914 2.0 > 3.0 GT Conversion

[defianty]

Thanks all, I appreciate the comments. This really is turning into a labour of love now but I'm still enjoying every moment. Racing against time now as I'm hoping to get to paint very early in the new year.

The list is getting shorter finally and I seem to actually be crossing more off of it than adding!

[Darren C]

Nice metalwork Stephen, enjoying the thread

[23e Heure]

Front end really is near done, great moves.

Put the heater on in the garage and keep going (wedding, what wedding )

[abzadams]

Put the heater on in the garage and keep going (wedding, what wedding )

What he says!

[hot66]

I’m impressed car is going to look great

[defianty]

Thanks James. And I hope so too.

[210bhp]

Very nice work Stephen. Great fabrication skills and lots of patient work.
Enjoying your write ups and photos.
Keep em coming.

Regards
Mike

[LouisCurtis]

Looking Great!!

[defianty]

Update time...

The floor wasn't in the best condition and as usual the further I dug the worse it got. The passenger rear corner was the worse and due to the accident was slightly crumpled. Initially I planned to cut this part out and repair but heaving pitting due to water ingress pushed me to replace half of the floor. So a new panel was ordered from Restoration Design.

Here's part of the floor showing some of the pitting.


This is the support piece that goes over the cross member that supports the gearbox I needed to remove this so set about drilling the sixty plus spot welds. I think you can guess what I found underneath it.


Yep, more rust!


Cutting out the floor piece by piece.


Restoration Design have produced some of their replacement panels from a thicker gauge steel. I think I get the reasoning behind this but it's obvious some definition in the part is missing and butt welding the pieces together isn't easy when you only want part of the panel.

Here's the replacement trunk floor panel. I've seen many 914's restored with trunk floors that look like this but I wanted to put the manufacturing access holes back in.



Here they are hiding under rather a lot of seam sealer.


Well preserved though!


After cutting out the cutout too I could then use that as a template


New hole


Both finished ready to be hidden under another load of seam sealer

[defianty]

Here's the new floor in place. As you can see I didn't use all of the new panel - I don't see the point in cutting out original metal that is solid. However due to the thickness of the new panel I had to cut off the middle section as the bends didn't match up to the ones on the car.



Problem! During the process of cutting out the center rusty section I found more rust in the top half! I don't know how I missed it but yet again there it was disguised by thick paint.


After calming down I came up with a plan after seeing the old bottom half of the trunk floor I'd already cut out. What if that fitted??


The rescued panel trimmed and cleaned up


Offering it up!


A perfect fit!


Welded in place. You can also see I put the hole and captive nut back for the additional spare tyre hold down on the cross member.

[defianty]

New support plate fabricated, slightly longer than standard.


Rosette welds for the rear towing eye and bumper support.


Completed including support plates for the rear sway bar mounting brackets underneath.


Whilst putting all of this together I got the back of the car reassembled too. I'll cover that at a later date as like many things I can't finish that until I complete another task.

So next time it's on to THE HELL HOLE!! As you can guess it's worse that I imagined

[chief]

Mental!
I thought I was getting deep Stephen!
Brilliant work though. I call that 'Invisible Mending'.
Keep battling, we're all behind you pal....

[Psw1811]

Outstanding work - I’m still in the process of collecting parts to commence my restoration, after seeing the standard of your work I’m very scared of what lies ahead!!!

[LMR]

Fabulous!

[Gary71]

Top stuff. Always love a bit of fabricating!