Restoring my first 914

[Darren C]

This morning I gave the door cards another clean and got the door damp proof membranes (or what was left of them out of storage)
One was reasonably intact but the other was shredded and half missing. The only option was to make new ones.
At lunch today I hunted down some new plastic sheet to make the door membranes. One little tip I’ll share from having been down this route many times is that VW & Porsche membranes have a “flap” that is heat welded onto the membrane which allows the water/moisture to run into the door and not out between the bottom of the door card and door. The membrane is a particular type of plastic and my top tip is to use the plastic off a new mattress (that has the ends heat welded). At lunchtime I called in at the local Bed Store and asked the manager for some mattress plastic. When they deliver beds they usually take it away for the customers so to them it’s just waste back at the store and they’re glad to give it you!
This evening using the best remaining membrane I marked out two replacements and cut them out.



The holes for the window winder spindle were punched out and two strips about 8” wide cut from the spare plastic to make the flaps.
The trickiest bit next is to heat weld them onto the full size membrane. From the look of the originals this was done by passing it through two heated metal wheels. Now I could have made a jig/tool to fit on the end of my soldering iron, but having done this before the quickest and easiest way is to use the soldering iron bare.
Heating it up fully I used some scraps of new plastic to trial the pressure and speed of drawing the soldering iron over the plastic. Not too slow to melt clean through and not to fast to just melt one sheet and have no joint. A small allowance to slow as you draw is required as the iron cools with prolonged contact.
With a metal sheet laid flat on my bench and some trial scraps I perfected the plastic weld before moving onto the new door membrane.
The flaps were neatly welded on giving about a 40mm overhang along the bottom as per the original.



Finally I trimmed off the ends to finish the new membranes



It’s also worth pointing out that the welded on flap sits against the door card and the full sheet sits into the door bottom so that any water doesn’t get trapped in the horizontal weld and run to the sides and wet the door card.

[Bewildebeest]

I'm speechless.

[911hillclimber]

Me too!

I did my 911's that way (with the flap) but NEVER had the thought of asking for discarded heavy plastic sheeting from a bed store.

Brilliant, bought a smile to my face this morning. This is why this thread is so good and entertaining. Lessons for us DIY enthusiasts with very limited cheque books.

[glovebox]

Darren, so this is why you don't sleep !??? It's not that you don't have the time !! It's cause you don't have any mattresses left in your house??? )))

[Darren C]

Thanks guy’s…
Glovebox, I have no matresses, just plenty of plastic from their covers


Today before work I painted the rear of the door cards with the same wood hardener as I had done the rear bulkhead trim before it was recovered to add strength. With the door cards it not only adds some strength but also seals the hardboard which makes it far less prone to soaking up water, blowing and falling apart.
I placed the door cards to dry in the conservatory and left for work.
I had some good news today…my windscreen is in at Porsche Centre.
The plan is to go pick it up on Thursday with a suitable large van as it’s in a crate.
This evening after work I started on the interior door furniture. I’d put the parts into storage straight from stripping down and they are in a bit of a state.
I began by taking apart the drivers door pocket, lid, and frame. I took everything apart and gave it a good scrub with Cif and hot water. The pocket/cubby has a flock finish on the inside on top of the pressed cardboard base. This was absolutely shot, scratched and worn mostly off and covered with years of grime, sticky stuff and sand. The only solution was to strip off the remaining flock with a detail wire brush.



While the card base was slightly damp from washing I clamped the lower edge in the vice between 2 bits of timber to “press” it back into shape before leaving it to dry.
The top hinged armrest lid and frame were next to get a Cif scrub, followed by the passenger side armrest.
With everything left to dry I cleaned up all the screws, bolts and cup washers that hold it all together with a brass wire brush before running out of light.
Having a rummage in one of my sheds I found an old flocking kit that I’d got left over from another cars restoration, so tomorrow I’ll re do the inside of the drivers door cubby and hopefully get everything sorted for a door interior rebuild at the weekend.

[Darren C]

This morning I coated the inside of the cubby with the flock paint/adhesive and then sprayed on the static charged nylon fibres which stand upright in the adhesive to create a new flock coating.



With the camera flash you can see the fibres more clearly.



The process takes a good few hours to dry, which was ideal as I then left for work.

I’d had a card through the door yesterday evening to say I had a parcel with customs charge to pay at the Depot in Segensworth. Living near Chichester this is quite a way away and a real pain to collect so I raced over from work this evening to pick it up.
Good timing, it was a replacement Right hand door pull/armrest with a perfect plastic cover surround for the top mounting bolt. My original has the cover completely missing so you see the metal tab and bolt. Unfortunately you can’t buy just the oval plastic cover as it comes as part of the armrest! I’d tracked one down on US ebay which claimed to be in perfect condition and also managed to get a good price on a multiple purchase of an excellent RH speaker grille too. (Thanks Ron if you read this)
As always I had a hefty customs charge of £40 to pay which really does annoy me, but hey, no one likes the taxman.
Anyhow I was late getting back home tonight fighting the rush hour traffic for almost 20 miles to find yet another card on the doormat!
Same Parcel Force Depot, different parcel.
Why oh why didn’t they tell me there was another parcel waiting for me when I had just picked up the first one? I phoned and went through all the options and 30 minutes later they took me off hold. After paying the second customs charge I asked the guy if they put all parcels with the same postcode in the same place in their depot (I thought this would be logical considering they must load up the vans by route or area). “Yes” he said, so I asked then if I had two parcels waiting and came in with one card would there be a system to flag up I had two parcels when they processed the first one? “No” was the reply.
Call me old fashioned but I think this is just plain stupid. So the net result is I have to drive all the way back to Segensworth tomorrow to pick up the second parcel that was sat right next to the first one today! The won’t deliver it to my home as it’s a customs charge parcel and I’ll be at work and it needs a signature. They won’t re direct it to my work address as it’s a customs charge parcel that can only go to the address on the label. So as well as paying for postage and then £90 for customs I have to drive 70 miles to collect both parcels! “Good olde Royal Mail, the envy of the modern world”

Rant over I took my frustration out by scrubbing the new parts within an inch of their lives with Cif and cleaning up the 3 metal fixing tabs on the armrest with a detail wire brush before painting them to prevent rusting in future.

[Darren C]

This morning the flock had dried completely so I re-assembled the door cubby before leaving for work.



At lunchtime the Windscreen arrived from Porsche Centre, hooray! The plans to put it in this weekend.
This evening I raced over to the Parcelforce Depot again to collect the Auto Atlanta speaker grilles. Opening the box this evening I found the RH one broken and both were of really, really poor quality (absolute tat) so I’m not at all pleased with these reproductions and now I’m going to have to send them back for a refund.
To take my mind off it, I retired to the garage and fitted the door damp membranes I’d made earlier before running out of daylight.
Carefully checking everything inside the door was tight, I used caulking rolled into a thin strip to attach the plastic. In this way they can be removed numerous times and resealed if I ever need to get back inside the doors. The caulking is like a very sticky Blu-tack so is great for this purpose.

[Darren C]

Today I had a days holiday booked off from work and to be sure I didn’t waste it I was up a 4:30am and straight down one of my other garages to load up one of my other cars for Goodwood Revival.
I was 3rd car in the tax free car park this morning at 5:45 am!
I sat on my fold up chair and watched the carpark fill up with 100’s of beautiful classics as the sun rose and the morning broke into a glorious day.
By 7:30am the gates opened and I filled up my senses with everything automotive and a good few lungs full of methanol.
Meeting friends old and new, the rich and famous and a few old TV show pals, the day flew by.
In the carpark was a solitary yellow 914. I was taking a good look over it when an American guy asked me if it was mine. “Sorry No” I replied. “Oh" he said, "I have one of these in my ga raaasshhh back home in Texas” I smiled and said “me too”. Just then a German chap came over to us as we were talking and asked if the car belonged to either of us. Turns out he had a 914 too back in Germany being restored.
Funny how a single 914 among 100’s of cars at that moment drew three 914 owners to it.
It was a very nice condition yellow M reg car, recently imported, sorted out and up for sale oiro £25K, and to be fair I could only see a few very, very tiny things that you’d want to sort out. (windscreen trim surround lifted in one corner….that sort of tiny stuff) The car body and trim wise looked superb.
Anyway after 12 hours at Goodwood I sped home, washed and put the car away and started on the 914.
With the door damp membranes on, I fitted both door cards that I’d scrubbed and cleaned numerous times to bring them back to life, and the armrest and cubby on the drivers door. Winder handle and door handle escutcheon to finish off. (Kev you'll be glad to see the armrest screw plugs, that are a pet hate of yours when missing )



On the passenger door panel I fitted the very nice condition pull handle I got from Ron on US ebay, winder and escutcheon. The lower false cubby that came off my car is broken around the 3 fixing holes at the base so for now I’m deliberating on a repair or trying to find a good replacement (albeit the searching hasn’t shown any good ones up to now)



(Kev, I even lined up each winder handle perfectly with each other when the windows are tight up. )

With the door cards on it’s almost done now interior wise, just got to sort out those speaker covers. I currently have 2 broken ones off my car, 2 really bad quality (1 broken) Auto Atlanta ones and a single presentable RH one I got from Ron on US ebay. I also have just had a PM on a lead for more, so hopefully it will sort itself out. I’ve already bought some new 4” speakers to go behind them to compliment the Blaupunkt, so itching to get the job done now!

[Darren C]

Forgot to add....The guy's from Stuttgart Porsche Classic department had a big repro garage at the Revival. I spoke for about an hour and pretty much convinced them to invest in remaking and selling more 914 parts through Porsche Centres. They were toying with the idea of doing more 914 parts as their 356 parts sales are booming and they are looking at the next few markets. The guy actually asked "me" what parts I thought they should start with....
Top of the list was Dashtops followed by brake discs, ali roll bar trims, interior rollbar trim and knee rolls, speaker grilles and a few other bits and bobs I could think of when put on the spot.
Top tip guys....Straight from Stuttgart.....
All remaining Porsche 914 stock, hasn't had a price review in 10 years, so try them first for availability. ie my windscreen from Pilkington direct was £550, from Porsche Centre with the Porsche P in a V genuine logo was £275

The chap also said they were uming and ahhring over doing more 914 parts but the fact of the matter was that very few people are buying 914 parts from their Porsche centres.

[jackstowers]

Porsche Classic please may we have Interior lights, rear lights, fog light grills, valances front and rear, horn push, all rubbers, long ht caps, rear caliper adjusters, m7 caliper bolts, cv joints and everything else!!

[Darren C]

Cheers David, I think a letter to Stuttgart Santa is required..

Today I made good progress and after all the preparation and pain I finally got the screen in.



With the weather being hot again this afternoon it was ideal to warm everything through and help the Butyl ribbon become more workable. The screen went in a treat and sat neatly on the packing pieces to hold it central in the aperture. After a couple of hours of massage in the heat of the sun I got it sitting nicely down with the butyl compressed to give a wide adhesion and room for the ali trim.
The next thing to do was to mask up the paintwork around the screen to avoid any accidental damage when fitting the surround trim. I then used a small modellers brush to paint the body surround with waxoil under where the trim fits. This in combination with the caulking I put around the plastic clips should stop/restrict any rust forming where water sits. Starting with the lower piece first I carefully fitted the two corners to it and slipped them fully on each end. Having measured and marked the centre I carefully clipped it down working outwards to each corner. When reaching the corner before the final clip, the corner joiner piece was then adjusted to suit the aperture. Lastly before clipping the trim into the last lower clips I slid in the two remaining parts of the surround trim into the lower corners and set how far they slid in (the height) with the top of the aperture. The top link cover piece was slid onto one of the side trims and then the lower corners clipped in and working up the pillar I carefully clipped the rest of the trims in place. The top centre link piece was slid out onto the other trim and set 50/50 in the middle of the car before clipping the surround into the last clips. The masking tape was then carefully removed.



All that was left to do was fit the recently refurbished rear view mirror. I’d purchased a genuine stick pad from Porsche on the 914 part number so carefully fitted it to the mirror. The adhesive on these sticks better when warmed up, so I left it on the black granite worktop in my conservatory this morning so that it was warmed right through before applying the sticky pad. I used masking tape on the outside of the screen to mark the mirror position (measured from my old screen) and cleaned the inside of the glass thoroughly.
The sky had clouded over by now so I needed to warm the windscreen to aid the mirror to stick well, so pushed the car back into the garage which was like a small oven after having sun on the roof most of the day. Since there is no power in the garage I couldn’t warm up the screen easily so had to think of another method.


This did the trick and after 10 minutes the glass was toasty warm, so I fitted the mirror firmly and left the heat to do it’s magic while the bottle cools overnight.

Kev, you were right again, the bloomin screen does appear to be dished in right where the mirror fits!

[Mr Pharmacist]

Genius!

[Darren C]

Cheers Stuart

This morning my son was due over at 9:30 for more driving lessons so I started very early on the 914. With the screen in, I was itching to fit the wipers, I’d bought new Bosch blades but had yet to sort the arms out. Being a Desert car I can truly say the wiper arms looked like they’d been half sand blasted. They were completely peppered on the underside (facing down to the scuttle) and lightly peppered over the rest of the arm. The only thing to do was to strip off completely the remaining black paint. I did this with numerous coats of paint stripper and a wire detail brush in between until every last bit was off. Next the arms were red scotchbrited to clean them up and key the surface.





With the sun out this morning I hung them from the washing line and gave them a good few light coats of etch primer, and left them to dry until tomorrow.
My son arrived and we spent most of the day out driving in the Traveller before calling into Maccy D’s for a bite to eat mid afternoon. All went well except a real pain in the ass late 50’s checkout lady at Tesco who refused to let my son fill the car up at the petrol pump as she thought he looked under 16. A very heated and loud argument followed as I was NOT impressed. He was driving a car on L plates, yet she wanted proof he was over 16 to use the petrol pump. It’s not as if he’d walked in off the street with a can. He’d left his wallet at home so I showed her the log book in his name and his certificate of insurance to drive the car as a learner. Because neither had his date of birth she refused to accept them, even though I maintained he needed to be 17 to drive and have this insurance. I did cause a bit of a scene I admit; but god help us, why can’t common sense prevail! She totally refused to authorise the petrol pump so I called her a few choice names and left in a huff, while others in the queue witnessing the charade had a go at her on my behalf.
Anyway we got home and both took out our frustration with some T-cut on the Traveller. The deal is; for every lesson, we T-cut a panel on the car so hopefully by the time he’s ready for the test the car will look very nice indeed.
This evening I started again on the 914. I’m sort of resigned to having to make good speaker covers out of the collection of damaged ones I have, so started by stripping my old ones down.
The speakers (which I hope someone can tell me if they are original or dealer fit?) say made in Japan and were held in with 4 small bolts in each corner of a multi-ply card mounting plate. The card plates were all flimsy and the black tissue type speaker paper on the outer side was holed and rotten. I decided to drill out the rivets holding the old speakers so I could use the ply card as a template to make new ones.


This is where it gets quite interesting…..
The ply card plate looks professionally made and mass produced. The rivets are pan head so need a machine to install. The card is die cut and again needs a machine to manufacture like this.
When the rivets were out the ply card pieces came apart to reveal this…



Printed card from some old Children’s game set, possibly to teach Japanese children English? The manufacturer must have recycled old toy box card to make the 914 speaker mounts!
Suffice to say I plan on making a much better mounting plate over the next few days to hold my new speakers in place.

[Darren C]

This morning the etch primer was well and truly dry on the wiper arms so I gave them a couple of coats of satin black and hung them back up in my conservatory and left for work.
At lunchtime I had to go over to the local Volvo dealer and pick up a new ETM for my V70 which failed on me on Saturday morning. I also got the steering wheel for the 914 back, but on close inspection the trimmers hadn’t done a very neat job on the stitching so I rejected it and asked them politely to do it again. I’m getting quite frustrated with trimmers. This was a different one from the knee roll guys and came highly recommended. Unfortunately it looks like an 11 year old stitched it up in their first attempt at needlework. If Jeremy Beadle was still doing his show I may have thought it was a wind up. A real pain as they’d had it for a couple of months and its not easy moving the car in and out of the garage and over to one side or another to work on it without a steering wheel. Anyway I’ve made my thoughts known and given them an opportunity to do it right so let’s see what happens.
Anyway after getting home tonight I changed the ETM on the V70 which took 2 minutes to unbolt then 1 hour to get the wiring lead free! The lead runs behind the starter motor but the multi plug on the end is too big to fit around the starter so you have to remove the bloomin starter motor to pull the lead free. Great engineering that is!
As it started to get dark I managed to fit the new blades to the 914 wiper arms then fit the arms to the car. I was puzzled again about the wiper positioning and having purchased genuine Bosch blades I wasn’t happy how the drivers side sat on the screen. The blade didn’t follow the curvature of the glass at its end (near the chassis plate) it stuck out in mid air. After speaking with Kev, it was apparent that the new Bosch blades have evolved over the years to better suit the modern flat screens and therefore don’t bend as much as they used to. In comparison with some blades on my other cars I have from the 70’s the new blades are more “chunky” in comparison to older designs and pivot & flex less. Despite my best efforts, the only way to get the tip to sit better on the 914 screen is to bend the end pivoting section of the new Bosch arms to a slightly greater arc so that it allows the rubber blade to sit closer to the glass.
Using the Haynes manual guide I set the two blades (post 71 year car) to as close as I could to the recommended 20mm gap before it got too dark to see.
Moving into my workshop I started on the passenger false door cubby repair. I used a strip of 1mm stainless steel about 300mm long folded to an angle about 10mm x 15mm. This was placed inside the base of the damaged cubby from the inside and the screw holes marked on it. Removed and drilled with 3 x 6mm holes, I de-burred and roughed up the surface with 80 grit on both the angle and rear of the plastic cubby. Using polyurethane panel adhesive I bonded the angle onto the back of the cubby to give it strength across the base where the screws pass through and also bridge the gap where the broken and missing piece went around the end hole. The cubby was then clamped in my vice and mole gripped with protective packing pieces at each end and left to dry for the morning.

[Mr Pharmacist]

If you'd like to borrow a steering wheel to help move your car about let me know!