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Mon Sep 26, 2011 8:52 pm

I have been working on the restoration of a 1965 notchback that I bought as a father-son project. The car turned out to be in much worse shape than we originally thought and so a different notchback was built for my son. Since I still had the original, I decided to restore it. I have shared some of the details with folks on this site and it was suggested that readers of this forum might be interested. So, here are a sequence of photos that document some of the work. I hope that you enjoy it.

The first look as I found it = I think that I will name her Lizzie- it is a 1965 sunroof notch

A 1500 single carbed motor

But, some rust

Lots of rust

And some suspicious wiring

I decided to reinforce the shell before removing anything - see no floor on the driver's side

Pulled the engine

only to discover it was full of water

that dissolved the case

Sourced a pan from the DDB

did some patch work

added Por-15

And went back to the body to look at rust - that's where the sunroof drains

I decided to cut off the bottom portion of the car

gone

and welded a donated section from a squareback into place

And took a break, feeling pretty good about this...

Mon Sep 26, 2011 9:11 pm

Wow, nice work so far. That car was ROUGH

That engine case is nasty, I can see one of the studs is about to fall out..

Mon Sep 26, 2011 9:19 pm

Wow! That's awesome. I really admire people who really bring back the dead!!!

Mon Sep 26, 2011 9:21 pm

Nice job on replacing that entire section. It's looking good, keep it up!

Tue Sep 27, 2011 5:53 am

WOW! Great work. That is a "tad" more than a weekend job.

Tue Sep 27, 2011 5:58 am

Nice work...keep us posted.

This makes me want to buy a welder, btw.

Tue Sep 27, 2011 10:54 am

I'm def. Going to be in this thread, great name btw. Keep up the awesome work!

Tue Sep 27, 2011 11:20 am

i need to learn how to weld. :D

Tue Sep 27, 2011 2:30 pm

very very nice. keep em coming. will be following your posts with popcorn :D :D

Tue Sep 27, 2011 2:56 pm

Nice to see another one being brought back! Keep up the nice work. :D

Tue Sep 27, 2011 3:00 pm

WOW! You're a man on a mission...keep at it, it looks great. Not many here that would head to the garage and cut the bottom of the car off only to graft another in...perhaps to part-out the top half, but not make it whole again...sheesh, and to think I struggled with hacking my bump stops :shock:

Tue Sep 27, 2011 6:12 pm

Guys
Thanks all for the comments. This has certainly been a much longer road than I anticipated and there were times when I wondered why I was doing this. But it's be fun... More pictures will follow.

Tue Sep 27, 2011 8:56 pm

Dave, those pics bring back a lot of memories (of doing my own stuff). The title to your build thread sounds familiar too. :wink: Glad to see you posting the early pics here, since some of them were on an old server (with Matt's build if I remember right). It's been a long 3+ years now with how far that car has come along. I think you were still gathering up stuff for it back when I started working on Krunchy. :shock: The last couple of pics you sent me really show the difference you've made with it. Aren't you glad you didn't leave that "patina" on it? :wink: I'm glad you're going to keep the original color of it. I hope to see it next summer at the Invasion. That'll be a hoot. 8)

Tue Sep 27, 2011 9:16 pm

Bob
I started down this road in 2004, that's when I bought the green notch. Originally it was supposed to be a father-son project but because of the somewhat serious rust issues I shifted gears, found a rust-free shell and built this one, also a '65, for Matt.

I finished Matt's in 2006 so I have been working on this car since then - yikes - that's slow progress. :D

Tue Sep 27, 2011 9:47 pm

Wow, I didn't realized it's been that long since you started that project. Five years, but it's come a long way since you started. 8)

Tue Sep 27, 2011 10:20 pm

:shock: Holy Crap PD that's a lot of work! I'm crying me a river for the 2 smaller then dime sized rust holes that I have, lolololol. I look forward to watching some more progress :D

Fri Sep 30, 2011 8:55 pm

Hi Guys
So, the story continues. Bob, thanks for letting me use a version of your thread title - it seemed appropriate. Now that the original upper body was tacked to the new lower body, I had to go around and weld, sometimes on difficult, complex curves. And while I tried to cut away all the rotten rusty metal, I had to remember that with this age of car the metal thickness varied, and so sometimes the metal was thin and I would burn through and other times it was easy to weld. For example, this is along the front inner fender area

the door post

Once the main welding was done I look at other areas and could not help but notice the front clip was in trouble...

I drilled out the spot welds and removed it (what else could I do?).

I found another nose section and welded it in place

Some fabrication was necessary for the rear inner fender wells.

a new section behind the rear seat

and a new firewall (actually, I am not sure if we call this a firewall but they do in hotrods)

And to make sure that the car sat on its pan, the 'guys' came over and in exchange for food and beverage we remounted the shell on the pan

Sat Oct 01, 2011 7:35 am

Amazing. Keep up the good work!

Sat Oct 01, 2011 8:49 am

For a porsche guy :wink: your commitment to your notch is fantastic! =D> =D> =D> Keep it up!!!!!!!

Sat Oct 01, 2011 8:58 am

Did you use the three bolt hinges at the top and two bolt hinges at the bottom for the doors?