.
Before the blower box went back in I gave it one last clean behind.



All was going well until I unpacked the new 914rubber mesh and seal for the top of the blower box. The mesh plate is angled down around its perimeter and the slot in the rubber seal is horizontal, so when you fit the mesh inside it (which is a fiddle) the rubber rolls over to match the angle of the perimeter of the mesh and wont easily fit or stay in place on the lip of the blower box.
It drove me to despair this afternoon, the bloomin thing wouldn’t stay in place for more than 10 seconds with the blower box off the car, let alone trying to fit it.
In the end I had to file the whole edge of the 914rubber mesh plate square (taking off the angled perimeter slightly and the underside part of the angle so that it sat in the rubber seal better without rolling the seal over.
Only then would it stay in place on the blower box.
Thinking I’d resolved the issue I then tried to fit the blower box back in the car. The damn 914rubber seal was far too hard and chunky for it to slide between the two metal securing plates welded on the underside of the scuttle without dragging it off the blower box.
Off again and back to the shed, I put a little superglue on the seal to hold it to the blower box and a light smear of grease on the sides to ease it between the two metal brackets.
Back to the garage and carefully slid it into place. Great, I thought. Then the next nightmare showed itself.
The 914rubber seal is quite chunky and the rubber isn’t forgiving so guess what….I couldn’t get the bolts in from either side as the seal wouldn’t compress enough on the underside of the scuttle to allow the blower box to lift upwards and align the bolt holes. We’re not talking a little here, with a piece of 3 x 2 wood as a lever under the blower box forcing it upwards with more pressure than I liked the holes in the box were still no where near, the box needed to go up a further 4mm. No chance.
I wrestled and wrestled with it for over an hour but the rubber seal was too hard and too big.
There was nothing I could do but have to take it out yet again. I was so frustrated with the 914rubber piece of shite that I had to go indoors have a cup of tea and calm down.
The only thing I could think of to do was physically cut 4mm of the top rim of the blower box to allow the seal to sit lower and the box to fit higher in the car. Again this was another 2 hours wasted trying to make stuff fit.
Anyway with it cut down, superglued back on and greased on the outside it eventually fit back in the car and the holes lined up (still needed a lever with the 3 x 2) but with points filed on the bolts I got them to go in eventually. Finally I fitted the air duct hoses and the drain tubes to complete it.
What a nightmare such a simple seal can cause.



I carried on by testing all the tiny indication & gauge illumination lamps in the loom with my multi meter and found 11 blown yes ELEVEN. How can you let a car get into this state of disrepair?! Fortunately a rummage in my shed resulted in finding 7 and I popped out and bought the remaining 4.
Fitting the lamps into the back of the blower controls was another fiddly job, they have a tiny flat on the holder and it needs to be aligned to fit it in all the way home.
The “fasten seat belts” lamp went in next and the rest of the wires on the heater control were reconnected.
Lastly this evening I dropped the fuse box and disconnected the power lead for the radio. Over the years the PO must have had a couple of radio replacements and the power lead had been cut and crimped 3 times between the fuse box spade and the radio so I plan on putting a new wire in without joins along with new speaker cables.
Just about to make up a new lead and my son arrived so we went out this evening for 2 hours driving lessons.

[Darren C]

Progress was reasonable today with the new cabling made up and installed for the radio including new speaker wires. While the fuse box was dropped I sorted out a few potential problems in there and replaced a few cables that had been cut and re joined some time in the past.
I then installed the Blaupunkt radio in the dash, made a bracket for the rear and wired it up.
Looks superb!
Next I started on the steering column that I’d removed previously. Stripping it all down I cleaned off the flaky paint from the universal joints, cleaned them all up and repainted them satin black.
The intermediate shaft got a good clean and all the gunk & sand cleaned from the splines and a finish with waxoil.
The wiper & indicator stalks were removed dismantled and cleaned. The washer jet valve had the pipe tails snapped clean off it. Strange as the perished old rubber hoses were stuffed up behind the dash but didn’t contain the missing pipe tails off the valve?
Anyway this afternoon I tracked one down from VW Heritage so ordered a replacement.
Finally I cleaned all the column housing and fixings ready to go back in tomorrow after the paint dries.

[914 KEV]

Not sure what you mean about taking the heater controls out the wrong way? I undid the bowden cables under the bonnet on the two levers on the drivers side and pulled out the control unit from the dash and undid the single top lever cable. The controls came out easily with two cables on them and one left in the car (the one under the blower box that you cant get at the clip with it in situ).

What a nightmare you had with the new aftermarket rubber seal for the later 914s that had the plastic grill attached to the top.
By the way even when re-using the factory seal it can be hard as the seal is easierly dislodged off the blower top edge.

This is the way I re-fit the hot and cold air control unit and cold air blower:
The heater and cold air control lever assembly with all cables connected is fitted into the dash after the dash has been fitted into the 914 and before the cold air blower is fitted into the car.
Once the lever assembly is fitted and mounted the cold air blower then goes in.
Before the cold air blow is fully pushed in and up between the mounting securing plates there is enough room to connect the cable through the securing clamp when the control lever is in the off position.
The outer sleeve securing clip is then pushed on and then the cold air blower can then be pushed fully back and up starting with the rear edge first and once in place bring the front edge up.
After the two mounting screws are attached the cable clamp can be loosened and the cable adjusted for correct closing and opening operation.

[Darren C]

Thanks Kev.

Today I continued with the dashboard installation.
I glued in the 3 pieces of carpet under the dash this morning before work. The right hand one has the hole for the steering column to pass through so needs to be installed first.
It was a manic day at work with the start of some big projects so I never got a chance for lunch today or chasing 914 parts.
After work I cleaned up the socket headed bolts that hold the steering column in and lightly greased the Universal joints and splines.
The paint had dried overnight so I fitted the steering column. I found it was easier to fit the Top UJ and shaft to the column and slide the lower UJ onto the rack, feed the assembly through the dash hole and locate the shaft into the lower UJ before fitting the 4 socket head screws.
I used two small fox wedges to very slightly open the clamp on the lower UJ and the shaft slid in easily. Once the column was bolted under the dash I slid the lower UJ to align the recess for the cross bolts, fitted both bolts and removed the fox wedge and nipped up the bolts. Job done.


Finally I fitted the wiring plug to the rear of the ignition lock and made sure the loom sat comfortably without tension. Once the new washer jet valve arrives I can assemble the stalks and refit them.

[Darren C]

This morning I finished working on the gauges. All lamp holes/tubes were internally cleaned and the protruding lamp holders re covered with heat shrink as some of the old covers were very loose and fallen off.
During lunchtime I called in at the trimmers and picked up the roll bar trim that I’d had to use filler on to sort out the multiple splits. I was pleasantly surprised how well its come out. They used a very thin pliable vinyl and heat gun to form it around the old part and unless you look really, really hard you’d be hard pushed to see its been recovered. With this part in full view with the roof off it needs to look good!
This evening when I got home I fitted the 3 large gauges and new powdercoated panel (with home made screws) into the dash.
Starting with the Speedo I carefully fitted all the lamps and connections including the Speedo cable and the odometer trip cable that I found disconnected? Fortunately once located back into the speedo and underside of the dash it worked a treat so I was happy that another fault was resolved.
The Tacho was next using the gauge hole to the left to work through. It was a puzzle getting it into the dash, but after figuring out you cant do it with the rubber grommet fitted to the gauge, it went in much easier.
Finally the combination gauge went in. Along the way I had to un-plat and de knot the loom so it sat nicely, which had mysteriously got itself tangled when the dash was out?
It took me a couple of hours as I was extra careful not to rest or knock the freshly painted gauge bezels during sorting out the wires and connecting up.
Next I moved into the shed and continued to clean up the indicator & wiper stalks cleaning all the contacts I could get at. Finishing off with my multi meter and with the Haynes wiring diagram I tested all the terminals where the plugs fit in each stalk position to make sure I’d got good continuity. The wiper connection in the haynes showed 5 cables, the plug on the car loom has 5 female spades but the wiper stalk connection has locating holes for 5 male spades but only 4 fitted? A quick call to Kev confirmed that there is indeed a spare wire in the plug. Thanks Kev you are mind of 914 information.
This confused me a little as when I took the column out the PO had disconnected the wiper plug and tucked it back up under the dash to stop it hanging down? No idea why? Certainly the wipers wouldn’t have worked, but I don’t yet know why. The mechanism was very tight before I removed all the sand and clean it up, so maybe that’s it. In Desert Hot Spring where the car came from google says it barely rains so maybe it seized with lack of use and got disconnected as the wipers were rarely needed. Who knows? I’ll be sure to find out once the battery goes back on.
For now I’m waiting for the new washer valve to turn up (due tomorrow) before I can refit the stalks and give it a try.

On another note, I’ve been working EVERY day on the 914 this year so tomorrow I’m taking a few days off. In between all the stuff I do, I also organise car club events and its that time of year again when I organise the BBC Children in Need Carfest club stand, so I’m off to Carfest North to set up for the show on Thursday morning. I'm on target this year for exceeding £3500 to Children in Need so it's certainly a worthy event.
If anyone on here is going, please call in and say hello on the Delorean stand (located near the Start Line of Oulton Park Circuit).
If the washer valve arrives tomorrow I’ll more than likely fit it just so I can solve the wiper mystery!

[Darren C]

Just a short post between packing for Carfest.
Picked up the lower dash roll at lunchtime from the trimmers at lunch. They called me to say they’d had a problem and could I come and take a look. During trimming they’d burnt the vinyl while trying to stretch it so had to take it all off to start again. Unfortunately the glue had stuck well and they’d accidentally torn off several section of the old vinyl & foam in a few places so I need to refill it all again for them to have another go.
When I got home this evening the washer valve had arrived, so I unpacked it and found it wasn’t made that well with lots of sharp plastic flashing on the hose tails that would potentially split the rubber tubes, so spent the next half an hour with a swiss file dressing it. Finally this evening I fitted the valve and stalks back into the column and sorted out the lay of the tubes and cable neatly behind the dash. What a game it was trying to fit the new rubber tubes, even after soaking in boiling water I could only get them on an inch, they were so tight. To be safe I put a couple of miniature cable ties around them to stop them blowing off. (But I’d be very surprised if they move at all as they were so, so tight on there).
I’ll post again after the weekend; I’m sure to get 914 withdrawal symptoms while at Carfest.

[nrc914]

Really impressive how you manage to not only find time to work on the car (and others) each day but also to write up about it Darren. Enjoy Carfest but please come back soon as the withdrawal symptoms are starting to kick in!

Regards