NaroEscape

I'll post something I posted on 914World:

So I was having braking issues at our last PCA Club Race - kept boiling the fluid. I think the problem was that the front calipers were not releasing from the rotors so it was like dragging the brakes all the time. It's been a long time (never??) since the calipers were rebuilt, and forever for the master cylinder so I decided to do a full brake system overhaul: rebuild all 4 calipers, new MC, new rotors, and new braided SS lines. Other than the caliper rebuild kits, I had all of the other parts already in my spares box, so this was a very cheap, easy winter project.

All that went perfect.

So...silly me, while everything was off, I decide to start scraping the undercoating off of the inside of the wheel wells with the idea I'm going to paint them (the old 'While I'm here' conversation we all have in our heads). As I was scraping, I came upon what I thought was a small crack... Nah, can't be, just surface paint crack, right?

So I investigated further, and...

Peter Zimmermann

The rear suspension in our IMSA GTU 914/6 was about to fall off at the end of the last 6-hour endurance race, in the mid-'80s, at Riverside Raceway. What a mess, and it had been expertly boxed/reinforced. I think that the only thing that saved the car was the roll cage, which passed through the fore/aft bulkheads and tied everything together.

Domer911

i would cover that back up and pretend you never saw it.

Use some of that stuff they are advertising on television that you can spray on a screen door and it holds water.

What you didn't know wouldn't have hurt you, but then you had to go and do that....

racer

I have some caulk you can borrow Yikes! Guess every 20 years on a 40 year old car you need to look at some of these silly stress points!

next time, go back to the 2.2l motor and run nothing larger than a 205-50 tire

skl

Found some interesting stuff on the '73 2.0 I'm restoring now- the old cancer was a lot worse than I expected, and the mice had found some very interesting places to die... that's all fixed now - in final primer and nearly ready for paint. The shop keeps promising me some new pictures...

Matt Romanowski

Wow. That's a good reminder for people to check there car. We put our car on a lift and do a complete nut and bolt / inspection before every event.

Jay Gratton

Thanks for posting, that is amazing.

kaerf653

Just a scratch, eh?

skl

Well, your idea worked didn't it??

NaroEscape

update:

So...the crack is worse than it looked...if that's possible.
Got the car over to my shop, took off the suspension, took out the engine, so we could see everything better.
Pictures below are from my camera phone, so that aren't great, but follow along with the arrows and lines: All the red arrows are the same crack, two different pictures, opposite sides of the rear outside suspension mount. The yellow line in two pictures is the reference point so you can see the continuity ( you guys dont need it as you know what you're looking at, but some of my buddies are not 914 guys)
The green arrows are ANOTHER series of cracks...

Oh, and I just got a text a bit ago from my mechanic saying that the metal around the front suspension mount points (the 3 bolts way at the front) are cracked too...

Guess we've been stressing Papa Smurf just a little too much???

skl

Holy smokes Bullwinkle!!!! Glad you weren't on a track when the car decided to split in two...

Richgreenster

A would love to see pictures of how you reenforce the area.

NaroEscape

you will see them as soon as they're done... Hopefully by the end of the weekend? we'll see...