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Comment by blastro | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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).

>>none of the new electric car offers that

Eh? I literally got a brand new electric VW e-Up last week, it's exactly that. It even still has analog dials, and VW provides a mount for your phone instead of an "infotainment" system. The height of sophistication is DAB radio and heated front window and seats.

I highly recommend it, it's a hoot - and with 150 miles range and rapid charging capability it's more than enough for all my needs.

That's the dashboard in it, it's as "bare minimum" as it gets: https://media.drivingelectric.com/image/private/s--7PGbPUr6-...

Not in the US I don't think. Even manufacturers that have been generally anti-touchscreen (read: mazda) went and stuffed in touchscreen HVAC controls because "people expect that in electric cars" or something.

The problem isn't only the dashboard, it is the pervasive surveillance. This car is better than most but I've read here before that it still had some flaws. Can't find the post at the moment however.

Find the radio, remove the aerial/sim card, done.

Ok as a band-aid, but doesn't create any market pressure to provide an alternative.

That's because "being tracked" has many benefits for the user and very few downsides.

That's a nice car. The range is a bit limited, but I could see myself buying it. Thanks for this info!

Nice. I’d buy one immediately if they were available in the US.

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

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...

Do any of those BMS do cooling? The parking lot at work hits 115F regularly and that is bad for batteries. I'd love a conversion, but I worry I'd get nissan leaf battery life vs tesla s battery life. I'm thinking something like an old mazda bongo import. For that matter, do any of the kits power the ac compressor?

Is there a place you know of to get production EV battery packs? I'm an amateur mechanic, and this might be up my alley, but (as above) I'm worried about these battery fire situations.

Unless I’m misreading what you’re after, batteryhookup.com

I and acquaintances in my hobby have dealt with them a lot, very great site.

All true, but a pack that has been in a crash might be broken in subtle and hard to detect ways. A short in the pack would be a quick way to ruin your day.

"Note 7 situation"—I don't understand this reference, can you explain?

Lithium-ion battery fire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_Note_7#Battery_...

Inverter not included .. useless

The inverter/regen braking, and charger units do have some firmware, but once everything is wired up and working, should work indefinitely without future OTA updates. If the national charging standard changes at some point in the future (or gets exported to another area (europe) that uses a different standard) you'll need to swap out the charger.

Companies like EV West in California and Swindon in the UK offer bolt-in kits for 1960s cars, in particular the VW Beetle and the original Cooper Mini

Long term, as engine parts become harder to source, especially for low volume european cars, Electric Conversion is rapidly becoming the accepted way to keep these classics on the road for another 100 years.

Engines like the VW typ 4 in the 914 are probably not going extinct anytime soon, you can order a ready to go longblock fairly easily [0]. For larger cars, a GM gen IV V8 can be had with CA-compliant emissions out of any parts catalog [1].

[0] https://scatvw.com/product/2-0-liter-long-block-24-875-779/

[1] https://www.jegs.com/i/Chevrolet-Performance/809/19421057/10...

Agreed; I suspect the reason why the VW has been targeted by EV makers is largely because the tuner/enthusiast crowd is quite large, and also it's an extremely well understood/documented platform. I haven't seen the EV West stuff up close in person yet, but it looks like as a platform to develop a set of standard equipment for other cars, the VW is a good initial choice for those reasons.

I have a similarly size/weight prewar french car, and when the engine finally gives out, will probably pull out the petrol engine and swap in a VW kit, but with a custom bell housing adapter. A 70-100hp electric motor meant for a VW is not a lot of power, but can provide enough low end torque to keep the car driving in modern traffic for 100-130 miles, which is probably enough for the use classic cars get.

People do electric conversions. I've been randomly watching someone on YouTube convert an old Jaguar: https://www.youtube.com/c/superfastmatt

Being an automotive engineer that worked for Tesla seems to be helpful, though.

> they have bigger monitors than my 14" work laptop

Unfortunately, though you might find one with a smaller screen, you won't find ANY new car with no screen these days -- backup cameras (and, by implication, a screen to see its feed) have been required on new cars in the US since 2018.

Some cars house the screen inside rear view mirror (notably some Subarus), as there is no specific requirement on screen size.

Most any vehicle with "telematics" available made in the last ~10 years is calling home with your location and a variety of information like cabin and outdoor air temperature, whether the wipers and headlights are on, etc. The data is sold to third parties, with varying levels of anonymization. This happens regardless of whether you're paying for a subscription to their telematics, whether you have a GPS navigation system optioned, etc.

I know this because a friend worked for a company trying to monetize that data for weather forecasting.

If you want to disable this nonsense, just unplug the cellular antenna and connect it to a dummy load.

My car has this, but with the sunset for 3G this year I am pretty sure the the data can't make it home anymore.

Some markets don't have this. You can't get remote start in some Toyotas etc.

Is this just a usa thing?

First you have to find the antenna, and there might be more than one.

Is anybody doing surveillance conversions?

Like take a stock Tesla, throw out the computer it comes with and replace it with one that doesn't spy on you. Keep everything else.

Probably easier than doing the reverse, isn't it?

That's a brilliant idea, and I think I might be well-positioned to offer it.

Not with Teslas specifically; I think surveillance is woven so deep into the fabric of the vehicle, it'd be a lot of work to get it out. But with most other makes, it's just a telematics unit that's easy enough to remove or bypass, and most of the other functionality just keeps working.

How would one price such a service? Often the research is 99% of the work, and the actual labor is just pulling a connector or two, perhaps fabricating a short bypass harness.

Depends how big you think the market is.

This x 100. My next car will probably have to be electric but I need it to be bare bones, serviceable and FOSS. DIY might be the only option

Yea electric conversion is a thing and according to Rich rebuilds they are making better kits instead of wiring everything manually.

But like all car projects it’s a money pit. Expect to spend $50k in parts and labor. And it may or may not be street legal for that price.

Driving the vehicle in places where you don’t have cell service or where it can be cold would be a bad idea if the conversion breaks down. Or just get a satellite phone and AAA.

I've been watching the Hummer conversion project from JerryRigEverything. It's a great series because he's not an expert on EVs, but he's competent with tools. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxkPuEmIX4U&list=PL0vZL9uwyf...

Surprisingly enough, you can get that from the BMW i3.

- The monitor is necessary but it is not a touch screen and it comes with a nice clicky knob to control it. Plus you can make shortcuts to go to certain screens with the radio station buttons.

- 2014 - 2017? all shipped with a 3g module that is now unsupported and not working.

- You can get access to munros teardown report for $10(1), and if you know where to look ;) you can find the service tech training manuals and their repair instructions for free which are all very detailed.

- realoem.com has exploded parts diagrams with part numbers for everything.

The only negatives really is:

- buying OEM parts comes with that BMW price premium and the dealer will 100% rip you off if you ever take it to them for repairs.

- The OEM tires, the only kind that fit on the OEM wheels, have terrible tread life.

(1)https://munrolive.com/support-%2F-store/ols/products/bmw-i3-...

It's still a thing. It's a lot of work though and it pretty much never makes financial sense versus just buying a used Leaf or something. But it's one way to get a car that's exactly what you want.

I'm currently working on converting a Mazda RX-8.

It definitely is a thing for classic cars. These people even have a discovery channel show about them. They look awesome, and are within easy electric range of my house!

https://www.electricclassiccars.co.uk

Check out the openinverter.org/wiki project. it’s very active, lots of development and backing going on

I also design a variety of parts for adapting oem ev parts for other vehicles www.bratindustries.net

How fast do you need to go? Hyster, Crown, et. al. make what you want.

Yep! There are some good resources at https://evwest.com (not affiliated but have bought parts from there before).

Check out https://www.everrati.com for electric conversions.

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

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.

The Suburban was sold as both a Chevrolet and GMC starting in 1937.

back when I was a teenager, I read a few bits that referred to it as a “VoPo”

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

924 here too! Totalled it (not that there was much to total) at the age of 20. May it rest in pieces.

I had an early 944 - it basically had all of the negatives of the 924 and only a few positives :-D

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.

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 :(

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.

968 FTW

I still want to buy a later model 90s one, throw an LS7 in there, and overhaul the interior. Would be an amazing vehicle.

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!

> 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.

Known issue with my car with D-Jetronic, too

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.

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.

I am sorry for your loss.

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.

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.

Thanks for this explanation. Totally makes sense!

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).

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