Lighting
D-Jetronic
I'm Paul B. "Brad" Anders, I live in Phoenix, AZ. Born in 1958, I've been crazy about Porsches and sports cars since I was a child. I currently own the 914 described here and a '98 M3 sedan.
This car started life in 1970 as a 1.7L. It was bought in about 1978 by a friend of mine, Scott Detro, from his boss at the Bug shop he worked at. The car had been in an engine compartment fire (one of the early FI line failures). His boss was going to restore it, but never got around to it. Scott picked it up for about $2500. Scott and his brothers are all car wizards, and started to work on the 914. Mike installed the glas flares by using glas resin (which have now been on the car nearly 25 years and still look perfect), painted it (a garage job), did the custom steel work on the flares and valences, did interior and suspension work, and put in a 2.2L 4-cyl that they got from Joseph Moes. Joseph was a jeweler who had Garretson's build him a hot 4-cyl setup, which produced about 160 hp in its prime. It wasn't enough for Joseph, he got a V-8 instead, and his engine ended up in my car. Scott sold the car to his other brother, Todd in about 1980. I bought the car in December 1982. Later, after it got to be too much of a pain to get it smogged, I replaced the 2.2 L with a fairly stock 2.0 L injected engine, built by High Performance House of Redwood City. It was my daily driver for a number of years, but has seen very reduced mileage over the past 10 years as I've bought other cars.
In the mid-90's, I started taking it to Bob Grigsby for service - Bob is the coolest! He pulled the engine and we did a lot of restoration work - powdercoating, fasteners, gaskets, seals, etc. Of course, the damn thing still leaks oil, but only a bit! At the same time, I had Bodystyle in San Jose go through the car and do some maintenance work - new underseal, trunk paint, etc. They charged a fortune and did very mediocre quality work.
I moved to AZ in early '97, and in '98, I started taking the car to the track. My new mechanic, Jack Doverspike at Stuttgart Southwest, is a great guy and he helped me get the car track ready - some brake and suspension work. I also have a '98 M3, and despite 140 HP less, the 914 is only about 1 sec per lap slower at Firebird. It's my favorite track car. I also bought a 2003 Boxster in '07, which is like a modern 914, a really excellent car (with just a few chronic, expensive engine design flaws....).
In late 2006, I got my engine rebuilt by Stuttgart Southwest. My valves guides were getting sloppy, had some head cracks, some leakage, and my ring gap was way too big. My rebuild was pretty stock, with Euro pistons, stock cam. My main goals were to eliminate all oil leaks, make the engine as cosmetically nice as possible, and go for reliability and smoothness. After a few small glitches, everything is done and I have a smooth-running, powerful, leak-free, clean-looking motor. There are some pics of the rebuild in my pictures section.
Below is a list of the car's current configuration (updated as of 12/08/07):