63 birch green squareback build

[cdollar]

Merry Christmas everyone! I Figured I'd finally start a thread for my 63 birch green squareback. I bought this beauty from Franz of KCW fame back in the spring of '08. It's a March of 63, Germany-delivered square according to the birth cert. Fairly complete, and overall pretty rust free and straight. The interior paint is still OG birch green, and you can see some of the OG BG showing through the exterior repaints.

IIRC Franz said the car was pulled from a junkyard in Grand Junction CO. Based on the lack of rust and totally sunbaked interior I'd guess it spent most of it's life here in the SW. There was some Canadian money down under the carpet and seats, so it might have spent some time up north too.

Here's some pics of it from '08 when I brought it home:

Toasty dash!

The plan is for a basically stock resto, seeing if I can take it back to OG birch green in the process. I got in on the Gizmobob S&P cloth buy so I've got that going for me when it comes to the interior, but as you can see from the pics my dash is totally shot, and I figure that's my biggest hurdle moving forward.

[Nate M.]

Cool car! I look forward to seeing the progression. . .
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Regards,

Nate M.

Squarsche build
Heavy Metal Affliction feature

For heaven's sake, put a type4 and a Porsche 5-speed in there. . . It's the right thing to do!!

[cdollar]

I started into disassembly a couple of weeks ago. I didn't think this part of the process would take as long as it did… Lots of bagging and tagging parts, being careful not to break stuff, and tons of photos. At this point I'm keeping pretty much everything I'm taking off, even if it looks toasted. Disassembly is boring, but here's some pics:

You can see some of the tarboard insulation that was put on the pans. As best I can tell there were 2 layers of this stuff installed. In some places it preserved the pans nicely, but in others you can tell it just trapped water and helped rot things out more. And although you don't see all of it in the pics, I do have the armrests and wraparound trim for the doors.

The rear area

Yummy

Found almost zero rust after pulling the windows!

[cdollar]

Here's a few more teardown pics. Found another rodent nest under the passenger foot rest panel… Just par for the course on this beast.

Some more interior panel removal and out with the dash

[MonT3]

Congrats and look forward to your build!!!
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MonT3
67 Squareback
64 Squareback
63 Squareback
Engine rebuild
Trailer rebuild

[cdollar]

Thanks for the replies! I'm really enjoying diving into this build!

The bulk of the rust I need to deal with is in the pans (go figure). It's kind of hard to tell in the pics, but at some point there was some body damage done to the driver side, going across the fenders and door. I guess the window winder mech was damaged somehow in the process, so they cut/bent/welded it together… Poorly (I need to take a pic of the mech and post it up). As a result the driver side front window wasn't able to close all the way, leaving at least a 1.5 inch gap at the top. I'm pretty sure this was the biggest contributing factor to the driver side pan rust. There's not much left of it in the rear bathtub section.

You can see more of the tarboard stuff remnants here… What you can't see so well is the big rusted out area below the heater channel vent area

After cleaning up the mouse nest

Battery tray

And from below

[cdollar]

Here's what the pans looked like after cutting out the nastiest of the rust and giving it some love with the wire wheel. Sorry for the pic quality here

You can't tell in the pics above but the driver side has the same forward rust that you see here, just not quite as bad

The rear portion of the pass side is mostly solid

[notchboy]

Will you be fixing the pans while the body is on or will it be a body off?

Looks like a nice solid base to start a stock resto
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[Mike Fisher]

That is a nice rear deck! Some 1/4 patch pans from ISP West and Master Series silver & black for the pans & chassis?
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https://imgur.com/user/FisherSquareback/posts
69 FI/AT square Daily Driver
66 sunroof,67,70,71,71,71AT,72,72AT,73 Parts
two 57 oval ragtops sold
'68 Karmann Ghia sold

Society is like stew. If you don't keep it stirred up you end up with a lot of scum on the top! - Russ_Wolfe/Edward Abbey

[Bobnotch]

[Mike Fisher]

He doesn't mention any desire for doing a multi-year body off/show car restoration so I'm guessing NO. I'm sure he'd save at least a year buy leaving the body on it.
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https://imgur.com/user/FisherSquareback/posts
69 FI/AT square Daily Driver
66 sunroof,67,70,71,71,71AT,72,72AT,73 Parts
two 57 oval ragtops sold
'68 Karmann Ghia sold

Society is like stew. If you don't keep it stirred up you end up with a lot of scum on the top! - Russ_Wolfe/Edward Abbey

[EverettB]

Cool, looking forward to progress!

[Tram]

[cdollar]

Thanks for the replies! Before I get to that, here's a bit more of what's gone on before now. These are some pics from this past Saturday. I needed to take care of some Christmas stuff and didn't want to get in too deep into the square, so I decided to play a bit with trying to strip back the oversprays to OG paint. I did the same thing a few years back with my single cab with decent results, and I'm hoping this turns out at least as well.

Here's the tools for the job... Jasco "Green Strip" paint stripper, rubber gloves, LOTS of razor blades, 0000 steel wool, and rags/water/etc. to neutralize it all.

I started with the inner door pillar on the driver side.

It appears that there was only 1 coat done here, and it started to lift off really easily. Here it is bubbling up and then some pics of taking off areas moving up the pillar

I was pretty pleased with how that was going so I went back to it later that evening, starting with the rear fender.

It looks like (at least here anyway) that the exterior got at least 2 coats of extra paint where the inner door jambs only got 1. So for this round the first coat of green strip only softened up the outer layer of paint - it didn't bubble up. So I took off the soft layers with razor blades until I got down to the bottom of the respray paint. Then that last layer of green strip would bubble up and I'd finish it off.

You can see some of the primer showing here... This isn't from over-stripping.

Moving further down I started to get into the previous body damage. The brownish body filler here is a real PITA because it starts to stain the OG paint that is softened from the green strip. Gotta move fast, and accept some imperfection.

Here you can see some of the swirls in the paint from when the body work was first done on the fender. This is why I don't get too bent out of shape when trying to expose OG paint... You never know what you'll find that's totally beyond your control.

A full Saturday evening of stripping and this is all I had to show for it...

[cdollar]

[Bobnotch]

[cdollar]

[notchboy]

Hey I was just curious. I love seeing an old pan get restored.

I wouldn't waste time on the paint strip though.
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[cdollar]

[Bobnotch]