Front Suspension - Body Supports

I dropped the front suspension finally. The  track rod ball joints were VERY difficult to separate. I wonder if they were the car's originals, so nearly 40 years old! Still, after shattering the first separator, the ball joint exploded apart with the use of a better tool (which managed to stay intact!)..

You can see the struts and A-arms stored beneath the car for now. These will be replaced by more modern 911 struts which can be used with bigger brake callipers.

Here's the front wheel well ready for a clean-up.

I thought I'd show some pics of how I've supported the car's shell. There are very solid planks of wood running beneath the Longs; but I've also supported the rear part of the chassis member near to where I've been cutting and welding to avoid it sagging.

Me - 'hard at work'!

I realised I haven't put any pics of me on the blog. So here's a sooty one of me having a well earned cuppa!

Wheel House Replacement - Hell Hole continued...

Right, to recap..remember this?

This was the PO's attempt to patch up the area infamous for its rusting - the Hell Hole. This wall panel is referred to as the Inner Wheel House. I bought an entire panel to replace these bodged patches from Restoration Design. RD makes great after market panels for most of the important body parts of the 914 - like the Trunk Floor I installed earlier.

Here's the view from the inside.

Obviously before the replacement panel goes in, I needed to cut out all the poor repair and any other rusty bits. I honestly don't know what goes through some people's minds when they try to fix things. The rear trunk hinge was held in place by welds stacked on top of one another in a absolute mess. But it looks to me like the hinge bracket is copper or similar so will never be welded to! Look at the mess I was having to deal with..

So after all the crap was cut out, the hole to fill looks like this; inside and out.

It took an age to shape the replacement panel to neatly fit the hole but after much cutting and sanding the panel looks like this. Actually the fit is pretty good but I'll show that in a later post when I weld the bugger in!

Infamous 914 'Hell Hole' Repair Begins

This part of the 914 is often referred to as the Hell Hole because of its propensity to rust badly. The battery sits on a tray above this area. When rain water mixes with leaked battery acid it washes down into this hole and rots the hell out of it.

The previous owner had done some nasty 'repairs' which I needed to cut out and re-do. Here's the PO's 'repair' job being cut out. It was really bad and not connected to anything, so the Long was pretty badly compromised and had no rust proofing and was already beginning to rust again..

Here are pics of my repair work..the hole and the patch.

 I removed the section above and re-repaired the hole..here's the hole:

Here it is patched up:

Part way ground and primed..still plenty to do, including finishing off the lower part of the Long in the pic and patch up the huge hole in the bodywork above!

Passenger Chassis Longitudinal Repair - Part 2

Hole patched... The Long was two layers thick at this point so the repair has the same with 'underlaps' re-inforcing the join.

Ground smooth and temporarily primed afterwards....yawn!