Porsche 914 Ferrari Swap #100: 100 episodes in and I'm still fixing my own mistakes!

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]Hey everybody, thanks for stopping in to check out what's going on at the Red Barn this week. Um, more distractions, let me tell you. I mean, you know, now it's a tandem bike and a half cage.

[00:00:10]What in the world is going on? Well, I do make some progress on the Ferrari powered 914, so stick around and see what that's like. Oh, and if you wait till the end, we got a quick kitty check-in as well. So, enjoy.

[00:00:22]>> [music] >> And I always find other things to get in my way of doing work on my own cars. And today, it's my buddy Tyson. Say hi, Tyson.

[00:00:33]Tyson is uh if you've watched the channel, you might have seen a Lotus 7 replica that we put an intercooler on and a new exhaust system. That's Tyson's 7. But today, we have a very special treat, and that is this is a real deal BMW 3.0 CSL.

[00:00:49]This is the lightweight. This is a factory lightweight car. Uh I had a a regular CS coupe.

[00:01:01]And this is one of my all-time favorite prettiest cars known to man. Uh he is prepping this car to sell, and at one point, a previous owner had put a half cage in it. So, it was here today, and uh we took way longer than >> [laughter] >> I would have thought, imagine that, to get this cage cut out of it. So, uh anyway, yeah, why am I not working on my own cars? Because BMW CSL. Oh my god, it is such a cool car. And uh now it's almost done, and so we'll be back on the Ferrari powered 914 here in a minute.

[00:01:45]Well, I don't know if you saw that in the time-lapse, but here's that cam seal, and you can see it can move. And I'm going to take accountability for that, that I did not verify it was dead straight up and down when I locked down the um the valve cover.

[00:02:04]But uh for any of you that doubted my pre-oiling system working, you can see there's oil underneath the lifters and there's oil all in these galleys now.

[00:02:15]And yeah.

[00:02:17]Uh the goo you see here on the lifters, I put some cam lube. I went ahead and added before I put the valve cover on, I put cam lube you know, pre-assembly cam lube all over this thing.

[00:02:29]Uh but there is the inside of a Ferrari 360 head.

[00:02:34]And so yeah, I'm glad I did that cuz that was probably not going to last being out of position like that. So uh yeah, unfortunate, but there we go.

[00:02:43]It's really interesting too when you get these valve covers, they come as one piece. But you can see there's this little separate piece right here, right?

[00:02:51]Uh these come connected and when you go to put them on you're like, "Wait a second, the cam's in the way."

[00:02:56]>> [snorts] >> And yeah, you have to snip these pieces off and so that's a little stand-alone piece.

[00:03:01]And then ridiculously, that little one around that stud, that is a stand-alone piece.

[00:03:07]And then this is this uh this sealer that's recommended by the Ferrari shop that I took it to.

[00:03:14]Uh I'll put the I'll put the name of it up here in the on the screen. I forget what it is off the top of my head.

[00:03:20]>> [snorts] >> But you can also see this is the cam cover that was off on the other side before. So I suspect I need to get new valve cover gasket and new one of these.

[00:03:31]And yeah, so that'll just take a minute to get.

[00:03:35]Uh there's a company Ricambi America uh back in the East Coast that gets stuff out pretty quick. So no big deal.

[00:03:44]And yeah, so there you go.

[00:03:47]Double overhead cam Ferrari 360.

[00:03:50]That sort of sucks, but it needed to be repaired or corrected.

[00:03:54]All right, let's get this valve cover put back on and here you can see what I mentioned earlier. This is how these gaskets come. They come connected and you got to snip this and have that separate piece go in. Haven't done that yet, but I did snip this little one up here and obviously I got to get that down there. But first, I have to put the uh the magical 1211 silicone liquid gasket on here. So, uh they want you to apply it to both sides of the gaskets, push those down and away we go. And uh a quick shout out to our friend who runs a channel called the Drive Tribe. I think I've got that right.

[00:04:33]Uh he actually pointed out, "Hey, when you're putting your cam seals in, make sure they're pushed all the way back and they stay straight." Of course, I didn't watch his video until today. So, uh thank you for that heads-up. I'll pay more attention. And so, yes, I've seated these seals all the way back in against the head, the way they're supposed to be seated.

[00:04:53]And so, now um uh I'm going to go ahead and get this all prepared and get the valve cover back on.

[00:05:03]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> So, that's the main valve cover and then there's the cam cover and it's got its own gasket. But the recommendation that I'm going to follow, you know, everybody's got their opinion, but they said, "Leave those little things long and after this is down and torqued and dried, you come back and snip those off and uh that way you've got the best possible seal over there.

[00:05:57]Anyway, you can see the deal. There it is squished out and so that's one installed. One installed cam cover and yay!

[00:06:05]The cam seal is no longer poking out like it was. So, more better.

[00:06:12]All right, so this isn't specific to the 914 Ferrari build. The LS car also needs this same solution or part of the same solution and that is some kind of heater.

[00:06:23]Uh I don't want to not have a heater. I think it's a a nice addition, at least a defrost kind of capability.

[00:06:29]And in the Ferrari build, it may end up with uh a complete AC heater unit, but they don't I don't want to do an under dash thing. Anyway, I have a small air conditioning unit that might go in separately as pure AC, but that means I still need heat. So, I know I'm going to only do heat in the LS car.

[00:06:49]So, I'm just going to focus on this for right now.

[00:06:52]Uh anyway, so this is a bit of a 914 tech geek fest, but uh maybe you'll find this interesting. This is the upper portion of the fresh air box that lives right under This is the grill where the windshield is. These fresh air boxes live right underneath there and here's one in place without the partial cover on it, but you can see that's where the factory fan lives. And you can see the regular vent systems in there. There's an upper portion it does the defrost.

[00:07:24]There's the hot or the the air supply that blows in there and there's flapper valves. Now, with the air cooled motor, hard to see, but there's another inlet, if you will, coming from what would have been the hot air blowing up through the longitudinals powered by a fan in the back of the car that came up and fed into here. So, you had hot air coming from the rear of the car, and this is like a blending valve system that can either dump it down on your feet or up to the defrost. There was also another component of it that could blow air out the dash if the car had dash vents. The LS car does not have dash vents, as you know, and the Ferrari car probably won't have them, either. But, let me get back to what I'm up to here. So, this is the entire upper component, the opening where the grill is at the base of the windshield.

[00:08:14]That's where the fan bolts on, and this [clears throat] is the factory setup. Uh forgetting that And please, guys who are painting 914s, would you please stop doing this?

[00:08:24]Take these parts out of the car, tape them off. So many of these air boxes end up painted cuz they're spraying through the great at the base of the windshield.

[00:08:32]Anyway, what you can see here, this is a completely stock one.

[00:08:37]And what it has is this raised section in the middle, and then what I call the rain hat, which is this section, because remember, this lives under the windshield, and what it has to have is the ability for water to go through here and drain out these drains, and there's a little Y section hose, and then this hose runs up and drains out under the gas tank area, but forget that for a second.

[00:09:03]But, what you can see is that rain hat overlaps this raised section so that any water that comes through there can't get into the fan and then into the car or drip out anywhere or anything like that.

[00:09:21]So, what's sort of typical for water-cooled 914s is to put a heater core in here.

[00:09:30]And so, if you Let me show you what I've done is I've taken another airbox and you can see I chopped that raised section out of it.

[00:09:50]So that I could fit a heater core in here.

[00:09:52]Now the fun part is what heater core do you use? And I've tried a bunch of different ones and anyway, uh in using our friend AI to do a bit of research um it appears that a fairly small heater core can work.

[00:10:09]And remember, the LS car has heated seats and it's a teeny little cabin and I'm not trying to you know, I'm not driving the car in the freezing cold wintertime. I'm just trying to have the ability to have a defroster, which by the way, I've driven this car in like you know, 40° weather fog and everything and it's only ever had a windshield fogging issue once and it was so intermittent that it really didn't matter.

[00:10:33]That's uh that's not stopping me from trying to solve for defrost. So, anyway, here's what I did. Um there are any number of heater cores that might fit in here and I'll show you kind of this is this is out of an S2 S2000 Honda and what I did is I started chopping away at it and with the idea that uh maybe I can cap these ends off and make it the exact right length to work inside here.

[00:11:03]But then I started looking around and I found this cute little thing.

[00:11:09]And the dimensions suggest that it will do an adequate job of window defrost and in combination with the heated seats I'll be fine. And like I said, I've been driving this thing around for 5 years with no heater at all other than the seats and it's fine.

[00:11:25]But as you can see when you chop this section out now I got to worry about rain getting down in here. So, what I did was I measured and whipped up this thing and 3D printed it, and it's a little angly ramp adapter plate.

[00:11:53]And what happens is it sits right there over this opening.

[00:11:59]And it's got a ridge all the way around it. You can see that once this is sealed down, this guy fits perfectly right there.

[00:12:10]And I've got a nice tidy I'm using only the amount of opening that I have for heater core.

[00:12:18]And then, I took one of the factory front pieces, and I deleted the rain hat, but I left a little lip in here. So, what happens now is if I kind of assemble this, you can see that that works like that.

[00:12:43]And now, all all I have to do is that lip is there so that I can design up my own little rain hat system, which can be perfectly shaped to do just what I need while allowing for as much air to be sucked past this thing as as I can, so I get the maximum amount of heat transfer out into the bottom for the fan.

[00:13:09]And I still have full season waterproofness of this system, which is critical, cuz what I don't want to do is what I've seen I've seen in other conversions where they just put the heater core in here, and then it's like, you know, if that gets rained on, that water's going right through the radiator core or the heater core or it's sneaking past something and it's going to get down into the fan, not good. So, anyway, now with that little adapter plate printed, yes, I've got to seal everything down and I got to come up with, you know, completely sealing this thing, but that shouldn't be a big deal.

[00:13:44]And as I mentioned, with this little lip, I'll be able to bond my own custom rain hat on here.

[00:13:51]And then it's just this it's all factory, right? I've got the factory blower motor, which if you look back on the previous episodes about the the LS car, I've got my windshield or excuse me, I've got my two-speed single button control with my wireless steering wheel buttons driving that fan just fine and I can program the speeds, so I can do some testing to determine, you know, what's the right low speed for maximum heat transfer, what's the right high speed for, you know, the quickest windshield clear or whatever it needs to be. So, this will probably be the same kind of setup that goes in the Ferrari car because then I can I can mount a small AC unit. I'll show you that in a in an different episode.

[00:14:37]Um and I don't have to try to package any kind of heat AC system.

[00:14:42]And away we go. So, uh I'm going to chip away now at designing this new rain hat and then this is going to go in the LS car and get proven out.

[00:14:51]And one last thing I'll show you is um again, if you go back to a previous episode, you'll see that I've got this servo controlled uh bypass valve.

[00:15:02]So, this will get mounted at the back of the car and then here I've got my some 3/4 in line that I've started uh prepping. So, that'll run on the outside of the longitudinals up under the fender and then into the heater core.

[00:15:17]And some, you know, I'm just I'm not going to do AN fittings everywhere. I'm just going to do heater hose. And so, I've prepped some of these heater hose things, and they just click right in here with a nice little step.

[00:15:30]You know, so that'll get welded on like that.

[00:15:33]And then I'll have a little bulkhead connector up in the inner fender, and [snorts] away we go. And so, yeah.

[00:15:40]The LS car will have quite the nice little heater, and this is going to be the proof of concept for anything I might do similarly in the Ferrari build.

[00:15:48]So, let me go figure out that rain hat.

[00:15:51]Oh, and and one other thing I forgot to say is if for some reason this thing just doesn't do it heat wise, then as I mentioned, I can find a larger heater core, and with this same approach, I can just make a different adapter plate that transitions you know, back to this you know, back to this same opening for the factory fan, and you know, design a different rain hat that solves for a larger heater core.

[00:16:20]But in all, uh you know, I've got a a modular, if you will, a modular modifiable design going, and I think it's going to work.

[00:16:28]Okay, so progress, but as [laughter] always, never as much progress as I hope. But the motor is nearly ready to go to try to figure out that crank trigger offset value. I do have to put the rear cam covers on. Uh the gaskets are here, so that shouldn't be any big deal. So, that's nearly done. And the heater stuff, while not important to get in the car running, is important because it moves the LS car that much closer to being able to be taken apart to get painted. Uh and I I need to make that happen. And I am going to have to solve for a heater with the with the Ferrari car anyway, so it's good to have in my back pocket. But with that, I am going to call it for this week and say, uh oh, stick around for the kitty stuff if you like. Uh but if not, like, share, subscribe, tell all your friends, do all that great stuff, and everybody take care till we talk again. Bye-bye.

[00:17:14]>> [music] >> Oh, let's see the little maniacs.

[00:17:21]There he is.

[00:17:23]There's the boy.

[00:17:24]>> No.

[00:17:24]>> Oh, that's the girl. Sorry.

[00:17:26]>> [laughter] >> That right there is Bloomer.

[00:17:27]>> Bloomers.

[00:17:29]>> And there's Knickers. Look at that. They just woke up.

[00:17:33]But they are and I'm outside.

[00:17:35]They are They are very curious.

[00:17:37]>> little babies. Come here little one.

[00:17:40]>> Look at the boy. Look at this boy. Hi.

[00:17:42]Hi. Hi.

[00:17:43]>> Okay.

[00:17:44]>> Oop. Here we go.

[00:17:44]>> Come here now.

[00:17:48]>> And the importance of fostering.

[00:17:51]Getting these guys socialized and being used to being pet and grabbed and touched. And where are they? They're everywhere. You got to be careful where you step. These guys are They're quick and they get under your feet in 1 second.

[00:18:04]So, I just kind of hang here for a bit.

[00:18:07]But yeah, the importance of socialization.

[00:18:10]Uh making these guys comfortable about being pet and Oh, and tipped over and grabbed and having their toes touched so we can do nail trims and all that sort of stuff.

[00:18:21]And yes, they're very They're bold, too.

[00:18:24]Everybody's climbing on me and which is great. They're not afraid of humans, which is >> [laughter] >> It's hard to get them on camera though cuz they're so curious and I got to look everywhere I move.

[00:18:34]>> And they're fast.

[00:18:35]>> And they're fast and they're playing with each other.

[00:18:38]>> You want me to move?

[00:18:39]>> Right under my feet. No, this is great.

[00:18:41]But uh yeah, so it's uh Look at this guy.

[00:18:44]He's very bold.

[00:18:46]>> This.

[00:18:46]>> Oh, here we go.

[00:18:48]And so yep, they're roused abouts now and they're They [clears throat] are in maniac wake up mode.

[00:18:54]Uh but like I said, the importance of fostering I keep saying it, but they keep interrupting me.

[00:18:58]Um you know, our cat our indoor cat Pandora we don't know her backstory. We just know that uh she is scared of everything.

[00:19:10]And we suspect it's because she was not properly socialized.

[00:19:14]And it took weeks before she came out after we first got her.

[00:19:20]Uh so, my lovely wife spends many many many hours per day out here.

[00:19:26]Gets up first thing in the morning and comes out. Has her coffee out here.

[00:19:30]Spends a couple hours with them.

[00:19:32]And here we are mid-morning and she's back out here playing with them.

[00:19:36]>> Well, part of that is is their food bowl needs to be refilled very frequently cuz all they do is eat.

[00:19:42]>> Right.

[00:19:43]Uh but this is so important for these guys.

[00:19:46]Uh [snorts] and then she's back out here, you know, mid-afternoon.

[00:19:50]Back out here in the evening for at least an hour or so.

[00:19:54]And uh the interesting thing about that is you might say, "Well, what about the rest of the time?" Well, the rest of the time these little guys are out cold sleeping.

[00:20:01]They pretty much spend maybe 2 hours, 3 hours a day max awake, playing, and eating, and then and pooping, and peeing. And the rest of the time they are in their little hidey sleeping.

[00:20:14]Uh because they are growing like mad.

[00:20:16]So.

[00:20:18]Uh yeah. Socialization. Socialization.

[00:20:20]When they're awake, get them around people. Hold them. Pet them. Grab them.

[00:20:24]Play with them.

[00:20:25]And uh they will be happy, bold, well-adjusted kitties when they get adopted.

[00:20:35]And that is the goal is to have everybody ready to go into their forever homes once they're at Morty's.

[00:20:44]Which with these guys is about oh, just about another month or so.

[00:20:48]But they're doing great and uh as we always say, support your local rescue. Thanks for watching.