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Well, to be honest, it did not excite me. It was
missing everything - motor, interior, gaskets & seals, etc. But, John assured me
we could make this toad turn into a prince. So, I agreed to buy it, and trailered it home. OK, well, I tried to trailer it...Jeff Scott, a friend and
local PCAer came with me to pick it up one night. Unfortunately, we forgot to
bring a wrench to loosen the bolt that holds the trailer ramps down. So after a
couple hours of trying to "create" a wrench, we finally gave in and drove over
to the home of Casey Holzman to pick up a wrench and loosen the ramps. A note
here....Max and Stephanie live out in the middle of nowhere, so it wasn't like
we could go to the local hardware store to pick up a wrench at 9 pm at night..
So I trailered it home, and this is what it looked
like when Nadine saw it for the first time.....
Needless to say, she was a bit concerned...I think
the exact quote was "and why did we buy this again?"
So, we set out to strip it down, grind and prime
the rust, and basically make it as prepared as possible for the body shop.
Bill at Autobahn kinda gave me a look like "you
want me to do WHAT with this? I'm good, but I'm not a miracle worker..." So, I
told him that not only did we want this to look better for Targa, but we really
wanted it to be a show car too....
So, we needed to come up with a paint scheme. We
originally wanted to do some sort of blue because Papa Smurf and our 993 cab are
blue - maybe Mexico blue or something like that. Then as we started to
look around, it came to us that we should do it in the colors of the old Sunoco
917 cars - blue and yellow with a red pin strip. So Bill went about finding the
correct colors.
Throughout this time, we were acquiring all the
"stuff" for the car, including GT style flares, roll cage, bumpers,
valences, and misc. other body parts. Most of the safety components (roll cage, Konig Seats, Deist Harnesses, camber truss, etc) came from
Stable Energies up in NJ. Bob there built Papa Smurf, so we have a long history with them.
Here it is at Autobahn getting flares, filling rust
and dents, and getting primed.
It was slowly but surely coming together. Nadine
went about fixing the door panels, completely recovering them with new vinyl and
new door pulls.
The next time we saw it, it was painted!!
Just like that. Interior, exterior, everything. Wow it looked good.
Next came putting it all back together. John came
by our shop to help. First we installed the OEM style oil tank in the wheel
well. The we took the engine out of Papa Smurf, and installed it into this car.
I was amazed at how easy that was: dropped out the entire engine, transmission
and exhaust all in one assembly. All in a couple hours.
We also had a few body panels to still install.
So, now we had an engine in the car but it was not
connected to anything yet. The car still needed all the stuff to accept a 6
cylinder engine. So, off it went back to Black Forest Racing so John and his
crew could run the oil lines, hook up all the gauges, relocate the battery, etc.
In the middle of this, John and his crew were
competing in the VIR Gold Cup, so back the car came to Exclusive Motors so that
we could install the seats, harnesses and other interior parts. This, as is
always, was easier said than done. Harnesses were easy...it was those seats.
It's just short of impossible to get the mounting bolts under the seats in a
914. But, with trusty welder in hand, David Fender and I managed to get them in
(though I learned later that the drivers seat is slightly crooked).
Unfortunately, we had to cannibalize a few of the parts from Papa Smurf,
something I really did not want to do. So, now we have to reinstall everything
back into Papa. But, by the end of the weekend, the car was ready to drive...it
just needed the engine to work.
When the Black Forest team got back from the track,
back it went to their shop to finish up.
See, we were trying to get this car finished for
the annual Carolinas Region Porschefest - a multi-event weekend consisting of a Concours,
Rally and Autocross. Figuring this would be the cleanest that this car would
ever be, we planned to show it, run it in the rally, and compete in the
autocross. Both Bill at Autobahn and John at Black Forest were definitely on
board with that timeline as this would be a showpiece for both of them. However,
at 3pm on Friday.....still no car.
Then, finally, John delivered the car back to us
at Exclusive Motors so we could clean it up, and drive it to the event
registration, which was luckily only 20 minutes away.
We realized when we drove it to the hotel that
this was the longest this car had driven under it's own power in probably 10+
years. It drove great, sounded wonderful, and really turned heads running
through town.
In the end, we won 2nd place in Modified Race Class
at the Concours, 2nd place in the Rally, and 3rd place in the Autocross. Not bad
for a first time out, not sorted out yet, with old suspension. Funny thing about
the rally....our odometer was not working. We guessed at just about everything,
and got all of the tricks right!!
OK, so how did we come up with the name "Huey"? The
car is painted the exact colors as the unstoppable Sunoco Porsche 917 driven by
Mark Donohue. So at first we thought of calling it "Donohue", but that sounded
too formal. After a long night and lots of beer, one of our friends came up with
"Huey" from DonoHUE. Since the other 914 is named "Papa Smurf", we figured it
was only appropriate to give it a cartoon character name. Besides, look
closely...kinda has a yellow duck bill, doesn't it?
Again, many, many thanks go to Bill Dunster at
Autobahn Collision, and John Forbes at Black Forest Racing for helping us get
this car to this point. There is still a lot of work needed to be done to get it
ready for Targa Newfoundland, but we have a great foundation to start with.
Click on the picture below for some pictures of us
in Huey at Targa Newfoundland.....
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