Restoring my first 914

[LMR]

I love the look of carbs. For a true retro look, keep the carbs as throttle bodies when you get the injection sorted. With your machining skills, I cannot image it will take you that long!!

[911hillclimber]

That looks really nice, well worth the effort imho!
Coming together, running again soon.

[Tosh]

awesome

[Mr Pharmacist]

Darren, start making these for other people (mainly me ).

And no excuses - you've got plenty free time on your hands

[Tosh]

He will have once the son passes his driving test

[Darren C]

Nice try guys!

I kinda get the feeling that once my son passes his test they’ll be another car to repair, maintain and restore. (We’re already looking at new Traveller fitted carpet sets for Christmas) Besides, I’ve shown in pictures how to make these bits so you’ve got no excuses for not making your own.

Anyway, today I chased up the wheels, they’ve had them almost a week now and have been too busy to start until Wednesday this week. Fingers crossed they might be ready to take to the polishers by Friday. With the engine running, and most bits done I’m itching to get it down for a MOT.

This lunchtime I ordered up a couple of metres of small metal tube to make the vacuum pipe with.
When I got home this evening I did a little housekeeping in the engine bay and noticed an open tube from the tinware on the drivers side forward of the inlet manifold. I think this is the old warm air take off for the induction. With the twin carbs it isn’t really required so I turned down a spare bit of stainless bar on my lathe and plugged the hole so that any air wouldn’t escape into the engine compartment and instead be redirected over the cylinders.
I also had a tinker with the spring tension on the newly made throttle assembly. I’d made a spring anchor with a threaded end which fits in either of the 4 bearing housing mounting bolt holes. By moving it left or right by a hole, I can adjust the coil spring tension and ultimately the accelerator pedal feel/resistance.
The throttle arms fitted directly on the carbs have their own return coil springs and with the new assembly “safety” spring installed the resistance (when set as I found on the FI) was overall greater than stock as your pressing against two carb springs in addition to the FI springs. Since I cannot safely remove the two carb springs (which is not recommended) I took the Safety spring anchor off tonight and set the tension less by moving it back to another hole. This worked a treat and the pedal feel is much nicer than before.
It’s these little tweaks that I need to make and find over the first few months of usage until I get everything to my liking, fluid and just so!

[914 KEV]

I love it! As you used the 2.0 mounting position for the throttle cable and reused the attachment there is no modification required to the throttle cable routing of cable. I noticed you chose a cable mounting hole over the slot on the original.
The straight return spring you didn’t like you have added! Simple, it works! Even though you said “the stretch spring really does look like bodge it and scarper engineering in comparison. ” (to the coiled spring)

When I got home this evening I did a little housekeeping in the engine bay and noticed an open tube from the tin-ware on the drivers side forward of the inlet manifold. I think this is the old warm air take off for the induction. With the twin carbs it isn’t really required so I turned down a spare bit of stainless bar on my lathe and plugged the hole so that any air wouldn’t escape into the engine compartment and instead be redirected over the cylinders.

The hot air induction you mention on the left side tin-ware had me puzzled as the 2.0 didn’t have hot air induction to the manifold or air intake. The 1.7 did for one model only, the ’72.

Your photos show a hose to the head breather connection and the heater booster connection so I'm a bit confused to where you mean on the tin-ware for cylinders 2 and 1.
Then the penny dropped, this connection is not used and originally had a plastic cap blocking it off.

[Darren C]

Thanks for the kind words Kev,

I’ll turn you to the “dark side” of carb conversions yet!

I chose the hole over the slot (on the cable mount) as to be fair if you need to take the cable off even with the original slot, you need to put a spanner on it, so why make it a slot and risk splaying or poor grip when you might as well have a secure hole for the sake of winding a nut 3 more threads off? I'm glad you appreciate the effort I put in to keep the original throttle cable routing through the car; its normally a bad compromise to route the cable elsewhere when using aftermarket carb linkages, and the cause of many stiff pedal & jamming issues. Cutting or shortening the cables also causes grief in the long run. The logical thing is to always keep it simple.
I did get a paranoid attack of spring failure on the bodge it & scarper spring and drilled two tiny holes to refit it. To be fair I still don’t like the “afterthought” look of the spring and it was just OCD (and two sleepless nights of worry) that got it fitted back on.
The hole I plugged was this one….



Is there an original cap available for this then? I didn’t even think to look in the PET.

Anyway moving on to today, with blustery rain and wind I’ve kept indoors today. I took the engine lid out of storage in my attic and started to re-assemble it as I’ll soon be ready to put it back on the car.
First I fitted the two new rubber bump stops to the hinges, followed by the cleaned and refurbished spring rods that hold the lid open under hinge tension. The small plastic clip and screw were cleaned within an inch of its life and fitted back on.
Next I used my Swedish punch set to make the holes in the new rubber T seal for the engine lid grill (that I’d previously fitted the Porsche script too). I then fitted the grill using the cleaned up captive rubber coated washers with a tiny bit of caulking applied to the rear to seal the hole in the engine lid and hopefully prevent any future corrosion due to held water under the washers.
Finally I fitted the new genuine Porsche U trim along the outside edges. I tried alternative suppliers but found only the genuine Porsche seal is the exact size U, nothing else seemed to come close.



Tomorrow I plan on getting the water tray out of storage and sorting out the fixings to complete the lid rebuild.

[Darren C]

Today I picked up a few stainless fixings and this evening I fitted the refurbished water tray to the inside of the engine lid. I discovered why the tray was cracked when I got the car. There should be two bushes in between the tray and the two outer M6 securing bolts. Without them the bolt pulls the tray into the metal pressing and cracks it. I’d repaired the tray and only when looking at the PET last night for the M6 bolt lengths did I see the Bushes. These were missing from my car. I can only guess that when the Muppets who carried out the awful respray, back in the past, took the tray off, lost the bushes and bolted it back on pulling up the bolts tight and cracking the water tray.
Anyway, suffice to say I’ve made new ones this evening and bolted on the repaired tray without issue.



The grille I fitted last night with the rubber T seal was causing me some concern. The last and first inch of the seal has to have the bottom return lip cut off to clear the lid pressing. This means with a 914rubber seal (unlike a more rigid plastic original seal) it seems to just flap around as its too flexible. Last night I masked it up, after posting on here, and injected a tiny amount of Tigerseal between grill and lid at each end of the seal and stuck it back in. With a small bit of masking tape to hold it in place I left it to dry until today.
With the tape removed it was held perfectly in place with no Tigerbond visible. No more flapping about and hanging out.

[914 KEV]

Is there an original cap available for this then? I didn’t even think to look in the PET.

Yes it’s on the PET, part number 039 119 991 but it has been discontinued some time ago.



Looking good except for one thing that looks so wrong! It stands out like a sore thumb!

The speed nuts that hold the letters on are not correct for the 914, they should be black plastic.
The part number the PET gives isn’t right. As these letters are also found on the engine lid of 911 and 912 and attach through holes in the lid skin they used the sealing type from ’69. The 914 grill letters never used this type during production.
I've seen this type hold the grill in place on the early cars, before they were changed to the plastic covered type.
The style of the plastic covered speed nuts have changed over the years from dome shaped hard plastic to flat rubbery plastic.
Also from around the '74 model year the PORSCHE letters changed from metal to plastic and when you washed the 914 and brushed the sponge over the plastic letters, they had a tendency to break!

Well done for spotting the spacing bush.
Many drip trays from ‘73 are missing the spacing bushes above as they fall off when the drip tray is removed; always good to study an exploded diagram to see how it should be.

[Darren C]

Thanks Kev,

The letters and securing nuts came direct from a main Porsche dealer! I suppose if the PET is wrong then we both didn’t stand a chance!
To be fair the flash of the camera does bounce off the nuts through the mesh and in reality you can’t really see them.

At lunchtime I checked in on the wheels. They’d promised to start them yesterday so I thought I’d see how things were going. Unfortunately slow….they hadn’t begun yet!
Hey ho just have to wait another week. Bloomin annoying as I have just sorted out changing my insurance from “layed up” to fully comp ready to take it for MOT.
I was very pleased with the yearly insurance premium….£42.50p per YEAR on my multicar 10 car + policy.
Today the fine pipe turned up in the post for the vacuum advance tube I plan to make.
This evening I spent a good few hours with some fine gas welding rods to bend up a “pipe wire” the guide I plan to use for bending the pipe. I tried a few options before coming up with what I think is the neatest route where the pipe can be clipped easily at even spaces and doesn’t offend the eye or obstruct anything in the engine bay.
For the sake of a good vacuum advance/retard curve I’ve retained the original distributor. Most people foolishly swap them out (with all good intention) to a centrifugal type. These are ok to a point but never match the original advance curve exactly and can cause issues at certain revs with timing. With my twin carb modification the Webers that I’ve used have vacuum ports. The key here is to use BOTH carbs vacuum ports linked in one pipe to stop “pulsation” that sometimes occurs when your only running a vacuum advance from one bank of cylinders in a Boxer engine.
With the pipe wires made up tonight I hope to start bending my new pipe tomorrow.

[Darren C]

Today was another manic Friday. I did however manage to get a blanking disc made to fit in the centre of the alloy wheels (about 77mm diameter) to help the metal polishers keep on track.
I also started to bend the new vacuum advance pipe to match the wire I’d bent last night. I need to check & double check one end of the wire for the driverside as the welding rod I used was too short for the complete length (it exceeds 1m between carbs). I started to venture out of my shed and over to the garage tonight just after 9pm and had second thoughts due to the drop in temperature; so I’ll have a go in the morning when the sun comes up!

[Bruce M]

Good to hear you are keeping the vacuum advance. Are you using any check valves or restriction in the 'balance' pipe work?

[Darren C]

Today I spent most of the day traveling up to Mansfield Notts to go pick up a new “wonder bus” to replace my Volvo V70. Problem is I still have the V70 (haven’t even begun to think about selling it yet) But all that’s for another thread on another forum. Suffice to say I was driving for a good 9 hours today, so 914 progress was limited to an hour this evening bending pipe and sorting out some nice stainless rubber lined P clips to hold it in place.
As for placing check valves Bruce in the vacuum advance pipe; its best left unrestricted (unlike a brake servo where you need a bleed).

[rhd racer]

You should have said you were coming up to these parts Darren, you could have popped in for a brew as am only 20 miles or so from Mansfield.....