How it all began. I imagine that I've never been satisfied with the performance of my first Karmann Ghia since I first purchased and drove it a few years back.  As others have mentioned before, while the Karmann Ghia may look like a sports car, it's engine doesn't live up to the expectation that the exterior suggests.   Virtually as soon as I noticed this, I began looking into ways of improving performance.

I mulled over various engine hop ups, just like many others.  I looked into bolt on's, rebuilds, new high displacement engines, and wasn't particularly impressed.  I spent many nights  pondering the problem with Richard Troy (RT), considering and comparing the different options on the market.  Through all the hemming and hawing, I saw 3 basic solutions.  I could blow X amount on a high performance engine that would almost by definition be sub par on reliability.  I could spend a lot more on an engine built by a company that deserves its reputation of building trustworthy engines, and be reasonably satisfied.  Then there was the idea of using a Porsche engine.  For about the same cost of outfitting a car with a high quality/cost souped up VW engine, I could drop in a stock Porsche engine that was designed and engineered to run as a system.  No mixing-and-matching pieces, such as heads from this company, cam from another, modifying the stock VW case,  and putting them all together, and running them on the basis of  "The engine runs well right at this moment."  This isn’t the universal answer for everyone, but it worked out well for me.

Well, once I had justified the idea and cost of the new engine, I got together with Richard and asked that we put things in motion.  We considered various engines and engine pieces that could be built and run, weighed the costs, amount of work involved, and the amount of time it would take.  All things considered, I think I made a wise choice of the engine I settled on, a 912 engine that Richard had rebuilt a number of years before.  The engine had been built with the intent of installation into a Karmann Ghia, so much of the detail work had already been done, and she was just waiting for me on the shelf.

So the engine was chosen, then came the clincher on the whole deal.  One of Richard's acquaintances was selling a black '73 Karmann Ghia who's condition sounded at least as appealing as the price.  There were very few outward drawbacks to the car, mainly the lack of an engine.   And since I already had a '73 more or less identical to this one, the purchase seemed appropriate.

After looking it over, the deal was set.  I purchased the car, and made arrangements to have it towed to Richard's place so we could tear into it and put her back on the road where she belonged.  The concept sounded great, I picked up this second car for a steal, which was more or less complete, save for the large hole where the engine is supposed to be.  Get the 912 engine, install it, do a little detail work, and I'd have two roadworthy '73 Ghia's.  My first Ghia would be sold with the original engine, and the money from the sale would go towards paying off the 912 engine.  Nice idea right?  Well, first we had to overcome a few stumbling blocks, mainly mechanical in nature.

Lets see, first the engine.  The initial obstacle I believe was the engine tin., Even though most of the work was already done, we had to do the final fitting, trimming a little here, a little there, fabricate some new pieces, and find a few old one's.    For various and sundry reasons, we had installed the engine with some difficulty, and found that some pieces weren't a perfect fit.  Rather than pulling the engine again and doing it the easy way, well, we stubbornly decided to fix the problems in the car.  Tip number 1, for those who follow in our footsteps, get the engine tin installed COMPLETELY while its out of the car and on the ground.  (Except for the rear most tin, the one that goes over the muffler.  You can fit it to the engine, but it needs to be off of the engine during installation.) And if the tin doesn't fit perfectly when its first installed, use good judgment, but understand that it'll likely be easier to just drop the engine for re-adjustment.  Its a real pain working behind the fan shroud and around the intake manifolds trying to line up little holes for little screws that seemed at the time to serve no purpose other than to annoy me.  Well, ok, I'll give those Porsche fellows credit and assume that Yes, I really do need all of them.

Next was the air cleaners, and the throttle cable/linkage.   I went through three bell crank designs before we found one that had a good connection to the new throttle cable and allowed a full range of motion.  Even then, it was only a functional design, but not well engineered.  I went through two throttle cable failures before I found a much more elegant solution using a Porsche throttle linkage component.  (More on that in the engine write up)  The air cleaners were off the shelf chrome replacement units that are low enough so they don't  interfere with the deck lid or hinges.   A slight modification was done to each to allow a mounting point for the spring return on the throttle.   A new Bosch 6V starter was installed with correct bushing to match the 6V flywheel.  Then we started on the wiring.  New wiring had to be run to convert from an alternator to a generator, and we installed a new voltage regulator for the generator.  All of this was done with a distinct style in mind, we wanted the wires to look like stock.  One heater box had to be slightly modified, a portion was cut off and a hole covered over.  This was done to allow the modified muffler design that Richard had made up to mount correctly without obstruction.

With the engine installed, we thought we were on the home stretch, and turned our attention to the rest of the car.  The Ghia had come with an adjustable front beam, and was riding very low.  The stock size tires rubbed badly on the inner fenders in the front.  First I tried to raise the ride height back to normal with the adjusters, and then found that I had no suspension travel on one side.  Crud.  So then we tried an earlier model front end from a bug that Richard had lying around.  It was readily available, and wasn't slated for any other purpose.  The only drawbacks were that it was drum brakes without an anti-sway bar.  I figured I'd just take care of those problems later.

We bolted that front end up, and tried out the brakes.  We couldn't get any brake pressure, and assumed that the problem lay with bad slave cylinders.  These we tried replacing with a dozen or so used ones we had on hand, but unfortunately luck was not on our side.  All of the slaves we could find were either the wrong model, frozen, or they leaked.  At some point, we decided it must be the Master cylinder, and decided to replace that.  I was able to get one from a local parts shop, only to find it was defective, and in a bad way.  When we tried to bleed the front brakes, we still found no pedal firmness.  So we tried to bleed the back brakes, and after putting a hefty amount of fluid in the system with nary a drop found at the rear, we started looking around the car.  No drips, no leaks.  Where was all that fluid?  Apparently the entire time we had been pumping the brakes, it had been pumping the fluid INSIDE the passenger compartment.  The pedal cluster was swimming in a pool of brake fluid!  So that was a glorious mess to clean up, soaking up the puddle, cleaning out the carpets, and pulling the master again.  That was swapped out, and with the new one in place we finally got the brakes to bleed in the rear.  We still had the problem of having suitable slave cylinders for the front, and the local parts places were closed.  After hunting around Richard's shop for solutions, we found another late front end, WITH discs and anti-sway bar mounted on a Ghia whose turn had not yet come.  So, we swapped out the front end again and set everything back up, including the front brakes, the tie rods, steering and alignment.  The calipers were swapped out with a pair of Ghirling Calipers that I had acquired from a parts car months ago.

After that, we assumed that all was close to completion.  The engine was running, and we took off on her first test drive.  We got about 25 feet.

When in motion, we heard a rather loud, expensive sounding noise from the rear of the car.  It was a rhythmic clunk that happened at about every wheel revolution.  So back into the garage we went.  We started on the simple stuff, the rear brakes.  So began another fiasco.  The rear drums WOULD NOT come off.  We tried heating, we tried banging, we tried pulling and we tried swearing.  Nothing would make these things budge.  We even made a good stout puller to try, and that didn't work.  We wasted more time on this problem than we care to admit to, and we were dead in the water.  Working up the line on the advice of friends, I pulled and checked the CV's and shafts.  There was some gauling on a few of the bearings and load bearing surfaces, but I didn't notice their severity at first glance.  That may have been the source of the sound, as the CV's bound up and released their energy, or it might have been in the brakes.  I don't know, we never did get those drums off.

After the CV's were torn down, inspected (by me) and declared sound, I checked the differential, spider gears and the ring and pinion.  For those who've ever wondered, it IS possible to remove the side cover and extract the differential with the transaxle in the car (we have the pictures to prove it!), but it's not much fun.  Unfortunately, very little was learned from this, everything still looked fine.   The differential we reassembled and new gear lube was pumped in.  All we could imagine is that it has to be something messed up in the brakes.  So, we got fed up, and decided to replace the whole rear suspension, spring plates, trailing arms, brakes, etc.  We decided to go this route for three reasons, 1: Eventually those drums would have to come off, 2: the problem noise we were hearing was likely in the brakes, and 3: , the car had been lowered by a previous owner, so having the whole suspension out would give us a chance to re-index the torsion bars.

The suspension components were pulled from a spare pan Richard had.   The new suspension required the correct parking brake cables, so those were replaced as well.  After the suspension was reinstalled, I went about finding suitable CV's, pressing them on good shafts, and greasing them up with new lube.   All new brake drums, shoes, springs, slave cylinders and cables were used on the rear.  I had in effect completely replaced the rear suspension with all new brakes, replaced the front suspension twice, disassembled the transaxle, installed the engine,  and got the running gear as good as I could get them.

There were some issues with the interior that had to be dealt with.  A previous owner had also decided on replacing the Ghia seats with some other brand.  These were really unsuitable, and I tossed them out.   A pair of correct vintage seats in usable condition were located at a local car yard, and were carted up to Oakland on my roof rack.  The old one's were carted back down for disposal.  (Let it never be said that roof racks are just pretty add ons meant to be drooled over at car shows.)  Complicating the issue of  reinstalling the new seats were the seat rails, or rather the lack thereof.  The outer rails had been removed on both sides, and new one's had to be welded  in.  These we found in yet another pan Richard had laying around, a rusted hulk that likely won't see any more functional use in the future.  After cleaning and drilling the spot welds,  the new rails were set in place after careful alignment, and were welded in by Richard with his MIG.  The seats were installed, and they slide at least as easily as my stock '73 seats do.

Towards the end of the project, we started working on the steering wheel and column.  The car had come with an absurdly small steering wheel that was quickly pitched out.  Richard had found an excellent steering wheel from a '73 Porsche 914 that had its original leather in excellent condition, and it was decided that we install that.  The steering column needed to be modified, as the splined end of the shaft was longer on the 914.  The details are many and I'll skip over them here, but rest assured the final product is functional, and of excellent quality.   We were both very proud of the stock look it produced, and the vintage is even correct, even if the lineage is a little skewed.  The way I figure it, this Ghia is already a hybrid with the 912 engine, so the Porsche logo staring back at me seems a correct thing to have.  Along these same lines, I installed a 914 Tach that replaces the stock Ghia clock.  The Generator and oil pressure idiot lights were relocated to some unused holes I later found behind the old cracked dash face, and I installed a gauge cluster that sports a fuel gauge, oil pressure, and oil temp gauges.

Then of course are the hundreds of little detail jobs.  New external door handles were installed, and the latch mechanism on each side had to be removed and carefully lubricated and filed down to work correctly.  All of the rubber fuel line, gaskets and filters were replaced with new, quality components, including those in the fuel tank.  Also replaced were the rubber brake lines running to each slave cylinder, as well as the blue cloth covered line from the reservoir to the master cylinder.  A new battery was installed, as well as new battery cables.   The car needs new mirrors all around.  The  wiper arms were replaced, and OEM wiper blades were installed.  The tranny likes to pop out of reverse.  At first we thought it might be from the short throw Scat shifter that came with the car, but a spare stock shifter from Richard's shop faired no better.  I had to swap it out for a rebuilt when I replaced the clutch, around 13K miles after I started driving the car.  The dash needed to be completely overhauled, I installed a new dash top, face and knee pads.  The fresh air vent knobs and mechanisms had been stripped out by a previous owner, likely from an old installation of an air conditioning system.  I was fortunate to find all of these parts at a car yard, and got them in good condition for a steal.

So what was good about this car?  Well, it's remarkably free of rust.  There's only one bad area, up in the front under the weather stripping seal for the front hood.  It needs to be dealt with, but its not a structural component.  I was saved by a merciful fate that the wiring was in good condition, all of the lights worked fine with the exception of the backup lights, and that has an obvious reason for its failure. The body is in a very nice state, its straight, has a decent paint job and will be a good candidate for a future repaint that I may or may not ever get around to.  The carpets are a decent aftermarket installation, and have proven very functional.   It's a '73, so it has all the late model goodies and it's still smog exempt.

I drove the Ghia home on Saturday,  March 28th, 1998, the day after the passing of Ferry Porsche.   I couldn't help but think about the man, his father, the company and the legacy they had left behind, and the little bit of history I had pushing me effortlessly down the freeway to its new home.  The engine gives me everything I was hoping to get, and particularly after putting on a new 050 distributor and getting it tuned, she runs like a top.  Every time I start the engine, I can hear her asking to be run the way she was meant to be run, and its a wonderful feeling to be in command of such a graceful beast.  Perhaps these sentiments are overly emotional , but I'm proud to be her owner, and I'm proud that both car and engine are back on the road with just a little help from a couple of car nuts like Richard and myself.  The cuts on my hands have healed, the grease is mostly cleaned from my clothes,  and now I can enjoy the car and the miles we'll share together.