My 914 lightweight project

[TRS63]

I then put the rear up in the air:


And removed the engine :


And the started to investigate..

Found some rust here at the bottom of the firewall :


And what looked like a "sh**ty fix" for the clutch cable tube:


Is worse than that..the tube just moves freely like that!!


And the big question.. The hell hole.. Well, when I bought it, I couldn't disassemble much so I checked with my hand - no holes - and tried with a screwdriver-everything robust.. So I thought to be safe..
Then I checked after engine removal:


And after a better check with my screwdriver..


Here is what I found:




A real disaster:



But I am not a guy that let something like that discorage himself. So I need to remove my battery tray to check further and make my plan.. But before that, and before probably destroying the old one by disassembling.. I built the replacement one:










Check with the battery and the fixation sandblasted:




And the bottom part:






Ready to go after the hell hole repair:




Stay tuned!

Antoine

[72targa]

Amazing work!

[Rick Cabell]

It is nice to see a younger person have interest in repairing rust in their own project. You are saving yourself 1000’s of euros. I’ll be watching your progress. The worst is yet to come, but don’t give up.

[TRS63]

Thanks a lot guys!!

@Rick: not only does it save me money but I am having a lot of fun doing it so all good!

To be honest : the car is already way further, so I can update a lot now..I did work around 280h on it since last august :-)


As I already did start the work on the front, I decided to make sûre nothing is hidden there under the paint..


Well of course some (bondo-) surprises were there...
Here a big dent, that I took care of using dolly/hammer:



And here.. There was a lot of bondo and under it a "fix", by the way of a plate under the rust hole.. Here to see:






So I of course couldn't let it, so cut this bad work:


And TIG welded a real patch:


And put it in primer:




Same on the other side :
Big dent here was hidden under bondo:


So dolly/hammer:






And in the back there was also a surprise:




Yes, again a plate welded quite behind the panel.. And on the bottom not welded :


So.. Patch prepared :


And welded:


Now we are flat:


Stay tuned, lot to comes !

Antoine

[Chuck Miller]

GREAT thread Antoine !!!!!

[bob joyce]

Great work.
Keep in mind Restoration Design Europe.
it is often a better repair to replace an entire unit as opposed to hole patching.

[skinnerd]

It's amazing how rough some of these 914's can be....mine certainly was.

Antoine, you're doing a great job.
Keep up the steady work and you'll have a great driver in the end.
Love that you are going back with the original color too.
It's a good one.