What’s In My Garage? Story and Photos by Aaron P. McKinnon
After Streets of Willow.
J
ust over 3 years ago, I ran out of a combination of luck and skill at Streets of Willow. I had just finished a conversion to a 5-lug and built a new motor that I had integrated a CB Performance Type I dry sump into a Jake Raby inspired, 2056cc Type IV. Before finally heading to the track, I ran through all of my normal routines: nut and bolt, fluid flush, test drives, etc. The car felt great, but it was not to be my day. Roughly 1.5 laps into my warm up, I felt the car take a funny set in the “Bowl Turn”. This turn leads into the back straight followed by a downhill chicane. Normally, I would be flat out down the back straight and brake heavy into the left at the end of the chicane, but due to the strange feeling I got out of the rear of the car, I decided to come in and investigate. I was peddling home nice and slow, and as I reached the end of the straight and the beginning of the downhill section (sometimes referred to as the “waterfall”) the rear of the car came around hard and fast. Counter steering did 30 PANDO | December 2017
nothing, and I found what must be the only stack of hay bales on the circuit. The bales made a mess of the entire driver’s side of the car. The driver’s side trailing arm and the exhaust sustained some damage, but other than that, the damage was cosmetic. So, this began a 3-year build, and I learned new skills in the art of body work. I began work fairly quickly with a portapower trying to push out the big dents. The front came out pretty easy, but the door and rear quarter panels were “goners.” A call to a good friend and local 914 parts hoarder yielded front and rear quarter panels and a door. I moved the car to a friend’s warehouse, where we removed the rear quarter panel, cutting along sight lines we could use to properly align the donor part. After skinning the old and new parts as necessary, we used a combination of plug welding and seam welding with a TIG machine and silicon bronze rod. We thought this would give
us the best chance of the welds not cracking later in life since the car would continue to be raced in some capacity. I also took this opportunity to weld in a longitudinal stiffening kit. Once the welding was done, I returned the car back to my driveway where I spent an enormous amount of time with hammer and dolly getting all the metal work ready for the next stage. This is hard work my friends! The next step was a skim coat of 3M light-weight body filler followed by blocking, priming, and more blocking. A staple of the SGV hot rod scene and all around good guy, Dennis of Foreign Motors Body Shop, took pity on me and showed me some of the finer points of blocking a car. Once Dennis was happy with my work, he had me shoot my doors and jams myself (I have some experience shooting two stage paint) then it went to his shop for the final barrier, color, and clear coats. The car was repainted in the factory