Projects Barn find - 1964 Pontiac Catalina 421 early custom car

...and more photos of the work on the inner rockers.

 

Looks good. Nice to have such a solid starting point...Randy


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Sorry for the lack of posts and photos recently, but I've been finishing off another project car. This one is my 1965 Pontiac Catalina Convertible, 421 auto. This was a GM exec ordered car with lots of options including the special order paint, Samoan Bronze. This was actually a 65 Cadillac colour...the car has taken about 4 years to do the frame off restoration. I still have a few things to finish, like getting the AC to work properly, fitting the fender skirts and generally getting rid of any bugs after a long term restoration. It came second in it's class at the Ames Pontiac show in Norwalk, OH in the summer.

 

As for an update on the 64 Catalina, we have now almost done with the inner and outer rockers. That took longer than we thought (it always done). Next we are going to tackle the floors before moving on to the frame.
It's a shame nobody make a good reproduction floor for the 64 Catalina (Ames and OPGI have them but they are not the same as the pattern as the original floor...it's more generic). I think I'll have to buy these floors but just use sections where my floor has rust. Unless anon has some rust free floors they want to sell, or know of a better option than Ames and OPGI.

 

Beautiful '65! I'd love to see a shot when you get the skirts fitted. Looking forward to more updates on the '64.

 

Beautiful ‘65!!!

Glad to see continued progress on the ‘64.


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Very cool find !! I agree it would be tough changing the color, either from the custom paint or the original color. Both are very cool. I have not had the time to read all the posts, so am kinda shoot'n from the hip, but I hope Bob is doing okay. i finished up an old Winfield custom for a fellow who was in a nursing home. He had owned the car since new, a '50 Chev convert. You can see the thread at "Winfield custom found"... Reason for mentioning this is that his family swears that I gave him one really good year of life, by including him in the completion. Good Luck !!!

 

Bob is currently working on repairing some of the floor rust, we are trying to just use small sections rather than replace the whole floor.

 

The metal work repair for the rear floors and the inner and outer rockers on both sides is all finished, next week Bob (from 'The Works' in Fridley, MN) who has doing at the work so far, will finish off the front floor section next week which shouldn't take long at it’s pretty straight forward and not as rotten as the rockers.
As you can’t get parts for these full size cars, most of the sheet metal has been fabricated from scratch and matched as close as we can to the original parts on the car. The sad things is, no-one is going to see this work as it will be covered in soundproofing, underlay and carpet and the underside will be weather sealed…but at least we know it’s been done and I have the photos.

As for the engine, Les Kasten from Pontiac Paradise is rebuilding it, he was was half way there when one of the valves studs broke off of the driver side head, number three cylinder. It was all caused by a defective nut that showed up with the rocker arm kit. It went back to Kelley Automotive to have them take a look and see what can be done. But it’s no big deal and will be fixed soon.

Notice the orange paint on the engine as we start to put it all together…Les did try to talk me to go Pontiac blue, but I’m sticking to Bob's original choice of engine colour...Chevy orange.

 

For those that haven't gone through all the photos yet, here is the engine back in the late 60's i the car with the custom paint

 

The other day Bob sent me a cropped photo from a magazine of the car that inspired him to paint his 64 Pontiac in Lavender. With the help of Google images I managed to find that magazine and also found a copy of the actual magazine on ebay for $9.99, a little more than the $0.35 is cost back in 1963 when it was first published.

Attached is a copy of the cover of that magazine, 'Custom Chevies' from the editors of 'Car Craft' and 'Rod & Custom'. The car that inspired Bob was the 1956 Chevy built by Marv Ringheim of Portland, Oregon. The magazine says he painted it in frantic Fascination Purple.

 

What a great find!

I forgot: did you already have the remaining paint scanned to get a formula that will match?

 

Hi, no we didn't...not yet anyway. But we did meet up with the guys at House of Kolor and they took me over to meet Jon Kosmokski, I took the hood with me as this still has the original paint on the car. He remembered painting the car and told me which paints he used...so we have a good start at identifying which colors he used back in 1967. The image is the good today and you can see where the tachometer was mounted and luckily it didn't fade like the rest of the lavender.

 

That's freakin' AWESOME!

 

I was very lucky with the frame as there was very little rust, as you can see the rust that was there has been cut out and repaired...the rear frame had some small damage and that was repaired too. So the next stage will be to clean it up and we should be able to “poly” it, to get it ready for paint.

More photos soon

 

Latest update: frame is now painted and waiting for the body to be finished. The engine is also done and just waiting for a few hose clips before going into storage (if your going to comment on the orange on the engine...just take a look at an earlier post).

 

All looks great! No comment from me about the orange engine, completely understand what you are doing here! Regards, Randy


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I would cut those upper control arm contact towers off and move them back 2 " and align them side to side. They usually are anything but perfect. The 2" will give you 6 to 8 degrees positive caster with stock parts while keeping the upper control arms nice and straight, piling a bunch of shims on the back bolt will bind up the suspension big time, I think the factory suggests no more then 1/8" difference between front to rear. Then pick up a pair of 61-62 upper control arms with the solid bushings. There's a company that makes delrin control arm bushings for the lowers. I think they might be for a Chevelle because I had to drill the sleeves out on mine to get the 9/16" bolt through. These two modifications made my 64 Poncho a dream to drive on the twistys.
Set the caster at 6 drivers/6.75 passengers side. Camber negative .25. Toe in 1/16-1/16. Addco front sway bar. Send the steering box to Lee and have them set it up with a 14:1 ratio with a 30 pound valve. It will feel and bounce back like a close ratio manual and have all the road feel you could ever want..

The factory steering on one of these things in stock form is anything but fun... They were made to wade over Belgium block city streets at 25 mph as soft and easy as possible...

I use to cruise this 64 at 140 with ease. It had a 462 / four speed Super Hydro / 2:56 posi...

 

As you can'f find correct reproduction 64 floors, we had to adapt 64 Impala floors. They are not an exact match, but so much better that the 'original period correct' floors that are being offered by some companies...these are just poor copies, the metal is too thin and the debossing areas looks nothing like the original as you can see in the first photo. I sent those one back to get a refund.
These are the Impala floor sections that look a better match...yes, the oval drain panel is not in the correct position, but hopefully you'll agree they look a lot better than in the first photo.

Once they have been cleaned up, painted, underseal, sound deadener and carpet, you'll never know.

 

Got the axels out of the rear end. Bob needed to set it up to remove the 3rd member. Brakes were completely frozen inside, which caused a bunch of trouble to get apart. One step closer to be back on 4 wheels.

 

As the summer comes to an end and I've not been able to fly over to see the progress on the car yet. Hopefully by the end of the year the travel restrictions will have been lifted and I can fly over again.

Here are a few photos of the recent work on the 64 Catalina. The firewall is done, rear end housing and backing plates are all good. The underside of the car has been sprayed and the inside will need to be sprayed and sound proofed next.

 

LOve this kind of build threads....

more more more...

 

I'm going to try and get a few more photos soon as the body is now finished and in primer...I'm hoping it's back on the frame...but only to move the car around the shop for now.

The good news is that we have a new gas tank now...the old one had acquired a hole in it at some point, I think Bob told me they used a forklift to move the car around...maybe I'm wrong. But the hole looks more like it was punch by something, rather that a rust hole. Anyway that tank was junk and was dumped...I have a brand new gas tank bought from Les at Pontiac Paradise in MN.

 

I’ve just had these photos sent over from Bob.

Rear end is done, so now it’s time to start putting some things together, and get the body and chassis mounted together. Next up is getting the frame out to start build up. Control arms, suspension, rear end, etc. I might even do brake lines, fuel and stuff like that…

The body will stay on the rotisserie for now because we want to seal the inside, then spray out sound deadening material.

Hope you like the photos, looking forward to the next instalment.

 

Very nice! Great to see the progress! Randy


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Now would be a good time to hammer a 1-1/4" freeze plug into that center hole. That was there to heat the intake when cold. The passenger side had a heat activated flapper that closed and sent the two center cyls exhaust through the intake manifold to add warm up..
Todays gasoline really acts up when heated like this. Best to block both sides off and run a manual choke or no choke if your in a warm climate..

 

In that climate, it might be good to have that feature.. You'll like this engine, 389s have always performed well for me..

 

When it's finished the car will probably be kept in my storage unit in California. But it's worth keeping n mind...thanks