Porsche 914 Inner Wheel House Repair continued...

Now the rusty metal and crappy repair job done by a previous owner have been cut out - and the replacement panel has been cut to fit the hole, it's time to weld it in. The fit is pretty good.

I used conventional welders clamps together with Integrips to hold the panel in place.. here are pics from the outside and inside before welding.

And here it is tack welded into place.. You've got to be pretty strategic as to which points you tack weld as you move around the panel, so that it doesn't shift or stretch due to the heat of the welds. 

From the inside, you can see the plug welds I made to attach the panel to the inner structure of the Sail Panel.

It's also important that when you weld such thin metal that you don't put too much heat into any one point. So I welded roughly inch-long lengths and allowed them to cool before I welded near them again. While they cooled, I would place welds on the other side of the panel. Here you can see the short lengths of weld that I would eventually join together.

And here's the whole panel completely welded around...

Chassis Patch Fabrication

This is the last 'patch' to the main chassis member on the passenger side. It was tricky because there is a curve to the box section which needed to be bent into the patch. Here's the area I needed to patch.

I was using 16ga sheet metal which is roughly 1.5mm thick, maybe a little more.  Firstly, I made a straight bend in the sheet with a radius to match the chassis it will sit on - I used a 15mm diameter pipe in the Brake to get the radius.

Then, I cut up the sidewall and bent the part to match the curvature of the chassis. I welded in triangular 'darts' to fill the area that was opened up by the bend. You can just about make out the two small triangles welded in...

Once it fitted, I sprayed the back side with weld-through primer and welded it in place. I still have some final edge-welding and grinding to do to finish it.

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!