Restoring my first 914

[Darren C]

Today I picked my son up early doors and we had a few hours driving lessons in the Traveller before finishing at noon by taking it to a local Classic car show at Chichester College.
The weather was glorious and 3 Porsche turned up amongst the many cars, 2 x 911SC’s and a 924 turbo, no old school unfortunately so we got our fix looking at some early VW’s.
Mid afternoon we returned home and flatted and polished the orange peel and cellulose fade from the front wing of the traveller (as per our agreement; 1 lesson = 1 panel to make good)
With a gorgeous summer evening at hand I took the Delorean out to blow off some cobwebs and drove my son back to his mums.
Getting back home I started by cleaning under a wheel arch of the 914.
The PO (a one owner car from new) had had the car spray undersealed by Porsche when it was new. This is a black coating and is everywhere under the arches and over the floor pan. Good news to stop it from rusting when new, but a bit of a pain now 41 years later when some of it has flaked off.
There are sections where it falls off in flaky sheets to reveal nice shiny Alaska Blue paint underneath as they must have just sprayed it on without keying the surface.
I have a quandary now.
Do I spend the rest of my days scraping it off with a plastic scraper or do I remove the loose and re apply new all over?
My OCD would like to see mirror polished blue paint under the car, but if I do this I’d be too scared to use and enjoy the car. Since this was a dealer option do I just re coat it all (knowing that the shiny blue paint and good metal is underneath?)

Thoughts please….

Anyway after a couple of hours with my head inside a wheel arch, looking like I’d been down the pit, I called it a day, and swept up all the loose scrapings with a brush and pan.
As it started to get dark I moved the wheels closest to the garage door ready for loading up in the morning to get the tyres removed.
I thought I’d take a quick picture for the records of the California Desert Sun UV and age degraded tyres.



And in close up…



I’m gobsmacked that the shipping company pumped these up with air to load the car almost a year ago and NONE of them have gone down in that time.
Loading on the flat bed to take it to the paintshop made me flinch a little when the ratchet straps pulled down on them, but nothing….they just kept on holding air pressure.
Unfortunately I think the MOT man would have something to say if I kept them on the car. Even if I did like Anthony Hopkins did in “The worlds fastest Indian” and filled all the cracks with boot polish, I don’t think it’d be wise to drive on them.

[karmann]

I also have the same dilemma, to remove all the old underseal or just remove the flakey bits and recoat. t will be interesting to see what you end up doing, If it was a lot easier to remove it would be a no brainer.

[Darren C]

After a bit of research I found this:

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php? ... try1247057

It took this guy almost a whole YEAR to get all the original spray on black underbody guard off. Great result, mind numbingly boring and I could restore another car in that time. Trouble is, it does look very nice indeed.

[glovebox]

I would say if your sure that underneath the stonechip it's solid ? They why remove what's solid ? Only to stonechip it again ?? How about stonechip and the colour? I went this route plus a mat finish so it hides a bit of the texture through the colour:)

Just a thought
Best regards Mark.

[LMR]

Underseal - I feel your pain. I am "lucky" insofar as my car hasn't got the black underseal, but hasn't been on UK roads so isn't wildly rust, but does have evidence of rust spots. My dilemma is slightly different in I am torn as to weather do some touch in, or whilst the car is on the rotisserie, have the arches resprayed body colour. I am worried with the latter that, like you, I will be scared to use it. I have on my 964 cleaned the arches and applied clear waxoyl to the visible surfaces and dinatrol to the hidden ones.

I don't think there is a right or wrong answer to your dilemma, but body colour would show there is nothing to hide on the car (which clearly there isn't!)

[Darren C]

I think for now I will complete the wash, brush and clean under all arches and remove any loose flaky underseal while I make my mind up.
LMR if I had the shell on a rotisserie with engine out and suspension off I’d definitely take the opportunity to clean & re-spray the whole underside if only with waxoil if I wanted a well protected daily driver.

Today I took the wheels over to my local tyre fitters at lunchtime and got the tyres taken off. They tried to lecture me on how dangerous the tyres were to drive on! I had a bit of fun telling them I wanted to put them back on the car when my wheels had been refurbished so that I could keep the car original for concours purposes...the chaps face was a picture

I've also noticed that one of the gearbox drive shaft seals has started to weep (since draining and filling up the box with fresh oil, they were bone dry before?) I called Porsche Centre and ordered 2 new ones. I'll replace them while the wheels are off & away. Better to find the leaks now than after the cars back on the road. I'm sure in the first few months of it being used they'll be more things show themselves.

Tomorrow I plan to take the wheels down to my friend who runs a wheel refurbishment company to have the rear of the wheels cleaned up. The alloys are part polished then anodised which I intend to replicate but the rear of the wheels are a little scabby so need a bead blast to get a good finish before they can be re-anodised.

This evening I carried on cleaning the paintshop dust from the arches and underside of the car concentrating on the lower bulkhead where all the cables and pipes pass through. I’d previously cleaned and waxoiled this but it was covered in white dust. It also gave me a chance (now the cars reasonably high up on axle stands) to get a better fit on the recently replaced throttle cable ferrule to the tube on the car. I also tidied up the fuel return pipe as it hadn’t gone back in all the clips correctly.
I managed to get 2 hours cleaning in before my LED torch ran out of charge.

[Darren C]

Today I dropped the wheels off at the wheel specialists and had a long chat about cleaning up the rear of the wheel without touching the outside, or the inner rim inside the tyre.
This was a first for the company who have never had a customer who just wants the inside of a wheel cleaned up!
I left them in good hands and called in at the motor factors to pick ups some more waxoil on the way back to work.
This evening I spent 3 hours under the rear o/s wheel arch washing, scrubbing and cleaning all the dirt out of the ripple stone guard and suspension parts.
I took extra care to clean the inside of the return lip of the wheel arch itself to get every bit of muck out of there. After multiple buckets of water I started to make progress, which last night and early tonight was not in sight. LED torch all charged up I reached in and cleaned all the way behind the door slam panel, up to the base of the roll bar fin, down to the sill and right around to the rear lights. Sitting in a puddle of muddy water I was soaked through to my waist by the time I got to rinse and wipe it all with a clean cloth.
Finally I started to clean all the splashes off the trailing arm and the shock absorber. I’d placed a carrier bag over the brake disc so it stayed clean (after washing off the paintshop dust last night)
Desperate for a change of scene I started with a plastic scraper to get the underseal off the trailing arm. It looks like they were quite lazy when they applied it, and masked off the bare minimum (if anything at all). It is all over the trailing arm at the pivot mounting. Scraping it off gently revealed nice satin black paint underneath and a white “K” in a circle stamp that the guys on 914world rave about in the originality threads.
Having taken 3 hours tonight and a couple last night and seen how the underseal was sprayed right inside the arches all over everything and right up to the inside of the door latch panel; to strip it off completely would be a hell of a task.
With my head stuck inside the arch for 3 hours tonight I have decided to keep the coating on the car (after all it is original Porsche), remove the flaky bits, locally re-apply the missing bits and then black it all out with black waxoil. I will however clean it off all the bits it shouldn’t be on, like the suspension etc. I did consider the suggestion of painting body colour over it, but having done this in the past on other cars, it looks bad with stone chips and you can never guarantee its going to adhere or if the old coating flakes off underneath (or you’ve missed a loose bit during prep) it looks bad when it comes away and isn’t easy to touch up. Added to the fact Porsche never body colour painted over it on the 914 (as far as I’m aware), it was either undersealed or left smooth in body colour.
As you can see I’ve talked myself out of scraping it all off to appease my OCD!
Only 3 more arches to wash before I can start on the underseal repairs

[911hillclimber]

That reads like HARD WORK to me.
When I faced the same on my 73T 911 I removed the flaky sealant and locally de-rusted, red oxide smoothrite paint and stone chip in black over the top of it all in the summer of 1989.

Still there now with local stone chips touched up, but no winter running since it went back on the road in '90.

Why are you keeping the seen-side of the wheels as is?

[Biggles]

Hi Darren
have you thought about soda blasting? You can hire a machine for the day and should remove it. Haven't done it myself but heard great things about this method. Also it's non abrasive and makes no mess.
Chris

[Darren C]

Hi Chris,
Call me cynical but there is going to be a hell of a mess using Soda Blasting and it would not be possible to control so that only the underseal was removed and not any paint below.
Great idea though and ideal if I had the car stripped and on a rotisserie like LMR.
My car doesn’t warrant that process.
As for Hard work, well its only cleaning and removing the loose bits I’m doing, not the whole removal & clean up. No need for any primers or rust treatment oxide, fortunately as there’s no rust only shiny blue paint and solid steel beneath the underseal.
The wheels are going to be electrochemically stripped of the factory clear anodise, then carefully polished (in all the right places on their faces)before going back to have the clear anodise coating electroplated back on.
The wheel specialist is only cleaning the rear of the wheels because there are some tiny, tiny spots (like freckles) of corrosion in the factory anodise that the electroplate removal wont clean up. The polishers can’t do it either as it will give a too smooth finish on the rears. Gentle bead blasting will leave a more “factory” look and clear out the oxidisation to leave an even finish all over that can then be clear anodised at the end of the face polishing.

[Darren C]

“Underneath the arches
I dream my dreams away,
Underneath the arches
On cobble stones I lay,
Every night you'll find me
Tired out and worn,
Happy when the daylight comes creeping
Heralding the dawn.”


This morning an hour before dawn I started on the rear N/S arch and got the first scrub/wash complete before needing a bath and leaving for work.
At lunchtime I called in a Porsche Centre and collected the driveshaft oil seals ready for the weekend.
This evening after work I returned to the rear N/S arch to continue cleaning.
I managed to get another 3 hours in. I’m pretty knackered tonight having spent 5 hours under the same wheel arch and managing 8 hours at work!
Anyway its starting to look clean under there.
I’m still amazed by the condition of the bodywork on this 41 year old car. Having cleaned mud, dust, spiders webs, leaves, pine needles and lots of fine desert sand from the textured underseal there is no rust anywhere I can see.
Here’s a picture from inside the rear wheel arch looking outwards behind the arch return edge, had this been a European car it would have started to rust within months with such a thin coat of paint and missed completely with the underseal.



Looking down the arch to the bottom where it meets the sill, it’s absolutely solid here. Unbelievable when you think this is where all the mud and dirt collect on the horizontal ledge. Washing and cleaning it all out I couldn’t fault the car anywhere.



With the white primer showing through a dusting of blue paint and missed entirely with the underseal (due probably not being able to get in at the right angle to spray it) I will certainly get in there and make sure its coated with maximum black Waxoil to keep it from rusting in our UK climate.
Despite all the hard graft in getting it super clean before applying the waxoil, it’s certainly worth the effort when you’re working on an old car in this superb original condition.
Just the two front arches to clean now

[Darren C]

Today I have spent another 4 hours under a 914 wheel arch.
This time I’ve cleaned the N/S front.
Getting a bit tired with it now, but only one more to go!

[Darren C]

Today I finished washing the dirt off from under the last wheel arch (Front O/S tonight) Not much to report just a long hard slog this week but finally got there.

The plan tomorrow is to locally repair the flaked off underseal in all arches and while that dries I can get the gearbox driveshaft seals replaced.

[karmann]

Hi Darren, the speed at which this build is coming along is staggering!
What is the process that your using when cleaning under the arches?

[Helen]

Is the clear waxoil no longer available ?