Sa Porsche & Pancakes - Black Mountain Coffee Shop

Then within the last 10 years or so, companies like Restoration Design, 914 Rubber, PMB Performance and bellwether Automobile Atlanta really stepped up with better quality, more offerings and excellent component rebuilding services. Parts that I could have only dreamed of on my 914 and 912 restorations became readily available and have made it so much easier to save cars that would have been cut up for parts only a few years

earlier. The one area that has been disappointing is the availability of obsolete D-Jetronic and L-Jetronic fuel injection components. The particular L-Jetronic system my 914 used was only found in 1974 and 1975 1.8 models, with several critical one-year-only components and used in less than 1 out of 5 of the total 914s produced. Frustration with my 914 sitting for months broken down while I was searching for L-Jetronic parts or waiting for component rebuilds led me to the decision to box it up and store it away in favor of Weber 40 IDF carburetors. Seizing on all the renewed interest, the big aftermarket parts producers like URO and Jorg have really embraced the 914 market recently by offering a huge selection of 914-only parts at Volkswagen parts prices. I make that distinction after watching prices for 911, 912 and 356 parts rising at about the same rate as the values of the cars over the last few years. Porsche is also getting involved again in producing more 914 parts though their Porsche Classic program. I was lucky enough to find a full set of 4 new CV-joints on the Pelican Parts website that were new production by Porsche Classic after being listed as NLA for decades. The good thing was I didn’t have to swap out the complete original rear drive axles for some proprietary aftermarket ones. The bad thing is each Porsche CV-joint was $172 whereas stock aftermarket OEM Meyle ones for a SWB 901 transaxle are only $38 each. While nearly 5 times more expensive, still much more economical than the complete Porsche Classic 914 rear axles at $892 each! When you buy parts for a car nearing 50 years old, you need to expect the unexpected and hunt for proven German or US manufacturers like Sachs or Sebo for clutch and flywheel parts, FAG or SKF for bearings and ATE or Zimmerman for brakes while they still make them. One company that’s really been interesting to watch is AA Performance Products and the quality of their Chinese-manufactured parts improving over time. Talking to Jack Morris about my VW type-4 2.0 engine build, he now considers AA pistons and cylinder sets better quality than Mahle because of Mahle outsourcing their production to China. The bottom line is Chinesemade parts are only as good as the quality control of the manufacturer outsourcing their production. It is incumbent on the manufacturer to confirm Rockwell hardness and conformance to dimensional tolerances with constant random sampling from each and every batch received from China. As Jack Morris lamented recently, the skills of the mechanic used to be the weakest link in restoring drivetrain components not the parts.

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The other 21st century 914 aftermarket surprise I discovered is that the Internet has opened the doors for high volume drop shippers like PartsGeek.com and AutohausAZ.com to sell the same parts I get at vendors like Stoddard and Pelican for about half the price. Their websites also provide the ability to see realtime if parts are in stock or not. With a few mouse clicks on a cold winter evening, I can go down my shopping list, which for me are the individual .pdf pages from the Porsche Classic Parts PET (Porsche Elektronischer Teilekatalog) from the Porsche Cars North America website. By printing just, the specific pages that apply to my model 914 containing both the exploded diagram followed with their numerically organized parts number and description pages makes for a very thin parts manual I keep in a “project build” binder. I simply highlighted the part numbers and quantities required and then went to the vendor websites armed with the information needed to make precise ordering easy... my wife would probably say too easy. Then I made a list of what’s coming and waited for the Fed-Ex or UPS guy like a kid waiting for Santa. I set up a table covered with a moving blanket in a corner of the shop and as the parts arrived, I laid them out logically like a military dress inspection, shockingly exposing the degree of my OCD!

Once they all arrived, I took a photo of the parts all laid out that I keep on my Chromebook so that I can go back and look at it to refresh my memory months later. Then I Ziploc bagged, labeled and boxed them up in logical groups, such as “transaxle” or “rear sway bar” and stored them in a convenient storage location. As you can see from the photos I’ve included, it might sound kind of silly but there really are a lot of parts to keep track of and it’s proven to be a great tool in remembering what and where things go when I start reassembly.

Now that all the parts have arrived, I’ve gone ahead with disassembling the rear suspension and the dirty “working in a coal mine” job of degreasing and stripping the undercoating and loose paint off the entire underside from the bulkhead behind the seats to the rear bumper. The main goal is to search for any surface rust that’s formed or I missed in the 30 years since I last did this exercise under the car on jack stands laying on a creeper. On these pre-zinc-dipped cars, the factory seam sealer dries out and comes loose, exposing bare metal which quickly flash rusts. Cleaning up and arresting it before a new coat of 3M Seam Sealing Caulk and paint is applied to protect it for another go-round is time consuming.

Hopefully by next month I’ll have it all done so I can share the before-and-after photos with you.