Mallee Notch

[NUG637]

This has been a LONG drawn out project for us but i thought i best bring you up to date for the past 10 years...

Back in 2012 a Friend of ours Known as Phat Bug on the forums got a tip off of an old volkswagen parked under a turned over water tank out in country Victoria (Australia). With only seeing a low resolution picture of the tailights and boot sticking out from under the tank he made the trip out to inspect and collect.

Late '63 Notch, been in that shed for at least 20 years after it threw a rod through the block

And my favourite part........ 5 matching 2 tone slotted rims

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Few more Pics after it was given a wash...

Salt 'n' Pepper Vinyl.............

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The strip-down to clean-up has started, while it was Still in his possession,

A tp 1600 from a later type 3 was source to go towards the build while continuing to clean. Being is Country Victoria for so long it had seen quite a few mice plagues in it time and was rather pungent of mouse piss..

Dent in rear qtr before....

after....

rims/caps got some love.....

Not the same wheel but you get the idea

and gave the top of the guard a hand cut to see how it might turn out with a full polish.

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few more pictures of the clean and polish, presented rather solid considering

This thing is beggin for a sneek style clean up....

some patina from bad past repair

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It was then listed for sale and that's when we took over the project. My wife and I drove the 3500kms round trip from Brisbane (Queensland) to Bendigo (Victoria) to pick her up...

this was when we got her home. next to my 58 beetle at the time

The smell of Mouse wee inside this thing was unbearable. but being quite the suvivor of sorts, the decision was made to do a preservation style restoration on it. This includes fixing any rust, blending the repairs and bad areas to match the "original" colour as best we can with as little body work as possible

all new mechanicals are in order, new rubbers and seals and new headliner and carpet but all in all a MASSIVE wash inside and out. Rust prohibiting coatings inside of panels etc and hopefully end up with a tidy mildly Patina'd notch.

abit like the Aussie 61 beetle my wife had for a few years

[NUG637]

After sitting in storage under our possession for some years we started the disassembly which showed a few areas to be really thin!

Got stuck into the bit of rot in the "a" pillar first

once i cut the rust out of the inner reinforcing i peaked down into the heater chanel and noticed some sort of ring…. took me a little bit but once i dug it out i think it may have been a hubcap puller? if it wasn't it sure acts as one with the hook on the end

i drenched inside of the both sections with rust kill throughout the process of fixing it all up… the inner panel was abit hard to get to which made the welds ugly but its doing the job and the outa skin turned out Smack on no filler required at all!

[NUG637]

Inspect, clean and anchor wax under drivers rear guard

Made a start on the passenger rear guard after pulling out a pile of mice skeletons from the inner sill that the guard bolts to...

Not as solid as the drivers side but not bad at all.... a 50c piece on the lower heater channel/sill.. also abit of rust around the rear bumper mount.

The guard had a trowel up in the past to which needed repairing

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job 1 - Fix inner heater chanel....

Fold up a replacement piece after i painted the inside of the heater channel, and burn it in...

while i had access to it i welded a nut on the broken bolt and wound it out to

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started on making the outa skin next... tried bending it up in one piece but couldn't get the curve i needed along the bottom edge so made it out of 2 pieces....

coated the inside of sill and the inside of the repair panel.

buzzed it in... Becauce it is hidden by the guard and i wanted it done i kinda rushed it and it warped a little with the heat but you will never know with the guard on *oops*

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Our shed mascot doing frequent quality control checks

Next job was to make a start on the rust around the rear bumper mount

started off by making the pressed recess out of some shit we had laying around the shed....

With abit of a file she came up alright

then cut the old mount off the body and drilled out all the spot welds and split the 3 piece panels for the actual mounting face on the engine bay side...

the old captive nuts had bolts broken off in them so new nuts welded on

and welded that sucker in

Rust free rear quarter complete

after further inspection the passenger guard is pretty toast... the complete bottom half of the guard needs to be replaced as the screw driver fell through it in many paper thin places....

[NUG637]

Any places that look thin get the screw driver treatment.... if it pierces through i fix it... if it doesnt, then its good to go... knew it was thin around the headlight on the passenger side but a lot thinner then i had hoped.... once i popped the headlight out there was a hole in the headlight bucket too from the mud wedged around the bucket over the years....

initially didn't think i would be replacing2/3rds of tin around the headlight but do it once and do it properly

on the same guard i got 2 other patches to weld in on the top and bottom corners of the guard against the A Pillar...

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same guard - different repairs

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Got my Hands on a repair Section for the passenger rear guard

Used a piece of copper behind the panel with the pin holes to fill up the pitted areas, worked a treat, kept the weld on the backside flat and pulled the heat out of the area abit to....

while reworking and rewelding the tail-light mounts also popped this dent out a little further, could probably get it real nice with abit of light hammer and dolly work but the door is just a wobbly so will probably leave it to match in...

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the last of the hangables to need work

like i said... just thin in places

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the decision was made to see how much OG paint was left under the decklid, drivers rear guard and the front of the hood as it was heavily patina'd from a bad past repair and didn't match the rest of the car which is pretty presentable. So scrapered back to as much OG paint as we could find until making the decision it was very little original paint left on these panels and now in for a full respray/blend of said panels was in order

it was very pitted so had to sand back until the paint was flat but didnt bother to fill or beat out any dents or deep scratches as I'm hoping to mimic its history but through a more presentable coat of paint abit like how i had done on a previoud beelte

then prepped the rest of the panels for some high build to feather out my repairs... as the original paint was put on with grey primer, a weiss sealer and then the blau top coat i wanted to mimic that too so if we polished through in places it will look more like factory... make sense?

was a bubble of rust that had occurred in the top of the passenger door because of a lip in the lead wiped repair that was catching water for many moons, not a trouble though as we will be blending the bad green job and will do it all in one

and let the white high build flow

the decklid was really wobbly with many highs and lows... i thought it would look funny if every other panel on the car had dents and scratches but the decklid and drivers guard be perfectly straight if we were to body work them so the idea is to leave it wobbly and when it comes time to polish it will rub through to the white on the highs to show those dents have been there for years, I'm just hoping it looks like the pictures in my head...

same idea for the drivers guard... i sanded out all the pitted paint but left the cracks, dents and crows feet which will get a coat of topcoat over them with a light sand

[NUG637]

Got some Paint matched and started blending.... colour match was awesome i thought...

[IMG]http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb45/OKE100/6B8et 3C56E-3EF1-41E2-A799-214E45029DC3_zpss6phgvxd.jpg[/IMG]

really happy with the blended panels, the guard and the deckled that got full resprays look to perfect but with a wet sand, a polish and a few scratches etc it should come up a treat.

[NUG637]

Not long after the paint blending, it went back into storage while life got in the way... bought a house, started a family. got a real job... this is when things really slowed up and if i keep going at this rate i might just be able to drive it before i turned 86.... homeownership is great... just ask me

time to make are start on the pan

Battery tray needed replacing but didnt have the funds to do new pan halves... didnt really need it anyway

bought a $30 type one battery tray piece to see if it could make it work.... seemed to do the trick. i dont get hung up on the wrong pressing to much, its a step ahead of flat sheet and another piece closer to being on the road.

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New Battery Tray burnt in

Now we are in the present stage of this project.

A few weeks back I got a couple of afternoons spare to hand form the rear seat base support that had rusted away with the battery tray.

Ready to be welded home again

This project Is currently at my parents acreage which we have abit of a workshop set up at but no good for me at the moment with a young family at home. Im hoping to be building a shed at our house In the next few months… once that’s completed I’ll be bringing this old Betty home so I can get abit of a chance to tinker more frequently.

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Rear seat base welded home

Found a patch of thin metal under the passanger seat rails so started to hand fab some pan ribs…

Im hoping to find some time in the next couple of days to weld this little patch in and that should be the last of the patch work quilt.... Until i find some more

[Ossipon]

Your work and effort is outstanding. The spots of repair are the places almost all of us face. And doing the mechanicals last is always best.
Can you provide any detail about how long this took you from the point you really started to now. Just curious.
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Ossipon
VWs in my life:
Air
Type 1 - 59, 62, 63, 71 Super 68 KGhia/ Type 2 - 59 Single Cab / Type 3 - 64 Notch
Water
GTI 83, Jetta 81, 85, 87, 91 TDI, 98 TDI, 09 / New Beetle 99 / SportWagen 05, 13 / Tiguan 18 / T3 92