VW-Porsche 914 Restoration (in pictures)

Over the past 10 years I have restored, or helped restore, seven different vehicles; only two of which actually belong to me. I love working with my hands, and I don't get to do it all that much with my job and school. I also need outlets for stress. I used to get this through competitive sailing, but now that I live in PA I am land locked. This kind of hobby helps me blow off steam and focus my thoughts. So, I thought I'd blog about how I went about restoring an old Porsche.

My 914 (sold as a Porsche in the US, and a VW in Europe) is my favorite toy in the world. After helping build several old WWII British armored cars, I decided that I had skills enough to build something for myself. I knew I wanted something sporty and air cooled. When I discovered 914s, I fell in love. I bought mine in October of 2005.

It was dented, the engine did not run, the paint sucked - but the body was not rusted too much and the car was complete. It took forever to get it home, but by midnight that night, the car was in my garage and I was happy, if tired. The very next day I started taking it apart.

The first year was spent taking the car apart and fixing all the stuff that had broken over 30 years. I had to learn how to weld. What rust I found I cut out and welded patches back in. This included needing to cut out and weld in an entire front trunk pan (since the engine of a 914 is in the middle, it has front and rear trunks).

Old and busted.

Replacement welded in.

By Oct of 2006, the engine had been removed, all the parts were stripped from the body, and all the rust had been fixed. It was time to paint. The first thing I wanted to do was build a car rotisserie. Similar to the kind used for cooking, this is something you mount the car on so that you can spin it on its axis. It makes life easier for stripping and painting the car. You can see how it works in the pictures. Also, note that the car has been stripped to bare metal - and that metal has been all beat to hell. I found out when I stripped the old paint off that the car had been wrecked at some point. :(



By October of 2007, the car was painted and off the rotisserie (which I then sold, and made a tidy profit on to boot).


However, things were slowing down. In 2007 I also started the MBA program, AND found out I was going to be a father in early 2008. I was putting the car back together, but it was still going to take 2 more years before it was road worthy.

Next up was the engine. The stock engine was a VW T4 motor, similar to the ones used in the Bus and the VW 411 Squarebacks. It had been tuned by Porsche and had more power, but at 95hp it was rather lack luster by modern standards. So, I built a better one. Not having the budget to go too big, I bought parts to build up a motor with a small displacement increase, but significant torque and power increase. I got this by increasing the compression ratio (how much the fuel/air mix get squished before it is ignited), electronic spark distribution and putting in a more aggressive camshaft. I also sold off the original fuel injection system and added dual Weber IDF carburetors, as the old injection system was a power bottleneck. the last big change was the exhaust. All aircooled VW and Porsche cars get heat by running fresh air over the exhaust pipes and then blowing that into the cabin. However, if you ditch the heat exchangers for equal length headers, you can squeeze even more power out of the motor. As the car is a summer toy, I did not think twice about loosing the ability to heat my car. On chilly mornings, I wear a jacket. :)

The first picture is the engine case opened up to show the crank, rods, and camshaft.


This picture is the engine and transmission hooked up on a testing stand I made to run the motor out of the car. This way I could test and tune my rebuild before reinstalling the motor.

The other neato mini project that I did during the January of 2009 was start producing shifter knobs for these old cars. In the late 1960s Porsche made a race car called the 917. It was the real star of the Steve McQueen movie "LeMans." These cars had a simple wooden shifter knob, that I later learned was turned from poplar plywood. It was very lightweight (made for a race car, after all, but also insulated the drivers hand from the shift lever which got hot during the race. The knobs are a popular add-on for vintage Porcshes, but are not commonly reproduced. I made a small run of five knobs, turned from maple and mahogany. I kept the first one I made, and sold the rest at $50 a knob. I glued up blanks to make 10 more, but have not had the time to go back and cut them out and turn them. The following pic is the unfinished prototype, and the next is the finished knob in my car.



FINALLY, over the summer of 2009 - nearly 4 years after buying the car - I got it on the road in time for the Hershey Park Porsche Swap Meet in April. I had a wonderful summer driving the car.



The car isn't "done." I doubt it will ever be done, as my tastes change - and then the car changes to suit my new interests. While put away for winter, I made MANY changes already, but none of them major.

So, whats next? Well, I bought this 1968 Jeep M715 ex-army pickup that needs a little love. Its been sitting for the past year as I just did not have time to do much with it and I promised myself I'd finish the 914 before I started it. Work starts this spring. :)