Restoring my first 914

[LouisCurtis]

The suggestion of taking things easy and resting is I'm sure going to fall on deaf ears so just get on and finish the bloody car!
Welcome back

David puts it perfectly!!!

Fingers crossed for a speedy recovery.

L

[karmann]

Glad your ok Darren I sure missed your update over the weekend

[Bruce M]

Hope u bounce back quickly. Take care.

[jamie]

Just read this wonderful tale all the way from the beginning, and the last update is that you've had a 'minor stroke'. WTF?!

Beautiful work on the car. It's a ninja skill, understanding what make a restoration job look and feel correct and unmolested to this degree, and I'm deeply envious.

Take it easy and look after yourself. Would be a shame to have done such a nice job and not be able to enjoy the results.

[Darren C]

Thanks guy’s, fortunately with a TIA you get everything back within 24 hrs so apart from lack of sleep (which is nothing new for me) due to being scanned and tested every 30 minutes for two days you wouldn’t know it had happened.

David you know me too well

After being poked and prodded all day again in Hospital, I’m getting bored with all the American Cop type drunk tests; they let me out this evening at 6:30pm.
Getting home late this evening I needed a little normality so off to the shed I went.

The first job was to count the splines on the new driveshafts for Kev and for the record. There are 25.



The next job was to sort out the elusive gaskets. After finding the 912 ones were too big on Friday lunchtime I’d had an idea. I measured the CV joint to find the inner diameter of the required gasket (80mm) and got out a British Standard flange table. A quick visit to BSS and I had 4 + 1 spare 3” pipe flange gaskets with a perfect 80mm hole in the centre.
Carefully marking out the 4 bolt semi circles and the 2 dowel semi circles I cut them using my punch set and finished them carefully with a rats tail file.



All that was left to do was then carefully mark out and cut the external diameter with sturdy scissors. Much easier to cut the outer diameter than trying to cut an inside diameter.



I made 4 plus 1 spare so just need to clean up the outer stub flanges and we’re good to fit.

[911hillclimber]

You cheat having all these tools!

I imagined a few nights with an Xacto knife and a trip to A&E..

Good stuff as ever.

[Bewildebeest]

Of course ! The British Standard Flange Table !! Now where did I put mine........

[911hillclimber]

In the back pages of your Zeus book you had as an apprentice!

[jackstowers]

FLANGE!! Fnarr fnarr!

[Darren C]

In the back pages of your Zeus book you had as an apprentice!

Ahhh, easy mistake to make there......you're thinking of the "co-ordinates for equally spaced holes table" that you find in the back of a Zeus. A Flange table is a data table of sizes and doesn't include trigonometry like the Zeus. It tells you the size of the raised section of a flange face and the nominal pipe id. This data allowed me to see what size flange gasket would have the right id for making the CV joint gaskets from.

This morning I awoke at 3:30am with too many ideas running through my mind, by 4am I’d realised a design for a new fuel rail, calculated the flow, itemised materials and worked out a rough cost. I’d decided the best composition of a painting that I’m planning, decided on the plan this week for the 914, had considerations of how to get mobile while I’m not allowed to drive and had a few more ideas for my other cars.
Suffice to say by 4am I couldn’t lay in bed any longer so got dressed and went out to the garage. The weather was awful this morning before dawn so I got a few bits from my shed and closed myself in behind the up and over door with two LED lights.
I fashioned two long handled paint brushes from some flattened tube and sticky tape and began work on the O/S rear inner arch.
Jamie, I appreciated your comment on making the restoration look correct; very observant of you Everything I do, I try and consider all options first before jumping in. It mostly pays off.
While lying in hospital over the weekend I actually got a lot of stuff sorted, designed, tweaked and considered in my mind. As they say I had plenty of time to think.
One thought I had was about the final finish of the old factory underseal on the car. The product Porsche used dried to a matt finish and wasn’t jet black as a result. Simple underseal off the shelf is too Black, too glossy and slightly gritty in texture. I had a product in mind from an old 911 restoration I did a few years ago, rummaged in my shed last night and found a half used 5 litre tin. This is a professional stoneguard designed for spraying in a Shultz type gun. It dries to a matt black very resilient hard finish.
Since the task was to “restore” the under arch Porsche finish (and I’d locally repaired the flaked damaged areas with a similar texture) I was able to just lightly paint the new stone guard on with a brush and stipple finish it to loose any brush marks.
This morning I started on the O/S rear arch and managed to coat everything forward of the rear wheel including behind the door striker plate panel, and up under the roll bar fin. I coated everything down to the sill panel on both the inside of the rear quarter panel and the inner arch making sure every surface was covered.
I was back at work today and had arranged a colleague to pick me up, so needed to get cleaned up and changed for 7am.
This lunchtime I called Porsche Centre and ordered a single 914 wheel bolt to replace my rogue Beetle bolt. They’re still available and I’m curious to see what final finish the new bolt arrives with. The old ones have a dull zinc plate (or what’s left of it). I plan on having the bolts replated and hopefully the new bolt will show me what a new bolt should be like.
Anyway after getting home a little later than normal from work this evening I carried on to complete the O/S wheel arch.
I took a photo with flash, so the arch looks far greyer in the picture than in reality.



The two trailing arms were repainted last week and “toned down” to give them a natural look rather than a just painted too shiny gloss. Both "K" marks were carefully retained.
I was extra careful with the stone guard and used a small modellers brush to detail around all the fiddly bits like the suspension bolt caps and sill screws to finish the O/S arch.
Going back a page you can see the washed and scrubbed original Porsche coating has been matched pretty well with the new stoneguard for colour and matt finish. I'm really pleased with the way its turned out.
Tomorrow the plan is to do the same with the N/S rear arch.

[rhd racer]

My, that's stunning Darren

[Darren C]

Thanks

Today was a repeat of yesterday but with a lie in until 5am this morning!
I finished off the N/S rear arch this evening after work to match the O/S. The “K” mark was retained on this trailing arm too (its just behind the brake pipe obscured in the picture below). On this side of the car it didn’t have the circle around the K, possibly to id the parts left & right?





(The runs in the stoneguard near the front of the inner arch are genuine Porsche!)

[914 KEV]

The first job was to count the splines on the new driveshafts for Kev and for the record. There are 25.

Many thanks Darren.
25 splines were originally only fitted to the 914-6.
Have placed an order with Porsche, as I need one for a 914-6 job I'm working on and this will keep it all standard 25 splines.

[914 KEV]

Looks fantastic Darren.

I spending many days in the wheel arches of my concours winning 914 when I was restoring it some years back and can very much appreciate the back breaking hours of hard work you are putting to get these results.

[nrc914]

Praise indeed from the UK 914 Guru! I was going to ask why you haven't replicated the genuine Porsche runs in the stoneguard under the offside wing?

No seriously Darren your extreme OCD and 'un-humanly' long days are really paying dividends. Looks fantastic.

Regards