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Thread: Project Lazarus - Bringing a Type 65 back from the dead.

  1. #1
    Junior Member aarivers's Avatar
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    Project Lazarus - Bringing a Type 65 back from the dead.

    Hello guys and gals, it's been far too long since I said I was going to start a build thread on this car, but here it is. I'm posting this to three boards since not everyone visits them all.

    I said my introductions on the newbie board but I'll bring you guys up to speed on this car. I found it on racingjunk.com, though I think it was posted here also. Having sent it's previous owner and itself into the pit wall at Roebling Road the car was taking up garage space at his house. I picked it up after he decided not to go forward with repairs and move on to a different car.


    I got the car unloaded after getting the garage cleaned up and made into a workable shop environment, then it sat there for about 6 months while I ordered parts for it and finished up a couple other project cars.















    So there it is, in all it's twisted, rusty, bent, and deformed glory. I have a ton of work ahead of me. Lots of welding, lots of cutting, and really a lot of fun I think. This will be my biggest undertaking yet (and most expensive) but I'm pretty confident that I can get it all back together and maybe even painted by the end of this year.

  2. #2
    Junior Member aarivers's Avatar
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    I guess I need to go back a few months now, back to when I ordered the parts for the car. I spoke with the FFR guys and we went back over the quote they gave Rob, I made a few adjustments and ordered them up. It took another 3 weeks for them to show up. While I was waiting for the parts to show up I also sent off the one bent Koni to a certified rebuilder in Cali.

    Then one day I came home and found all this!





    Since I had the parts I got to chopping! I cut off the real mangled section first to get a better look at the rest of the frame and take some measurements.

    Chop



    Then a couple more chops I had this.



    I had to tear out the drivers side foot box panels to get to this brace to allow me to chop it out and then get tot he frame easier.


  3. #3
    Junior Member aarivers's Avatar
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    Fast forward to about 6 months later, and I finally started chopping the frame up for the final cuts and getting ready to weld it all up.

    So today I worked on chopping off the rest of the front end and squaring it up to get ready to install the new unit. I measured 20 inches back from the crossmember on the old car and the new piece to mark my cuts and hopefully get things to line up once all the metal dust has settled.



    Then I took the new front and trimmed off the excess tubing to make my sleeves.



    One of the sleeves before I cut a 1.5 inch section out of it to allow me to shrink it down to slide into the frame.



    First sleeve installed. I tacked these in place to keep them from sliding up into the frame when I put the front section on.



    The new front end slid on pretty easy, just needed a few whacks with the mini sledge to get it fully seated.



    It came together pretty well. The drivers side has no gap and will weld up good.



    The passenger side will need a little more weld than the drivers. But that's why it's sleeved, so it doesn't rely on the butt weld solely for it's strength.


  4. #4
    Junior Member aarivers's Avatar
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    I burned all the big stuff in today. Things went well, I gave my little flux core welder a workout though, had to stop and let it rest a couple times as it was nearing it's peak duty cycle. I also picked up an auto-darkening mask from Harbor Freight this morning and man is it nice to not have to get things line up and then hope you are in the same spot when you flip your mask down.

    On to the welds. They may not be as pretty as the FFR ones, but they have good penetration and will grind down nice and smooth for painting.

    This is the drivers side.



    The side bar welded up nice.



    The passenger side needed a little more filler so I can grind it down later, but it turned out good also.



    Then pretty soon I had full frame again!





    I ran into a slow down at this point, I needed to know how high up these upper braces are on the front shock towers here.



    I got a reply on that today from someone so tomorrow I'll cut and weld those bars in. Then it'll be ready for the suspension to be mounted up.

  5. #5
    Junior Member aarivers's Avatar
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    Got out in the garage today and got the upper braces welded in. Didn't take too long to get those in so I started to throw the front suspension on there in order to get it to a rolling state again. I will disassemble this when I get it back to the new garage, I'm missing a lot of bolts and spacers so I'll need to order all the correct fasteners.







    Like I said earlier, this is all just assembled for moving it. Once I have the proper hardware (some of which is on the donor Mustang at my parents house) I'll go back over it all and make sure it's all assembled correctly and to spec.





    I was missing an upper ball joint for the passenger side so it'll have to wait till I get that in from Amazon.


  6. #6
    Junior Member aarivers's Avatar
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    Since I am still waiting on the ball joint to show up I went ahead and got the hood prepped for installation. It will be nice to not have it taking up half the garage anymore. :grin2:

    I had to cut and re-weld the flat parts to allow for the contour of the nose, and sit more flush on the fog light holes.




    I took a couple of the 2x4's out of the shipping crate and then slid the hood forward. From there I man handled it up onto the car.



    Then I had something resembling a car!



    I'll need to do a lot of trimming for this hood to fit right.






  7. #7
    Senior Member Gromit's Avatar
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    I could be wrong but...

    I think the drivers side UCA ball joint is up side down. this has been in a number of posts that the ball joint should point out to the knuckle and not in.

    Chris aka Gromit.

  8. #8
    Senior Member CraigS's Avatar
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    You are a brave man to take that project on. I have one concern. You didn't show any rosette welds through the outer tube to your sleeves. To me that means that your sleeves will do nothing to add strength to the joint. They helped w/ initial assembly alignment but that's all. Can you go back and grind/cut a few holes in the frame tubes to make some rosette welds?
    FFR MkII, 408W, Tremec TKO 500, 2015 IRS, DA QA1s, Forte front bar, APE hardtop.

  9. #9

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    It's nice to see this car being resurrected; if I recall the original owner was trying to sell it, post crash, during the early days of this forum. I would also agree with Craig's comments about adding rosette welds to the frame tubes. If you do that, you might get even better penetration with that welder by pre-heating the metal with a propane torch, assuming you are not doing that already. Good work, good luck, and please keep the photos coming!

  10. #10
    Junior Member aarivers's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by CraigS View Post
    You are a brave man to take that project on. I have one concern. You didn't show any rosette welds through the outer tube to your sleeves. To me that means that your sleeves will do nothing to add strength to the joint. They helped w/ initial assembly alignment but that's all. Can you go back and grind/cut a few holes in the frame tubes to make some rosette welds?
    I definitely plan on going back and adding some rosette welds to the frame.


    I got the passenger side ball joint on and made a wooden steering rack out of 2x4's to keep the wheels pointed in the same direction when I roll it around. The steering rack is still in the donor mustang which is now at my parents house till I get moved.

    Looks like I got the frame measurements right, the wheels seem to be in the correct place. The car even rolled out on 4 wheels for the first time in probably 3 years.



    And being Florida, as soon as I pulled it out, it started to rain. So I rolled it back inside and started getting the rear glass hatch in. I sprang for this upgrade over the plexi unit to make it a little bit nicer place out on the street.

    You can see here the old hinges got sheered off in the wreck.



    I removed the old bolts, and bushings from the cage.



    This bushing gave me some trouble but I finally got it free. The new hinges came with a different bushing.

    I then assembled the hinges so I could get the glass installed and adjust the hinges.



    Next up was installing the latch after adjusting the hinges and trimming even more of the body after I tried opening the hatch it only opened about halfway.

    The latch came with some longer screws for installing it in the glass instead of the plexi, but they turned out to be too long and also the flathead style is pretty crappy. I dug through my screw bucket and found some t25 torx screws from the SAAB I parted out a while back which fit perfectly.





    A little adjustment of the latch striker on the body and I that job is done. I'll need to redo the weatherstrip after I paint it down the road.



    I also got the side windows mounted in the doors so it's now ready for transport.

  11. #11
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    Nice work, are you planning to remove the body at some point?
    It would be worth putting a tape across the frame to ensure its square before you go too much further.

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