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In high school, my friends and I managed to resuscitate a 914 that had been stowed away in a garage for over a decade. We towed it to the top of a hill with a p

In high school, my friends and I managed to resuscitate a 914 that had been stowed away in a garage for over a decade. We towed it to the top of a hill with a pickup truck and attempted a clutch start after we'd picked up some speed. None of us (especially me in the driver's seat) expected this to work, but amazingly it fired right up. One of my friends managed to jog alongside and jump into the car as I tried to keep it puttering along, and we ripped a few laps around the neighborhood. Soonafter, we stopped the engine and were never able to get it started again. Thanks for bringing up this memory. Cool article.

Eric_WVGG 5y ago
My father had one of these just sort of gathering dust in the garage when I was growing up, utterly shocked when I turned 16 and he handed me the keys. I still like to casually drop "oh yeah, I used to have a Porsche back when I was 16." Although I must say it was in immeasurably better shape than this one :D I still dream of finding an old 914 and giving it an electric conversion… I'd have to do something about that rear window, though, it whips air forward when you drive with the top down.
- tricky 5y ago
  Hello to a fellow member of the "my first car was a Porsche" club. Mine was a $400 924 that broke at least once a week. Good times.
  - f38zf5vdt 5y ago
    924 here too! Totalled it (not that there was much to total) at the age of 20. May it rest in pieces.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - polynomial 5y ago
    The 924 had a design flaw in the engine. The oil pressure sensor was located in the oil pan at the base of the return pipe to the cam, rather than at the top of the pipe at the cam. Thus, the pipe could become clogged and no oil would reach the cam shaft, while giving no indication of the problem. Needless to say, this could be very bad.
    - hef19898 5y ago
      Reminds me of the bad rep the 2.4 VM turbo diesel got in the Range Rover Classic. Good engine, used in some Chryslers, and boats, from the 80s to the early 2000s. Why? Because the Land Rover engineers mounted the cooling flyid tank too low, the 5th (?) cylinder risked not getting enough cooling and tended to crack. The fix is to mount the cooling tank a couple of cm higher up in the engine bay.
  - Melatonic 5y ago
    I had an early 944 - it basically had all of the negatives of the 924 and only a few positives :-D
    - technothrasher 5y ago
      Come on now, the Porsche engine in the 944 is miles better than the Audi one in the 924. Got rid of all the vibration issues. Granted the base 944 is a bit slow, but I’ve currently got an ‘86 951 and it’s still a great car today. The weight distribution on it is just perfect. Much more fun to drive and way more reliable than the ‘85 Ferrari 308 that I recently sold.
      - ryandrake 5y ago
        I had to sell my beloved '86 951 to an out-of-stater due to California emissions madness[1], and miss it every day. I don't, however, miss the hours a month spent underneath it keeping it driving. Everything except the turbo was aftermarket by the time I was done with it. The mid-80s were this weird point in time where cars were still wrench-able, but manufacturers started adding electronic gizmos, not knowing how to make those gizmos reliable. It's like they were still figuring out how to make everything from engine ECUs to power windows, and trying ideas out on production cars. (It was also my first experience with an interference engine, and the terror of having your timing belt break.) 1: Car blew clean as a whistle, even to clean air standards that never existed in 1986, but since the intake and exhaust had all sorts of parts not officially stamped with the CA bureaucracy seal of approval, it had to go :(
    - mikepavone 5y ago
      I don't know about that. More powerful engine, 4 wheel disc brakes (rather than 2 disc, 2 drum setup on a base 924) and the switch to electronic fuel injection instead of K-Jetronic all seem like decent upgrades to me. I had an '83 944 as my daily driver for a couple of years and for a poorly maintained 25 year old sports car it wasn't so bad. The combination of an interference engine and a super-long manually tensioned timing belt was rather unfortunate though. I never had an issue with my belt, but adjusting the tension was very stressful. Especially since I was too cheap to buy the proper expensive tool and was using one of the crappy "cricket" ones.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    Those are slowly gett;ng expensive as well. 928s seem to be reasonably priced so far. No wonder with a car that was barely considered a Porsch back the day. It was one of the potential follow up projects, once the first one is done. That will take at least another two years... And I won't get permission for another project car in our drive way!
  - chrisdhoover 5y ago
    I have a 65/66 912 converted to a 2.7 liter six. I love this car. When I got it there were issues. I have worked through many of them. The PO did not understand the regulator for instance. I gutted the wiring and redid it. It now charges and there is no battery drain. Like OP the lights were not good. I replaced those with LEDs. The suspension was worn, it was completely replaced. The engine has good compression and the leak down showed it was healthy. It did leak oil though, sealed the engine. It no longer leaks. You can’t just buy one of these cars and drive it. You have to wrench on it. It takes care and feeding. I find it rewarding
- EastSmith 5y ago
  Is the electric conversion still a thing? I want an eclectic car with no monitors, no software updates, no surveillance (none of the new electric car offers that - they are calling home for updates and god knows why way too often, and they have bigger monitors than my 14" work laptop).
  - distortedsignal 5y ago
    Ford will sell you an electric crate engine for $4k [1]. At that point, I think it's up to you to supply the other parts of the system. I assume that at this point there are enough wrecks of Model S/X/3/Y that you should be able to pick up electric motors from them at junkyards. The thing I really worry about with electric swaps is battery. You could have a Note 7 situation on your hands _real easy_ if you're not careful. [1] https://performanceparts.ford.com/part/M-9000-MACHE https://performanceparts.ford.com/part/M-9000-MACHE
    - aetherspawn 5y ago
      Inverter not included .. useless
    - __david__ 5y ago
      "Note 7 situation"—I don't understand this reference, can you explain?
      - colanderman 5y ago
        Lithium-ion battery fire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_Note_7#Battery_faults https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_Note_7#Battery_...
    - KennyBlanken 5y ago
      Production EV battery packs almost always include some sort of BMS and have lots of interlocks and safeties. You don't really have to do much to work with them other than to talk to the BMS and not exceed voltage and current limits. If you do, the BMS will trip the pack's internal HV contactor. Safely installing/modding/repairing automotive fuel systems is likely just as, if not more, dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. There are few interlocks on automotive fuel systems beyond "if the engine stops spinning, turn off the fuel pump" or in some vehicles, there might be a crash/rollover fuel shutoff switch. People think working on EVs is super scary when reality is that you can usually pull a cover in the rear passenger area, find and pull a bright orange plug, and the HV system is rendered completely safe. EVs don't have a billion places you can scald or burn yourself, their "engine" compartments generally don't have much or any spinning objects that could deglove your hands, there's no fuel or oil to catch fire, no high pressure hydraulics...
- more_corn 5y ago
  I have an electric converted 914 if you want to pick it up. It’s even in need of a few battery packs so it won’t all be done before you get your hands on it.
- hindsightbias 5y ago
  Those that haven’t burned (fuel injected high pressure fuel lines degraded and cracked) have rusted out, just sits too low to ground and can’t be left that way. Rebuilt one at 16 and took it to college!
  - everybodyknows 5y ago
    > high pressure fuel lines degraded and cracked A vulnerability shared with all K-Jetronic engines. At some point I got clued in and kept a fire extinguisher on board my own 914, just in case. And it saw use, not on my own car, but doing damage control on a stranger's VW Beetle, in flames on the freeway shoulder.
    - psd1 5y ago
      Known issue with my car with D-Jetronic, too
- colburnmh 5y ago
  It's really a weird Volkswagen/Porsche frankenstein, despite what the badge says. Porsche designed it, Volkswagen built it. Outside the US, the Volkswagon version is 914/4, and the Porsche version being a 914/6. (The last digit references the number of cylinders). In the US market both versions were branded as Porsche because US buyers were deemed unable to understand that two different car brands used the same body style. (Times have changed.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_914 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_914
  - donw 5y ago
    The author has neglected to mention that you can find the engine by shouting "Gerald! Gerald!" at the top of your lungs in all directions. This will summon the ancient, exhausted hamster that powers the vehicle.
  - Eric_WVGG 5y ago
    back when I was a teenager, I read a few bits that referred to it as a “VoPo”
    - riedel 5y ago
      I remember it being referred to as Volksporsche. It was a strange mix of feelings. Nobody took it as a serious Porsche while owners that normally wouldn't be able to afford a 'real' one really loved the car for it quirks. To me this is a much better Volksporsche than the Cayenne/Touareg . And in hindsight the people who loved this democratized version of a sports car have a better place in history than all those who started the SUV boom in Europe's cities. While Porsche was made a bit fun of at the time, today's Porsches feel like an anachronistic thing that nobody desires but super rich and wannabes.
  - zeckalpha 5y ago
    The Suburban was sold as both a Chevrolet and GMC starting in 1937.
evanjacobs 5y ago
My first car was also a 914 that the father of a friend of mine had sitting in his garage. The transmission was shot (no first gear) and the suspension had given out but I bought it anyway for $800 and put about $2000 into fixing it. It was a really fun car to drive although it also shared many of the same quirks as mentioned in this story.
titzer 5y ago
lol, your memory jogged my memory of me and my neighbor, me 14, he 16, finding an almost-completely disassembled moped in the woods behind my house. It had been completely stripped--out of spite, it would appear, since everything not firmly attached to the steel frame, including all of the plastic shell parts, lights, switches, etc, had been strewn all around. Of the few things attached to the frame, it was lucky the engine, gas tank, and rear wheel, remained. We lugged this 200+ pound pile of junk a few hundred yards through the woods into my garage. Just replaced the spark plug cable, and it fricking started up! We then proceeded to replace the front wheel with a BMX bike tire, fashioned a makeshift seat out of a banana bicycle seat with some angle-iron, and I rode that heap of junk, wires flailing off the frame, for over a year. I got pulled over by the police for not having lights. Problem was, in the mess of wiring that did exist, I was randomly splicing into whatever, including a feed that apparently hadn't gone through a voltage regular, and would burn out the tail lights if I hit the brakes at too high of an RPM. After the police incident, my dad wouldn't let me ride it on the street anymore, and then eventually he took it to the junk yard one day when I was at school.
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
  I am sorry for your loss.
14 5y ago
lol that's a cool story you probably damaged the rings and cylinder wall by force starting it without taking some precautions first. If you have an engine that has sat a long time you definitely should pull the spark plugs and spay lubricant down the holes. Let it sit overnight. Then gently try and turn over the engine by hand and see if the rings are free or not. Something sitting so long the ring tend to stick to cylinder wall and turning over the engine suddenly can cause them to damage the cylinder wall and damage the rings. So while running down the hill you probably did some damage but it was moving fast enough that it could get enough compression to run while you had it running. After you stopped it and attempted to start it again there would be less oil on the pistons as well as any damage greatly reducing compression and preventing it from starting.
- blastro 5y ago
  Thanks for this explanation. Totally makes sense!
jacquesm 5y ago
Likely not enough lubrication happening. Pity, that engine would have been perfectly good if it had been treated a bit more carefully, and a matching numbers 914 would be worth something today. They're a very interesting car, mid engined lightweight sports car that handles a lot better than you would expect from something that old. There was a six cylinder version of this as well (super rare) and they made a prototype 914/8 which was never offered for sale, afaik only two were made (one for Ferdinand Porsche, one for Ferdinand Piëch).

Eric_WVGG 5y ago

My father had one of these just sort of gathering dust in the garage when I was growing up, utterly shocked when I turned 16 and he handed me the keys. I still like to casually drop "oh yeah, I used to have a Porsche back when I was 16." Although I must say it was in immeasurably better shape than this one :D I still dream of finding an old 914 and giving it an electric conversion… I'd have to do something about that rear window, though, it whips air forward when you drive with the top down.

tricky 5y ago
Hello to a fellow member of the "my first car was a Porsche" club. Mine was a $400 924 that broke at least once a week. Good times.
- f38zf5vdt 5y ago
  924 here too! Totalled it (not that there was much to total) at the age of 20. May it rest in pieces.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- polynomial 5y ago
  The 924 had a design flaw in the engine. The oil pressure sensor was located in the oil pan at the base of the return pipe to the cam, rather than at the top of the pipe at the cam. Thus, the pipe could become clogged and no oil would reach the cam shaft, while giving no indication of the problem. Needless to say, this could be very bad.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    Reminds me of the bad rep the 2.4 VM turbo diesel got in the Range Rover Classic. Good engine, used in some Chryslers, and boats, from the 80s to the early 2000s. Why? Because the Land Rover engineers mounted the cooling flyid tank too low, the 5th (?) cylinder risked not getting enough cooling and tended to crack. The fix is to mount the cooling tank a couple of cm higher up in the engine bay.
- Melatonic 5y ago
  I had an early 944 - it basically had all of the negatives of the 924 and only a few positives :-D
  - technothrasher 5y ago
    Come on now, the Porsche engine in the 944 is miles better than the Audi one in the 924. Got rid of all the vibration issues. Granted the base 944 is a bit slow, but I’ve currently got an ‘86 951 and it’s still a great car today. The weight distribution on it is just perfect. Much more fun to drive and way more reliable than the ‘85 Ferrari 308 that I recently sold.
    - ryandrake 5y ago
      I had to sell my beloved '86 951 to an out-of-stater due to California emissions madness[1], and miss it every day. I don't, however, miss the hours a month spent underneath it keeping it driving. Everything except the turbo was aftermarket by the time I was done with it. The mid-80s were this weird point in time where cars were still wrench-able, but manufacturers started adding electronic gizmos, not knowing how to make those gizmos reliable. It's like they were still figuring out how to make everything from engine ECUs to power windows, and trying ideas out on production cars. (It was also my first experience with an interference engine, and the terror of having your timing belt break.) 1: Car blew clean as a whistle, even to clean air standards that never existed in 1986, but since the intake and exhaust had all sorts of parts not officially stamped with the CA bureaucracy seal of approval, it had to go :(
  - mikepavone 5y ago
    I don't know about that. More powerful engine, 4 wheel disc brakes (rather than 2 disc, 2 drum setup on a base 924) and the switch to electronic fuel injection instead of K-Jetronic all seem like decent upgrades to me. I had an '83 944 as my daily driver for a couple of years and for a poorly maintained 25 year old sports car it wasn't so bad. The combination of an interference engine and a super-long manually tensioned timing belt was rather unfortunate though. I never had an issue with my belt, but adjusting the tension was very stressful. Especially since I was too cheap to buy the proper expensive tool and was using one of the crappy "cricket" ones.
- hef19898 5y ago
  Those are slowly gett;ng expensive as well. 928s seem to be reasonably priced so far. No wonder with a car that was barely considered a Porsch back the day. It was one of the potential follow up projects, once the first one is done. That will take at least another two years... And I won't get permission for another project car in our drive way!
- chrisdhoover 5y ago
  I have a 65/66 912 converted to a 2.7 liter six. I love this car. When I got it there were issues. I have worked through many of them. The PO did not understand the regulator for instance. I gutted the wiring and redid it. It now charges and there is no battery drain. Like OP the lights were not good. I replaced those with LEDs. The suspension was worn, it was completely replaced. The engine has good compression and the leak down showed it was healthy. It did leak oil though, sealed the engine. It no longer leaks. You can’t just buy one of these cars and drive it. You have to wrench on it. It takes care and feeding. I find it rewarding
EastSmith 5y ago
Is the electric conversion still a thing? I want an eclectic car with no monitors, no software updates, no surveillance (none of the new electric car offers that - they are calling home for updates and god knows why way too often, and they have bigger monitors than my 14" work laptop).
- distortedsignal 5y ago
  Ford will sell you an electric crate engine for $4k [1]. At that point, I think it's up to you to supply the other parts of the system. I assume that at this point there are enough wrecks of Model S/X/3/Y that you should be able to pick up electric motors from them at junkyards. The thing I really worry about with electric swaps is battery. You could have a Note 7 situation on your hands _real easy_ if you're not careful. [1] https://performanceparts.ford.com/part/M-9000-MACHE https://performanceparts.ford.com/part/M-9000-MACHE
  - aetherspawn 5y ago
    Inverter not included .. useless
  - __david__ 5y ago
    "Note 7 situation"—I don't understand this reference, can you explain?
    - colanderman 5y ago
      Lithium-ion battery fire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_Note_7#Battery_faults https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_Note_7#Battery_...
  - KennyBlanken 5y ago
    Production EV battery packs almost always include some sort of BMS and have lots of interlocks and safeties. You don't really have to do much to work with them other than to talk to the BMS and not exceed voltage and current limits. If you do, the BMS will trip the pack's internal HV contactor. Safely installing/modding/repairing automotive fuel systems is likely just as, if not more, dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. There are few interlocks on automotive fuel systems beyond "if the engine stops spinning, turn off the fuel pump" or in some vehicles, there might be a crash/rollover fuel shutoff switch. People think working on EVs is super scary when reality is that you can usually pull a cover in the rear passenger area, find and pull a bright orange plug, and the HV system is rendered completely safe. EVs don't have a billion places you can scald or burn yourself, their "engine" compartments generally don't have much or any spinning objects that could deglove your hands, there's no fuel or oil to catch fire, no high pressure hydraulics...
more_corn 5y ago
I have an electric converted 914 if you want to pick it up. It’s even in need of a few battery packs so it won’t all be done before you get your hands on it.
hindsightbias 5y ago
Those that haven’t burned (fuel injected high pressure fuel lines degraded and cracked) have rusted out, just sits too low to ground and can’t be left that way. Rebuilt one at 16 and took it to college!
- everybodyknows 5y ago
  > high pressure fuel lines degraded and cracked A vulnerability shared with all K-Jetronic engines. At some point I got clued in and kept a fire extinguisher on board my own 914, just in case. And it saw use, not on my own car, but doing damage control on a stranger's VW Beetle, in flames on the freeway shoulder.
  - psd1 5y ago
    Known issue with my car with D-Jetronic, too
colburnmh 5y ago
It's really a weird Volkswagen/Porsche frankenstein, despite what the badge says. Porsche designed it, Volkswagen built it. Outside the US, the Volkswagon version is 914/4, and the Porsche version being a 914/6. (The last digit references the number of cylinders). In the US market both versions were branded as Porsche because US buyers were deemed unable to understand that two different car brands used the same body style. (Times have changed.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_914 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_914
- donw 5y ago
  The author has neglected to mention that you can find the engine by shouting "Gerald! Gerald!" at the top of your lungs in all directions. This will summon the ancient, exhausted hamster that powers the vehicle.
- Eric_WVGG 5y ago
  back when I was a teenager, I read a few bits that referred to it as a “VoPo”
  - riedel 5y ago
    I remember it being referred to as Volksporsche. It was a strange mix of feelings. Nobody took it as a serious Porsche while owners that normally wouldn't be able to afford a 'real' one really loved the car for it quirks. To me this is a much better Volksporsche than the Cayenne/Touareg . And in hindsight the people who loved this democratized version of a sports car have a better place in history than all those who started the SUV boom in Europe's cities. While Porsche was made a bit fun of at the time, today's Porsches feel like an anachronistic thing that nobody desires but super rich and wannabes.
- zeckalpha 5y ago
  The Suburban was sold as both a Chevrolet and GMC starting in 1937.

evanjacobs 5y ago

My first car was also a 914 that the father of a friend of mine had sitting in his garage. The transmission was shot (no first gear) and the suspension had given out but I bought it anyway for $800 and put about $2000 into fixing it. It was a really fun car to drive although it also shared many of the same quirks as mentioned in this story.

titzer 5y ago

lol, your memory jogged my memory of me and my neighbor, me 14, he 16, finding an almost-completely disassembled moped in the woods behind my house. It had been completely stripped--out of spite, it would appear, since everything not firmly attached to the steel frame, including all of the plastic shell parts, lights, switches, etc, had been strewn all around. Of the few things attached to the frame, it was lucky the engine, gas tank, and rear wheel, remained. We lugged this 200+ pound pile of junk a few hundred yards through the woods into my garage. Just replaced the spark plug cable, and it fricking started up! We then proceeded to replace the front wheel with a BMX bike tire, fashioned a makeshift seat out of a banana bicycle seat with some angle-iron, and I rode that heap of junk, wires flailing off the frame, for over a year. I got pulled over by the police for not having lights. Problem was, in the mess of wiring that did exist, I was randomly splicing into whatever, including a feed that apparently hadn't gone through a voltage regular, and would burn out the tail lights if I hit the brakes at too high of an RPM. After the police incident, my dad wouldn't let me ride it on the street anymore, and then eventually he took it to the junk yard one day when I was at school.

NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
I am sorry for your loss.

14 5y ago

lol that's a cool story you probably damaged the rings and cylinder wall by force starting it without taking some precautions first. If you have an engine that has sat a long time you definitely should pull the spark plugs and spay lubricant down the holes. Let it sit overnight. Then gently try and turn over the engine by hand and see if the rings are free or not. Something sitting so long the ring tend to stick to cylinder wall and turning over the engine suddenly can cause them to damage the cylinder wall and damage the rings. So while running down the hill you probably did some damage but it was moving fast enough that it could get enough compression to run while you had it running. After you stopped it and attempted to start it again there would be less oil on the pistons as well as any damage greatly reducing compression and preventing it from starting.

blastro 5y ago
Thanks for this explanation. Totally makes sense!

jacquesm 5y ago

Likely not enough lubrication happening. Pity, that engine would have been perfectly good if it had been treated a bit more carefully, and a matching numbers 914 would be worth something today. They're a very interesting car, mid engined lightweight sports car that handles a lot better than you would expect from something that old. There was a six cylinder version of this as well (super rare) and they made a prototype 914/8 which was never offered for sale, afaik only two were made (one for Ferdinand Porsche, one for Ferdinand Piëch).