The engine is now dropped outta the car and I have removed the gas tank for restoration. I installed new stainless steel gas lines and cleaned up a lot of gunk. I then started into the famous “hell hole” rust present in all un-restored Porsche 914’s. This phase of the project can strike sheer terror into your heart when you dig in; mainly due to the discovery that you have a “parts car” or a decent one based on the damage in this area. The goodness is that this car has minimal rust in the longitude. That said, it is still significant work and requires fabrication and welding. I cut out the rusty bits to inspect the longitude and see how much good metal I have to work with, what you are trying to do is preserve lips and shelf's for attaching metal and get to the bright, shiny metal to weld onto. So far, we are still inspecting and figuring out the shapes of metal we want to weld. I am going to treat the inner longitude with POR-15 as I tested the metal and it is all strong and in good shape, there is surface rust and so encapsulating it is a decent fix for the time. Some day in future I would do a repair in this area to fully restore it, but it is more than good enough and will stop any further deterioration. I have a lower, rear inner longitude and so I am going to cut and fit that and see if I can get welded in for a good fit. It is thick metal and will provide some nice strength.

In the pictures below, you can see the cigar shaped hole in the top of the longitude…

Then I cleaned it up and I am scrubbing metal, sanding, grinding, etc.

Battery tray removal and new parts…

Okay, this is more geared towards the “gas” version of one of my 914’s, but it is cool and it helps me clear the garage for the next phase of the EV restoration. I have purchased a tricked out Porsche engine with 100% working EFI system, a newly rebuilt transmission from my trip with Dr. Evil and the crew and a new SS Borla Exhaust (very rare) and I plan to put this into the yellow Porsche over the next couple weeks. Finally, it will be better than new, more powerful and more important, dependable (fingers crossed!)

The exhaust is a work of art…

I then had my son and his buddy put up my outside shelter, wired it for lights and power and turned it on tonight!