Have you ever thought of something you wanted and then after a bit of research realised no one really offers that service and if they did the cost would be ridiculous? I do often and usually you forget about the idea, but occasionally you realise you know the right people and maybe you could make it happen. Well this is one of those instances when I had a very good friend in exactly the right place.
With the build being more of a Hot Rod, I guess, rather than an exact replica GT I wanted a badge to reflect that. Now I’m not the first person to make a custom 914-GT badge but I wanted a hand in making my own - just as I’ve done with the car itself.
So a while back I drew this using my original 914 badge as a template. All measured out perfectly from the original.
That was simple enough, now it needed to be turned into a file that a CNC mill could read - so the following was created in Solidworks.
A quick 3D render.
Now I don’t have a CNC mill at home but I have a friend who owns a surgical instruments manufacturing company. Now was the time to take advantage of that
After a while a was presented with this billet of stainless steel and my badge had come to life.
This is the machine that was used to cut the badge from the billet. It uses a process called Wire Erosion. I'd never heard of this process before and found it quite fascinating. It's process actually takes place with everything totally submerged in distilled water.
The next step was back with me to clean them up, polish them and add the engraved detail between the digits as per the original badges.
The first step was to get rid of the machine marks. This was done on a granite block with increasing grades of sandpaper. I won’t speak about how long this process took - let’s just say I won’t be doing it again
The next step was to add the texture detail and then polish. I did these processes at the same time so these photos are a bit mixed.
Polishing
Engraving
This shot shows the difference from the machined original.
Instead of cleaning them all myself I sent them back to my friend to be ultrasonically cleaned.
I couldn’t decide what colour finish I wanted for my car so being greedy I elected for one of each colour that the 914 would of had over its production.
So one would be silver so I left one uncoated as I had already, Black as the original plastic badge that was on my 73 and Gold as the early cars.
The process used to coat the badges was PVD (Physical Vapour Deposition). The black was Nitron MC coated and the gold, Titanium Nitride.
Here’s the samples of the black and gold. The sample are a matt finish as the base metal was media blasted.
Today I got word that the badges were ready to collect….
You could say I was rather pleased with them.
Huge thanks goes to my friend for doing these for me and swallowing the entire cost. I could not have done this without his help. Cheers Jay.
This is certainly a process I won’t be repeating and these are certainly one offs! I do however have one spare Gold one and if anyone’s interested I’ve decided to auction it off with 100% of the top bid going to charity, DDK Macmillan of course. I appreciate it’s a niche badge and interest in the UK will probably be minimal so I will invite bids from the 914world forum too.
So I have just weeks left to finish the body, hopefully plenty of time. Wish me luck! 
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