Somebody Please Call 911

[Loudpedalgarage]

So lets start this journey off together on the right foot. First of all I have no clue what I'm doing but I am stubborn and have skills that far exceed my brain power. I am currently an operations engineer at a university power plant but have worked in several roles on motorsports teams and in industrial fabrication and repair. My unhealthy obsession with Porsche started in grade school with my third grade teachers 914. My parents lived three houses from the school so I saw the car every day until I was in high school when it disappeared. I was the odd guy in my group of friends, they all wanted 69 Camaros and 70 Chevelle's but I just wanted a long nose Targa. Growing up in a farm town in the Midwest there wasn't many Porsches running around so I had to get my fix through books and maybe catching an IMSA race on TV.

I was pretty lucky in that my father was an owner/driver of a fairly successful dirt stock car racing team. He leased a shop across town and there were always two or three cars campaigning out of that shop. I spent my teenage years hanging around the shop, helping when I could and learning as much as possible. This opened up doors for me in the future, I was able to work for several teams then eventually partnering with a long time racer and starting our own team. This is where I transitioned from crewing to driving. I had always done a little driving here and there and did a lot of testing when we brought two cars to the track but never had it been my full time gig. Along with driving I got heavily involved in chassis development. I was an "OK at best" driver but I knew a lot about shocks, tires and setups and was able to be fairly competitive because of that. I engulfed myself in this stuff and to this day there is nothing more that I enjoy than setting up a jig and building a chassis.



Fast forward almost 20 years, I am a normal working dude with a wife and kid and normal job. I rode sport bikes for fun for quite a few years but started suffering from lack blood circulation in my hands after about 30 minutes or so. That prompted me to get off the bikes and find another outlet, welcome back Porsche obsession! Of course when I decided to start looking for a car the Porsche market had already exploded undenounced to me. Prices were much higher than my budget and I thought this adventure was over before it even started. Then one day I was perusing the interwebs and came across the hoonigan video of Jeff Zwart and his 914-6. I had completely forgotten how my original love affair with Porsche began. This kicked off my search for a 914. I knew I wanted a project because I just cant buy something done. I wanted something fairly complete that wouldn't take much to get running then I could tinker with it while I drove it. Of course if I knew then what I know now I would have spent some more money and bought the nicest one I could and save some headaches. I ended up buying a non-running 72 914-4 out of Wisconsin, it was a complete car that hadn't been on the road in a long time but the owner did get it running off of a ketchup bottle of gas.

The deal was struck and in the height of covid a friend and I drove north to pick up my first Porsche. In order to keep this first post reasonably readable and on point I wont go into the details but basically my son and I wanted this car to look like a vintage race car that had been tucked away in a barn for the last 40 years. The basic specs of the car are 1.7L dual webers sideshift conversion, 911sc front suspension, wilwood brakes, fuchs, Long tube headers, Achtungkraft GTK exhaust, 911r style seats, chassis stiffening door bars, and a host of other nonsense. We have had a blast being a part of the Porsche community and doing mountain rally's with our homies but it is time to upgrade.



So here is what you guys have been waiting on, me finally getting to the point. It is time to build a 911. I heavily considered buying a 911 and modding it like I did the 914 but the urge to design and fabricate my own chassis is outweighing the convenience of buying a car. This is where I am sure a lot of you are going to start angry typing telling me "you cant do a better job than Porsche engineers" and "you don't know what your getting into". To those comments I say "you are correct but I really don't give a F!" While I love ripping backroads with my friends the real joy in these cars comes to me during the late nights in the garage analyzing a problem and solution then getting to work making it a reality. I have a small chassis table, a cnc plasma, a tubing notcher and a couple of welders, pretty sure I can make this happen.

So here is what we are starting with, the worst 1972 911T Targa in the country. It nearly fell in half as we loaded on the trailer with a forklift. Its ok though because I really only wanted it for the door pillars, windshield frame and cowl, everything else is easily sourced or fabricated. Next I really lucked out on the bodywork. A friend of mine acquired a 911 project that was in the midst of being turned into a race car. He sold me a complete never installed GT Racing 993 widebody front end, side skirts, quarters and RSR decklid. Only missing pieces of the puzzle so far is the roof (undecided if I will go Targa or coupe) and the doors (unsure if I will go glass or steel).



Please be patient as I slowly start to piece this thing together. Along with being a father/husband and working full time I am also a full time college student getting my business degree then eventually my MBA. Progress will be in short bursts as I have time but I am hoping that by posting on here and engaging with you all it keeps the fire to move forward on this through completion.

I know there will be a lot of questions on specific components of my build and what I plan on using and trust me I will answer those in time. For now I will leave you all to speculate and come up with all of the reasons I should not be doing this.

[shoooo32]

Welcome Nathan! I guess I'm now the last member of the Full Send Society without a Pelican build thread

Watching your transformation of the 914 from rusty hulk to rally car leads me to believe this 911 project thread will have a few followers. LFG!

[Showdown]

It's about to get real interesting over here...

Cannot wait to see this come to life!

[Joesmallwood]

Awesome!!! This should be fun to watch!

[chrisbalich]

Get back to work, hippie.

[47silver]

wild should be cool.

[mhurwitz]

Originally Posted by Loudpedalgarage

Please be patient as I slowly start to piece this thing together. Along with being a father/husband and working full time I am also a full time college student getting my business degree then eventually my MBA. Progress will be in short bursts as I have time but I am hoping that by posting on here and engaging with you all it keeps the fire to move forward on this through completion.
.

Well you have your work cut out for you. I’m hoping you won’t be a grandfather by time it’s done.
I believe a targa chassis has a stronger reinforced rocker section because of the lack of roof…..so that’s a positive 😁

[Loudpedalgarage]

Thanks for the words of encouragement homies!

The first order of business for the old 911 was get the scrap cut off of it (coincidentally that was 2/3 of it). Like I said I only need the door pillars/posts, windshield frame and cowl. I may end up using the section from the smugglers box rearwards depending on how I plan to heat the car, yes it will have heat!!

So basically here is how the car sits today, I need to drop it off at strip masters and have it media blasted so I know exactly what I'm working with and have a good clean surface to weld to.

[Gabe.]

Pumped to see the evolution Nate!

Build threads are great and being able to reread them once in a while is such an incredible thing to do. Puts you right back into the moment.

Looking forward to being along for this journey.

[Loudpedalgarage]

Thanks for the support homies!

I am way down the rabbit hole on chassis designs at the moment. Hoping to get the front clip taken to strip masters for media blasting in the next week or so. Then I can start fabricating the center tub of the chassis and cage.

[callard]

Cut off the windshield frame and make a full up track car (27% less frontal area).

[Loudpedalgarage]

Originally Posted by callard

Cut off the windshield frame and make a full up track car (27% less frontal area).

I don't do track stuff anymore and something tells me my wife won't want to ride in it without a windshield.

[ToySnakePMC]

I've enjoyed the build of your 914 (here or YouTube?? not sure) !! These are the best sort of threads we have. Definitely excited that you're going to keep us watching along the way. Best of luck ! Keeping the 914 around?? Patrick

[Loudpedalgarage]

Originally Posted by ToySnakePMC

I've enjoyed the build of your 914 (here or YouTube?? not sure) !! These are the best sort of threads we have. Definitely excited that you're going to keep us watching along the way. Best of luck ! Keeping the 914 around?? Patrick

Thanks Patrick!

You probably saw the 914 build on YouTube, I guess I should link my channel in this. I have made a couple of videos featuring the 911 build. I would like to continue the video series on it but YouTube videos take so much time even when they are half assed like mine are. I need to think about that one.

https://www.youtube.com/@loudpedalgarage3503

The fate of the 914 is uncertain at the moment. I have taken it as far as I wanted to and have enjoyed so many adventures putting on miles with my friends and family. I don't grow attachments to cars but I will miss this one when its gone. As it seems to happen though I will probably need to sell the 914 to free up space and funds for the 911 to be finished.

[Ryan_Cunningham]

Following. Glad to see other fathers with full time jobs and other commitments take on hurculean tasks like these!

[Loudpedalgarage]

Weekend update:

With the long holiday weekend I just knew there would be plenty of time to get out to the garage and get some things done on the 911....right? Well as usual the weekend slipped by and not a lot got done. Here is what I did get done though.

Saturday I drove a couple of hours to help out on another 911 build that some of you might recognize.




Had a ton of fun hanging out with these guys in the garage, watching Julian lay filler and shape the transitions from the flares to the body was really cool. I've done a fair amount of bodywork but it is never that fast and flawless, truly impressive!



While hanging out we were all chatting about our projects, each of us working through our thoughts and getting truly insightful opinions. With the help of Chris and Julian I was able to work through a few key issues and make some decisions on the direction of my build. Truly thankful to have guys like that to bounce ideas off of. Chris also sent me home with a windshield and decklid to help get me started with the mockup/fabrication stage. Sunday afternoon I happen to have about an hour to run out to the garage to pull the front clip off the table and set it up on jack stands. Hopefully Monday when I get off of work I can spend a little time out there and get it stripped and ready to take to the sandblaster. My last final for the semester is December 14th then I am off for a month. I hope to have a pile of tubing and a sand blasted clip waiting for me on the 15th!!

[nospiners]

Mother of God , what a project !!! Celette is waiting ..

[chrisbalich]

Originally Posted by nospiners

Mother of God , what a project !!! Celette is waiting ..

Tube chassis don't need a Celette.

[Loudpedalgarage]

Who's this Celette chick and why are all the guys on here obsessed with her?

[shoooo32]

lol no celette needed, unless they have a fixture to keep the VIN plate straight when you weld it to the tube