Porsche 914 – January 2012 – #44

I have been getting a few parts together for the body work. We are ready to put the Porsche up on the rotisserie and hope to have that ready by EOD Monday.

Basically I have a new front pan and all the needed parts from 3 cars and i am grabbing the best bits for the full pan. The plan is…

• Get all parts cleaned and ready.
• Remove the parts from the pan and add the missing lip metal to the front headlight drain area.
• Cut the pan out of the car.
• Replace & butt weld in the inside fender skirts, about a foot or more that is rusted out.
• Weld in the replacement pan and parts.

This will be a fun project and presents some challenging fabrication.

Porsche 914 – November 2011 – #43

I am in the middle of tearing the whole car down to the metal for welding and pan replacement. As I am pulling the parts off, I am preparing them for storage and in the case of the front end, paying the debt now to upgrade to the new bits. Porsche uses a torsion bar approach to the front suspension and it works really well. The factory setup is pretty forgiving and yet it is not real precise and this has created a large aftermarket in upgrades for the 911. I wanted a more precise handling in the 914 with the newly upgraded suspension and I wanted to be able to adjust all the elements (height, tow and camber) as easily as possible. With the new struts and tie rods, I decided to also add the racing polybronze suspension bearings for the A arms. You can see the difference below and I am really looking forward to getting this setup mounted on the car in the spring.

 

And the pretty new A Arm all cleaned up, epoxied and bearings fitted…

Porsche 914 – November 2011 – #42

I wanted to include some pictures of the new racing suspension for the car, we have a complete 5 lug conversion, restored 911 brake calipers and a strengthened set of trail arms from Eric Shea on the back, The front has Elephant Racing struts and bump steer adjustable tie rods.

  

Porsche 914 – November 2011 – #41

After doing some trial fitting of my new front suspension and the new racing bushings from Elephant Racing for my 911 front end, it because clear… I was screwed. The reason is that the car had a previous repair to the front end. From what I can tell, it was a small bender on the passenger side and the repair included replacing the front fender (it is perfect, no bondo) and some work to the clip. The shop that did it was terrible and awful hacks, there are rivets and brass brazed welds. In fact when I went to remove some of the welds, they didn’t even connect to the metal below.

So this forces me to fix this properly because the torsion bar mounts are not aligned and the higher tolerance of the new parts do not work. So I bought a new front pan with mounts and I will keep you posted as I get this cut and installed. Although it is hard work, it is pretty cool work, you have to get it right. In the end the fix should be very difficult to determine.

Here is how it looks now, UGLY!

Here is the new clip to install…

Porsche 914 – September 2011 – #40

After taking a break, I am back at the restoration and upgrade of the 914. During this time, I have collected a number of awesome parts for the suspensions and the engine modifications. I put the car up on stands before I left this last week for California and getting back and seeing the car in the air this weekend was a real motivator.

Last winter I finished up the conversion to a 5 lug 911 suspension and I was not satisfied with the stance of the front end, it was too high and did not fit the way the new fenders looked. So I ended up ordering a racing set of struts from Elephant Racing and these allow lots of setup options and lowers the stance by an inch in the front. The reason for going with the setups from Elephant Racing (which is a bit more expensive than other strut lowering services) is the flexibility in adjusting bump steer, negative camber and the right fit with my Fuchs.

Running Windows 8 Developer Preview on Parallels 7 and OSX Lion

While I was at build this last week, I was determined to get Windows 8 running on my MacBook Pro (17″, 8 gigs of ram). I made it work and there are a few issues to keep in mind. Here are the steps I used to install the following…

• Windows 8 Developer Preview x64 with Apps
• Visual Studio 11 Ultimate Preview

Both of these installations are on the supplied media stick they gave out with your tablet at Build.

I am running OSX Lion on my laptop and Parallels version 7. Here are the steps…

• I have a baseline Windows 7 setup for Parallels with all windows updates and security signatures updated, I then cloned this virtual machine to a new name and called it “Windows 8 Dev Preview with VS11”
• Start the VM and login. Set the registration to a new PID with your MSDN subscription.
• Shut down the VM and open the settings for the VM.
• Click the “Hardware” tab and choose boot options.
• Enter the text “devices.video.pci_device_id=0x5005” in the boot flags to force the video driver load…
• I then plugged in the Build Stick into a USB port and choose to associate the USB with the running VM named “Windows 8 Dev Preview with VS11”. (Note you just need to make sure your VM is enabled with USB in the settings for the VM and you will be able to access it via Windows 7 Explorer)
• I navigate to the “Windows 8” folder and run setup.
• I chose to not retain any settings and the installation of WIndows 8 begins.
• After install, I then installed Visual Studio Ultimate from the stick.

I have made remote debugging work to the tablet, so that is cool. I also did a Bootcamp install for bare metal testing.

Porsche 914 – January 2010 – #39

I have been working on wiring, putting in the European turn lens and kit, new H4 headlights and new fog lights. These things are all in disrepair from the PO, so I wanted to make sure there are no shorts (found two) and have good night vision.

Today I received my new, hand-crafted fenders from Tangerine Racing, so I tacked them on to see how they look, the will be so nice with my restored Fuchs! I will weld these onto the car in the spring and then we will get a fresh paint job.

Porsche 914 – January 2010 – #38

The engine was started and running this week. I worked on the air flow (critical on a Porsche 914) and then, the car died. I noted that a coil wire came off and then noticed more and more exposed copper in the harness. I knew this but blew by it in order to get the engine working, but I could not procrastinate it anymore and I needed to know that whole “end to end” electrical system is perfect. So I pulled on of my other EFI harnesses out of the garage, removed all the old, hardened coating and fixed all the wire. I then re-wrapped the harness and tested every connection. New harness goes in for testing in the morning.

Porsche 914 EV Project – December 2009 – #37

Engine is in, transaxle bolted up, fluids all ready… And now for a million little details to get it up and running.

 

Porsche 914 EV Project – December 2009 – #36

Tonight I finished up the electrical system. I wired and fused the new power supplies for the head unit and the amplifiers. I wanted a clean, pro looking install as most 914’s have hacked in stereos and they look like crap. I ran the lines, put in proper grommets and protected the wires from heat.

We bled the brake system and tested all the new hoses, we are good on brakes. Next we will test the fuel system and make sure the new system, tank and relocated fuel pump are all working. Then the engine is up next… we will swap in the 911 clutch system and mate up the transmission. We are in the home stretch!

I ran the new power wires up the tunnel and put in the Dynamat for the sound insulation, this will go under the restored sound pad.

 

Cool, new sound system amplifiers.