Bring 'Em Back Alive, Part I

Bring 'Em Back Alive, Part I

Over the years my participation in vintage racing satisfied much of my love of driving and sports cars. I had drifted away from motorcycles when I got into the sport, as I realized I was using the bike mainly for commuting, and Bay Area traffic was getting more aggressive and dangerous. I didn't think it was smart to have two risky hobbies.

Over time vintage racing changed, perhaps inevitably. I will write more about that in later posts, but increasingly I found myself just behind the car I could not quite catch and just ahead of the one who could not quite catch me. Since my budget and time limited me, for the most part, to the same three “home” tracks of Sears Point, the new SCCA course at Willows, and Laguna Seca, more and more I was just tooling around by myself, pretty much in my own state of zen. What I mean by that is that I did not track my lap times, but relied on my observations and perceptions to tell me how well I was taking any particular lap. It was fun...but had lost the edge of competition, and once the 914 deteriorated to be un-drivable, left me with only a few hours of enjoyable driving for many dozens working on the race car(s). My daily driver was my tow vehicle...first a relatively nimble small Toyota four cylinder pickup, and from late 1999 a Dodge 2500 which was over 20 feet long. Not exactly sporty.

From time to time the 914 would still enter my thoughts. Sherri and I more than once discussed getting rid of my hulk and buying a good quality survivor, which could be had for well under $10,000...more like half that. But something inside me made me shy away from taking that action. It was years later that I realized why I had not let go of “my” 914.

It started innocently enough. We were on a family gathering in Napa with Jason, Stephanie, and their son Jet. On the way to dinner one evening we passed a used car lot with a nice looking, several year old Miata sitting among the sedans, with a price under $8000. I realized that I could have a sports car and almost justify it on the basis of savings in gas over the 11mpg average of the truck. With modern conveniences like air conditioning the Miata was tempting.

The early ones were Lotus Elan lookalikes

I began poking around internet listings for these and found any number which seemed promising...mileage well under 100,000, perhaps seven or eight years old, and priced like the one on the lot in Napa. But I still held back from actually going to look at any of them.

It is unfair to dismiss the Miata as a “girl's car,” but I am far from the only one to do so. There is something almost dainty about it. But I think I was more turned off by their  popularity...there were literally thousands of them running around. Good for things like keeping parts prices down, but somehow I was left with my senses dulled by their ubiquity.

And then I saw one painted shocking pink! That did it. Miatas were out.

So I went back to looking at internet listings for 914s. These were not exactly growing on trees, though with a total production run in seven years of about 120,000 there were always a few dozen listed on various 914 club sites as well as places like “The Samba” and “Autoatlanta.” The former is a VW and Porsche forum and the latter is a Porsche parts house in Georgia.

I saw a few cars which looked interesting. I did not want to spend the premium the two liter cars demanded, and the 1.8 I knew to be very anemic and pollution control choked, so what I focused on was the 1.7 liter model, made from 1970 to 1974. I did not like the mandatory “Mae West” bumpers on the later cars,

And in 75 they got even worse!

but knew I could easily find and swap the earlier plain chrome units. I wanted a car with the vinyl and chrome trim on the crash bar, along with fog lights...the same setup my car had. While alloy wheels would be nice, I was not obsessed with having to have them.

After a few weeks, or perhaps it was months, of this I still had not made the effort to go see a single car. It finally dawned on me why.

“I don't want a 914,” I told Sherri, “I want my 914.” The car which had been with me for decades, the car with the magic Porsche name I thought I'd never own, the car with all my youth and memories wrapped around that thin plastic steering wheel. I went out to the shop and, for the first time in a decade or more, really looked it over.

I began to think about who could help me recover the car from the near dead, and what it might cost. My target, of course, was the price of the Miata which first caught my attention a couple of years before. When I approached one shop with photos I seem somehow to have misplaced, the price quoted for painting alone exceeded that figure by 25%. Discouraged doesn't begin to describe my feelings.

But in April of 2013, after extensively examining the car, I produced a four page summary of its status and issues. I thought the main issues were body and paint...getting off multiple layers, killing the surface rust, finishing the shape, and painting it. I thought the mechanical “must dos” amounted to new fuel lines, a clutch job, new shift linkage bushings, refurbishing the brakes, and a new set of tires. Though the interior was quite tired and there were issues like a tear in the driver seat cushion and dash and door material which peeled from the day I bought the car, I thought I could fix these with material and replacement parts from Autoatlanta and do the work myself. So if I could find someone to do the body stuff at some less than stratospheric cost, and a shop to do the mechanical work, I might actually have a decent “daily driver” within my budget.

Through the Crosley Club I had met Dale and Rob Lebherr, from Minden, Nevada, just “across the hill” (albeit a BIG hill) from me. They both had day jobs but did moonlighting on cars...Dale handled engines and mechanical work while Rob was the body and paint guy. I had seen several of their Crosleys and was impressed with them visually as well as the way they performed. So I asked Rob if he would give me an estimate to do the 914. His quote was about 40% of my total budge, but I expected that. The paint would also be a clear-coated two stage, which would be more glossy than the original, but that was an acceptable compromise for me to keep the cost down.

One of Dale and Rob's restorations
A custom bodied Skorpion/Crosley

One problem solved.

Next I approached Llew Kinst. I have known Llew for 40+ years, and he is not only one of the nicest guys around, but is a true Porsche “guru,” particularly on the older cars. His small but well equipped workshop has restored numerous classic street and race Porsches.

Llew and the 914-6GT Kremer Porsche he restored
Taken in Ernie Mendicki's shop

He also had bought a 2 liter 914 for his son, though the car had been converted from fuel injection to carburetors. This was often done when the owner had problems he could not solve with the original system, and the easiest thing was to just throw on a pair of carbs, though unless more extensive work was done to replace the camshaft and distributor the car would not perform as well as with the FI system. The last time I spoke with Llew about the car he was accumulating parts to replace the carb setup with the original D-Jetronic system.

I asked Llew if he would consider doing the mechanical work on the car. At first he demurred, since my original assessment indicated to him my car was too far gone and I would be better off scrapping it and getting a better base from which to start. But I looked more closely and revised the document, we discussed it further, and he agreed to take it on. So sometime in 2013, though I don't recall the date, Lee Cohee helped me trailer the car to Llew, and over the next month or so, in Ernie's shop, we disassembled it almost completely, though we left it in a state where it could be rolled on its own wheels. We also left the interior in place, other than removing the carpets, door panels, and driver seat cushion. The early 1970 cars had a bench passenger seat in order to keep costs down, but there were so many complaints about this that, from 1971 on, a duplicate of the driver seat was used. The 1970 bench was difficult to remove, so we left it in place. Rob had suggested that the paint could be removed with a process which did not require fully stripping the car.

Soda blasting uses baking soda to literally “explode” the paint off the vehicle. It is so gentle that window glass need not be removed. However, it turned out that leaving various sensitive components from the electro-mechanical fuel injection system bolted in place in the engine compartment was not a good idea and caused many problems later in the rebuild. The soda goes everywhere and is corrosive enough to interfere with these devices. In the next chapter I'll show you what the car looked like after the process.

The interior was a mess. This photo was shot in Ernie's shop as Llew and I began to strip the car. Note the peeling dash and torn seat. There is also a tear in the bolster that doesn't show, and the threshold sill plate is scratched. The carpets and door panels were equally trashed. You can also see the tear in the passenger sill which was done with a piece of wood for a project when the car was truly multi-purpose and used to haul building supplies. 

I will continue describing the rebuild in Part II, but here is another shot which provide an idea of what the car looked like just before I trailered it off to Nevada. Note the new rear rotor and that the front has not yet been replaced. The car was pretty sad, but this was the absolute low point. 

Worse then it appears
The bondo on that fender is 3/8" thick
April 2014