These Blues is Killing Me

I finished up the coats of paint on the trailer lid and it looks really good. I am going to let it cure while I work on the body.

Next I went through all the parts and lights attached to the body with sheet metal screws (which I hate) and put in the nut holders and I will tack with a small weld and tighten them up, this makes the lights replaceable, etc.

Then cut the new inserts in the sheet metal for the new triple rear tail lights.

Next I will do the under body rust treatment then start painting the body.

We stripped down the whole trailer to bare metal and started fixing the little things. I then taped it off and decided to paint the the top of the trailer before I worked on the other stuff, this makes sense as we can raise it out of the way and tape it off. I applied the first coat of the thinned Rustolem paint (50% paint – 50% mineral spirits) and it is an nice almond color. Looking at 6-7 coats over the next several days and then polish/buff. I am excited to see how good this comes out.

Let’s go back to my initial enthusiasm in acquiring a 1974 914 2.0, certainly the most desirable model of the entire run of 914’s. I was mostly concerned with the integrity of the body and rust and since this car was stored and maintained, it was in excellent shape for it’s age. I figured the mechanicals were no concern because the car started and the documentation was with the car. BOY WAS I WRONG!!!

I failed to pay attention to this little sentence uttered in the course of the transaction by the seller “I took it to a mechanic, but he had trouble making it run well. He recommended switching it over to carburetors and since that is $1200.00, I decided to sell it.” That was a prescience statement and I blew by it in haste. I missed that “that” bastard of a mechanic took all the proper Porsche specific parts off the car and swapped in VW parts that did not match the displacement or the Bosch EFI setup. I recognized this folly once I started to work on the car and realized that I needed to gain expertise in the EFI components and try to secure them through EBay and other means. Of course many parts are NLA, so this proved to take the better part of 3 months and it involved my getting scammed a couple times. I discovered that the NLA Porsche parts market is very tricky and you need to be really informed about the part, what can be swapped and the specific details of how that part will work in your car. This is common sense for sure, but compared to Detroit vehicles, the details are critical and the prices 10-20 times more.

Here is what I needed to acquire…

• Proper Distributor for 1973-1974 2.0 (231 174 011). Thanks so much to Brad who documented all of the important details. Eventually I ended up with a 1975 2.0 Dizzy that was in excellent shape and although it is not documented as a swappable part (231 174 021), it works perfect. I ended up buying 3 distributors before I got one that worked well. The first one was the proper part number in the EBay listing, but the seller sent me something completely different (a 1.7 Dizzy) and after I asked, he refunded my money. The second one was so worn out and sloppy that it was terrible and the third one was near perfect and in great shape.
• MPS - Manifold Pressure Sensor (280 100 043) – This is a NLA part and one on the car was from a VW bus and had been hacked (removal of the screw adjuster) and in a sense could have probably worked if everything else was tip-top. But it is not the right part for the car and so I ordered a remanufactured unit from AA and it works great.
• Bosch 2.0 Fuel Injectors – These are the big problem areas for me. When I started the car and did my initial troubleshooting, I noticed that the car ran rough. First I noticed that one injector was unplugged, bingo. Wrong, plug it in and the car ran worse. So I backed up and tested that the injectors are all spurting gas, this involves putting them into a baby food jar and seeing the gas spurt. The design of the 914 EFI has triggers built into the distributer to fire the injectors, when a plug fires on one side, both injectors dump into the cylinder on that side. All four injectors seemed to work and I don’t have the equipment to measure volume, etc., so off to the Witchhunter for cleanup and tuning. I reinstalled the injectors and things still seemed rough, so I rebuilt the fuel system deliver end to end with a new Fuel Pressure Sender and new German high pressure fuel hose.
• Throttle Body Sensor – This part was in okay shape, but I did have to pull it, clean it up, readjust it, make a gasket for it and reinstall. These parts are NLA and it is based on a circuit board that uses tension across a set of three leads to change resistance, like a drive by wire system built by a steampunk.

That last mile…

Once I had done all of the above, the car was still not up to snuff, but it did run. It missed and backfired through the throttle body and so I was stuck. I ended up taking to a Porsche shop and he fixed the timing and other sensors, but I forgot to bring the air cleaner apparatus and so the car could not be tuned for idle. I certainly thought I had all vacuum leaks covered as I had new hoses and the proper installation of the pieces, but the idle would not adjust and it hunted up and down indicating a leak and the car would cut out once I hit the road. So I started to think, injectors again. This time through the wonderful documentation of the folks on the 914 World forums, I tracked down the replacement injectors that would fit the car and offer the same performance for a 2.0. These are the Neihoff 57512 injectors for a MB SEL 450. I swapped them in this week and fitted new rubber gaskets into the injectors. This proved to be an issue and I removed one injector, I could see that the gasket was compressed and likely leaking. I also had new rubber boots to install on the injector connectors to hold them fast in place. This involved pulling the wires from the plugs and reinstalling. In doing this I notified that one injector wire as cut through in 2 places and I had never noticed this before because the harness covered it up. It was not all the way through, but just a couple strands holding it together. Fixed, installed the injectors, fastened the boost and fired it up. YES! The car idled now and was only showing issues under acceleration. I then swapped in the new Dizzy with a Hot Spark Ignition setup to replace the point and set the timing.

This journey is near its end to really get the car running great and just needs some optimization tweaks to get it where I want it. There’s a couple little issues in the power curve at 4k RPM, etc, but easy stuff from here.

What I learned…

These kinds of things are frustrating to most people, but I enjoy the learning that comes from a project like this. Taking a 35 year old car that would not run worth a dang and getting it back out there and enjoying it is very rewarding. Learning the “ins and outs” of the Bosch EFI was fun and I am now in the expert camp and can tune it and troubleshoot one with confidence. I also learned the Porsche NLA parts market is something to be very, very wary about. There is a reason someone is selling something and likely it is because it is worn out and they think that you understand that risk. I didn’t and it was really a drag opening a box for a part you had been trying to track down for a month and it was all wrong or a waste of money. Stick with forum’s and ask lots of questions, I did many hours of research and found almost every situation documented on 914 World and that was they key to success.

We have been wanting to get a tent trailer for a number of years, but the price and the number of years we would use it seemed to make the price too high to justify the purchase. I looked at used ones and did the research and you can easily get into $1500+ of costs just replacing canvas, tires, springs, etc. So it was great that last weekend we ended up being given a 1984 Coleman trailer and it met my lowest price of “FREE” and it is in decent enough shape for being 25 years old. The canvas needs some attention to patching, but it is worth keeping. The undercarriage is intact and with some POR-15 treatment, it will last a long time. The paint and sheet metal showed no “rusting through” and so I figured it was a candidate to easily fix up and paint. The last issue is to repack the wheel bearings, replace the springs and get new wheels and tires. All told, I figure 500 bucks should do it. I plan to replace all the electrical (after I just rewired the Porsche, this should be a piece of cake), add new lights, mattress covers and new water & gas lines.

I have been wanting to test the internet legend of the “$50 Paint Job” using high density rollers and thinned Rustolem paint and the Tent Trailer Restoration is the perfect project to test this out and see if I can recreate the results everyone is raving about. We ended up doing a lot of work this weekend to get the trailer prepped for painting and have most of the sheet metal and aluminum exposed and ready for primer.

I will update the posts over the next couple weeks as I finish the restoration and get camping!

Okay this is off topic, but I wanted to show how I planned to haul my EV when I needed to take it to a show or pull it home. Early, early this morning I had to drop my yellow Porsche off at the shop in Seattle, so I needed to haul the car about 22 miles. I feel bad that I humiliated the poor car, but lots of folks honked and gave the thumbs up. people really like 914’s and yellow one even more.

After I finished up the door sill, I decided to hang the door and tackle the following…

• Weld in new steel and cover the door handle insets. The car will have “shaved doors” and will be opened with a remote. This give the side of the car a long, clean line. You can see the roughed-in delete on the door handle in the picture.
• Install the 911 Power Window Assembly.
• Wire up the actuator and solenoids for the lock, door opening and window (up and down).
• Install a modern door clasp to replace the stock 914 door clasps. The problem is that the 914 door latch moves sideways and I needed to open it from a “downward pull” of the solenoid. The inside area to “play in” in a 914 door is very limited. The mounting will require fitting, alignment and welding.
• Line up the rear quarter panel and get it fitted.

I will document the shaved door installation and power windows in later posts.

The side view shows the car with the pieces hung and it is starting to look like a Porsche again, albeit an ugly one!

Great progress on the passenger side and have completed…

• The boxing of the bottom of the door pillar. Kid of a PITA to make this part and get everything aligned.
• Tacked in the door sill.
• Mounted the “safer” door from the ‘74 parts car.

I am going to focus on some door fabrication activities next. I need to enjoy the heavy metal work being done on this side and do something a little less taxing. I plan to mount in the 911 power window assemblies and the shaved door kits. This is the best time as I have to move holes, cut things, etc. Then I will work on the considerable work to mount the rear quarter panel.

And BTW, I received my forged aluminum Fuch’s and they are from an original 914/6 which is nice. I plan to strip them, clean then and then prepare them to be painted on the inside and then polished in the rim areas. Imagine the red wheel below in Irish Green and you get an idea of how cool and matched these will be on the car.

I am ready to seal up the longitude and put on the rocker panel. I needed to finish up all of the welding that could melt my plastic wire conduit (2 in) for running all the heavy battery wires. I welded in the passenger side of the Engman stiffening kit…

Then ran my fabricated conduit into the front and rear of the positions of the previous warm air returns.

BTW, can you spot a mistake I made from the pictures?

Sure, I mean Johnny Cash, but I digress. I rarely post anything on this blog that I consider to be political and try to focus on things I am doing with my life. But I have become aware of things that hope others are paying attention to in their lives and holding onto their precious resources in this time of trial and toil. We had started pull back some time ago on credit, loans and excess (Sushi mainly). After looking across all of the credit accounts that I have left open (it is not always in your best interest to close an account and better to keep zero balances) and started to notice many “changes in terms of service” for these accounts in the mail. Then I decided to go back do some analysis on APR creep. You would think in this moment when the interest rate is at or near zero, how the hell can banks and credit card companies jack the rates into the stratosphere?

Here are the changes…

• WAMU (Is that !$%*# CEO Kerry in Jail yet?) now CHASE – Has moved their APR calculations to some new, obscure APR aggregation timing mechanism which kicks in every time Simon trashes a song… is now @ 23.95% on new purchases.
• AMEX BLUE – 21%

Then you get pissed. You call them up, cancel and ask the person on the phone who “fakes that they care about you as a customer”, that the company that they work for is behaving unethically and criminally (TARP you took, I say --yoda) and they are now contributing to that deceit.

So I needed something a little more grounded after all of this, hence I am listening to Johnny Cash tell it straight and true.

Is it good? Is is great? Yes, this movie was very tight, great photography and excellent direction. It never deviated from the story in anyway and made a brutal sport/show very sympathetic. He should get the Oscar.

Normandy Park is a sleepy little south Seattle suburban area with it’s own police force and a small neighborhood feel. What it lacks is anything resembling a commons area for meeting up, doing business, a solid pub and non-fast-food restaurants. Initially when the Normandy Park Towne Center was proposed, I had high hopes and then they diminished when I saw that the design was more strip mall than a true center and the place is designed to be car centric and the huge parking lot that creates a wasteland in the middle of things. But that is just me wishing more folks would read Suburban Nation and take to applying it.

We have a solid community restaurant that is not named Starbucks. Cafe Mia just opened and it is configured with an open area and a walkup counter that at first impression I thought it was a little cold, but as the neighborhood comes in, it warms right up. I like the idea they have for the wine sales, it is all done retail and they charge corkage. So getting a great bottle is as easy as going to your favorite shop and not taking the typical 70% restaurant markup. The food is very well done and simple. Very good cheeses and excellent pizza. We have fallen in love with their gelato and especially the tiramisu flavor.

Another review here…

Cafe Mia
19803 1st Ave. South, Suite 104
Normandy Park; 206-429-3145

View Map…

I managed to get the Motor mount all cleaned up, added some new metal and welded it in. I am close to finishing up the suspension section  of the project and I did the suspension tie (a thicker piece of metal that connects the outer to the inner consoles). I then moved onto the first half of the inner firewall and added the new metal to the center tunnel to attach the new floor pan when I get to that. Progress is good, but the metal work is taking more time than I wanted and so I am running behind. The good news is that all the pieces are coming together and within tolerances, so I am super happy with the strength of everything and my overly aggressive welding techniques.

My posts have been quiet lately, but not because I haven’t been busy on the project. The challenge is that I have some more difficult things to fabricate and make work. I finished up getting the inner console installed, which included fabricating the sheet metal sleeve, welding that in, placing the console in the right place using my jig I made early in the project and doing some fairly complicated welding. Then I started to finish up the fabrication of my tube carrier for the big battery wires that will run on the inside of the inner longitude. I have to fabricate up the ties for the suspension and these tie together the bottom on the suspension consoles so that they are tied together for strength.

I finished up positioning my outer wheel-house and having it sit there taunting me for two days was too much for me, so tonight I welded it in. It went in fine, I then added an overlap with the chassis stiffening kit which I have installed rear-ward and finished. I blew a small hole around one of the stupid spot welds I drilled out, so I need to patch that before I am completed. It is really nice to be over this hump!

I am ready to do some “critical” positioning and welding. I had to recover the outer trailing arm console as everything around it was rusted, yet once I got it cleaned up, it was in pretty good shape and had a little rust on the inside. I treated that, put POR-15 on that and then welded on a new top part so I could attach the top as the removal of the spot welds weakened the metal. Note to self/others, if you have to recover this part, I would cut it out and then grind down the metal to preserve the ability to put your own plug-weld holes in later.

In order to make sure the part goes in correctly, you need to make sure the part gets back on the car in the same place. I could have saved myself some hassle in making a full jig for the placement of the part, but I did have the sense to measure and triangulate everything to record the placement. The following measurements were taken and validated to put the holes right back where they need to be…

• Front center of the outer console bolt hole – Exact to intact measurement 138.5 cm
• Front center of the outer console bolt hole leveled and measured off the firewall, even and exact
• Template over the wheel well to position outside of outer console seam
• Triangulated measurement from middle of firewall to side, outside to the center of the outer console bolt hole
• Pitch of bolt heads for 2 angles on outer console

I now have the part positioned and ready to weld in. A few more days to contemplate and ask the 914 World forum their opinions and feedback. Then we are all done in the outside rear repair. Onto the rocker and jacking post. That is the boy helping weld his first metal parts!

Today I sealed up the outer longitude and attached the inner rear wheel well. Lots of fitting and I still have the inside to do, but structural integrity is back in the car!

Wow what a weekend me and the wife had at Alderbrook. Mary set us up in the resort, did the spa stuff and a special wine tasting. The thing was we were the first people to sign up and try the wine offering, so we had the Chef, Sous Chef and restaurant manager all attentive to Mary and I and it was grand. Each tasting had a special dish from the kitchen and they put in a lot of effort, it was really something and we certainly consumed more of the staff’s time than the price, let alone the food and wine. Alderbrook is really pretty this time of year and I am glad Raikes sunk some of his cash into this place, it is pretty special.

I have completed the rear and middle inner longitude repairs and I am now moving onto the inner wheel well and outer rocker panels. This is a significant moment for the project. I learned a lot about the characteristics of my MIG welder and how to work with thin sheet metal.

In the fitting below, I did a lap weld and worked the pieces together to merge about a 1/2 inch. I then fitted my inner sleeve and welded that into place.

I then did another inner sleeve for the upper part of the rear longitude, This is total overkill as the fitting on the upper part was very strong, but I wanted to make sure the car is stiff. I then treated the inner area with POR-15 (and primer) before I close it up with the inner wheel well.

I finally finished up all measurements, had my Clecos in and tested. So we started welding in the longitudes this weekend. Lots of Lap and Plug welds and then cleaning them up nicely. Car is almost back to being structurally sound!

Recovering parts is something you have to invest time in when restoring and working on cars. Some parts are just not obtainable (this is why you buy a donor car) and others are so phreaking expensive, you cringe. The motor mounts and the outside trailing arms pieces on the 914 are these kinds of parts. You have to recover and fix them or call AA and my last quote was US 650.00 to get used versions. So I took off the motor mount and prepped it up. It needs some Dremel work to get all the rust out and final prep (work for the boy!) and it saved me a bunch of money. It was very detailed work and required a lot of fine grinding and spot weld removal.

Then I made a purchase last week of a 74 914 that literally was out of a barn. It was part of an estate of a man who passed and his wife traded the car to a company for tree work and I picked it up from them. It is one of the most desirable 914’s with a 2.0 FI (all intact) and the brown interior. A little surface rust in some places, but none of the big problems prone to 914’s as it has been in a shed for 14 years. The guy who I bought it from took it to the Porsche shop and got it all running and drivable, but they scared him by saying the car should be converted to Weber Carbs for a grand or so. So he panicked a bit and decided to sell. Of course the Fuel Injection on a 2.0 was awesome and very economical, you can get 35-40 MPG out of these cars when you get them tuned and working right. Most Porsche mechanics don’t like to work on a 40 year old FI design and so conversion to dual Weber Carbs is pretty typical on these cars and it destroys their originality and value IMO. I contacted him directly after seeing it listed on EBay and paid for it there on the spot and covered his EBay fees. I won’t say what I got this for, but it was roughly 1/2 it’s value after some TLC. Mileage is @ 38K on the speedometer and we really can’t tell if it did a full turn as the car has all original stuff on it, so once when I get into more engine work via the inspection plate and reviving the FI, I will report back on what I really think the mileage is.

Because I am going to leave this car all original (to preserve the value) I am recovering parts from the other 74 like the Rivera mags and Monza muffler, etc. I will post pictures as I update things.

This weekend we turned the corner and start actually adding to the car restoration versus just pulling rusty stuff off. This is a critical time as you have to get fittings in place for the longitude members and get all the measurements back within tolerances. I did a lot of detailed metal shaping and fitting so I could get the Clecos all in an tightened up to prepare for the welding. I measured everything and checked all tolerances from my original notes. I am going to take a couple more days to measure and check alignments and then begin the welding of the pieces into final placement. Wohoo!

Sometimes things go your way completely unintended. When I first bought the two 914’s, I thought that the sunflower 74 was the better car. Sure it had been sitting for a while and had rusty wheel bearings, pretty typical for being in the elements for 10 years. But something stopped me and I chose the Blue 72 car to do the first conversion on. The blue car had more rust and a longitude replacement was required (which really complicated the project) but my thinking was do the hard one first and the 74 will be easy. What I have come to discover is that the 72 is a really solid car and the 74 is a piece of SH%$%! The PO was a bit of a scammer and I was not versed enough in the details to pick up on some of the issues. But I will come back to that.

In the meantime I have managed to remove all rusty pieces from the passenger side of the car and place in the new metal for the longitude front and back. We did make a mistake and cut the rear longitude too short and I have been awaiting a replacement from AA for 2 weeks (c’mon!).

So with all that in flight and the 74 being crappy, I quickly sacrificed the bugger for a parts car and have been removing the fenders and parts for placement on the 72. Which actually works great as I get to coordinate the part removal and make sure the easiest path to welding in the replacements.

Removing a fender from a 914 is intensive. It took about 6 hours with a spot welding removal bit and lots of targeted chiseling. But the part is perfect, in great shape and will make the repair on the 72 a lot easier to align on the door. I also noted a rear collision repair on the back as the fender was tacked and welded back incorrectly. Hard to determine the severity of the damage originally, but it looks like a fix to the rear versus the fenders. The real “scam” is that the PO said the battery was moved to the trunk long ago (true) and the was rust free (false) and looking closer, you can see a pretty poor repair in that area. We will compare it to my work in a few weeks.

I have been planning for a number of weeks the modifications I would make to the 914 engine compartment and gas compartments when it comes time to fabricate up the battery boxes and supports. My goal was to get a reasonable weight distribution to the center of the car and preserve a little of that mid engine magic the 914 is know for. Here is my engine compartment layout. I measured this up this weekend and in between my major repairs, I will start making a mock up for fitting purposes and sizing.

Doing a large project whether it be for your job or yourself has that special moment of satisfaction, that reward you work for not connected to “just money” or a paycheck. Everyone has a different point and personal response to these moments as I have discovered over the years leading teams on large software projects… and trying to hold together all the people it takes to finish something up. Personally, I love the moment when all the work is known and the ambiguity is at a minimum. All that is left is the process, finding and assigning the right people, resources and guiding the outcome. It is the moment when I know something will be successful and that it is possible. I am now at that phase on the passenger side of the Porsche. I have removed the outer rockers and inner fender and all the excess rusted metal. I am fabricating the strengthening parts for the double-walled portions of the inner longitude and have all my measurements and plans organized. It has been interesting getting to this point and I thank the connections the internet creates and the enthusiast forums which provided me with incalculable knowledge and documentation.

I also believe strongly that you should never tackle anything without the proper tools and I have invested in a complete welding setup, a fully stocked toolbox, a restoration rotisserie, unibody measurement tools and the Led Zeppelin box set. In preparing for the replacement of the inner longitude and rear suspension, the whole car will lose all structural integrity and you have to have it supported safely and know how to bring the new parts into spec. Otherwise, you have what is called a “highway bomb” which will break under stress. The 914 was prone to this without proper repair anyway because of the stupid engineering decision to place a lead cell battery over the passenger suspension components and it rusted straight down with extreme determination. The next affect was to take that rust and goop all the way down the inner longitude and ruin that part and the rockers. This is one reason that restoring a 914 is important and yet never worth the investment, they just are not worth the return. In my case I am happy to get in and repair these parts and I want a solid roller for my EV conversion and I like knowing all is well.

So let’s look at the exposed inner longitude after much effort I gave it cutting, grinding and the metal removal…

The other key thing is to take that extra time and document the measurements of the car. The funny thing is that a 914 body delivered from the Karmann factory was allowed deviations of 7mm to 9mm in the car. This is huge by today’s standards and that means that your roller maybe off that much compared to factory specs. Luckily mine is in pretty good shape. I measured everything up, fabricated a couple measurement shims for when I weld in the new parts to the final positions and matched up to the factory specs.

The last task of the weekend was to start to fabricate all of the pieces for double-walling the parts I am replacing. This is a PITA, but part of the fun of the repair too, you get to make parts from your own hands and skills and plan how they will fit. Sound creative enough for ya?