Projects 1965 ford falcon- complete restoration! with pictures

I think the young man has a future in this if he chooses...

 

Nice work, young Man!
If I may make a sugestion, the 200 I6 is a fantastic little motor and worth a second look. You cant do much with the head, since the intake is one piece, but you can renove the end plugs and set it up for 3 X 1V's, which looks waaaay cool. A chrome valve cover, and a thumpin' cam..... Just saying.

If you just cant live without a V8, the 351 is going to be a SOB to put in there. It's a couple inches wider than a 302 or a 289... And your engine bay was designed for an inline 6.
Late[r] model 5.0's are a dime a dozen. If you score a HO mustang engine, it will already have the go fast internals... I'd look for one of those.

 

Yeah I would recommend a 5.0 HO. Had that in my first 64 falcon and it screamed and got good gas mileage too If you go to tffn.net you will see that a 351 wont fit very well unless you cut/replace the shock towers.

 

I have been reconsidering the 351 lately. I do have a 289 kicking around, but it needs some work.. it is a good year i believe? its a 1968 4v engine i pulled from a mustang last summer. I would want to set it up with a tri power intake with progressive linkage. paint it black with gold valve covers. i know it would be really easy to just do a single 4 barrel, but thats not fun!

 

I second that. I wish I could fab like that.

 

Thanks for the kind words guys!

 

NEW UPDATE:

So it has been a while since my last post, but still working at it. In the last couple weeks I finished off the quarter, the trunk inner, drivers door inner, rear tail panel and the drivers side rocker. I have now moved over to the passenger side quarter and I will be starting to strip it on monday.

The camera didnt follow me to school for a couple days in a row so i will do a small intro for the pictures. the last patch for the bottom of the quarter has been welded in and finished front and back. all the welds on the inside of the quarter have been metal conditioned, epoxied, seam sealed, and epoxied once more.

Here is the quarter finished in 180 and ready for primer, and the inside of the last patch all sealed up. I welded up the trim holes on the quarter since all of the trim is to be shaved off except the F-A-L-C-O-N on the trunk and F-O-R-D on the hood.






next is the tail panel, and trunk inner ready for a good etch and high build session




and last but not least is the drivers door inner ready to go!



It feels good to have the drivers side done and out of the way, I need to pick up some high build for this thing and I dont really want to spend the $208.00+ for a gallon of the stuff, does anyone have any suggestions on some good quality high builds?

 

I know its a little off topic here but I thought I would just show you guys my truck, took some pictures of it at the college. pretty cool little burner, bought it from the original owner and just did a couple things to clean her up! I would like to trade for a 60-65 ranchero,or a ford station wagon If anyone out there is interested!

 

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Nice work. Keep it up.......

 

The kid has good hands!

 

looks like the start of a great project.

Just a note in case you end up taking the car to the track . . . don't leave on slicks hard with a stick and a 8". The axles won't hang in there at all.

 

New Update



I stripped down the other quarter and was very pleased to what was underneath! not completely clean, but much less of a PITA. I made a new patch for the little bit of rust over the wheel arch and another little one by the rocker. Now I just have to duraglass my welds and give it a little lick of filler. I also filled the trim holes like the other side.

 

so this week I found a little unexpected surprise on my passenger side door, so if the previous owner happens to read this, thanks for the tar covered piece of sh*t iron oxide! Haha. I found that the whole bottom of the door had been eaten away and a shawty repair with roofing tar and some sort of tape was used to cover up everything. I also found two substantial dents on either side of the door after grinding off aprox. 3 inches of filler covering the entire door, (yet another great surprise!) along with more rust hiding in the usual spot for these cars, right in the front bottom corner where the door shell comes very close to the skin.

I made some patches for the rust and epoxied them so they are ready to go tomorrow, I still have one left to make. the Big patch was actually really simple to make and was very quick, which made up for a little of the crap I had to put up with

 

bttt

 

Way to bring that post car back to life! Looks good.

Total Perf-

 

That's the plan!

 

uPdAtE!

This week I got quite a bit of work done on the ol' falcon.
I finished all the metal work on the passenger door, filled the trim holes on the door, and welded in the bottom of the door where the gaping hole had once been.I fitted the door to the quarter after this and got a real good fit that I was very happy with. I also got all the duraglass work done and a good start of some filler work completed on the rear quarter and door.

When I first started with the passenger side door it was pretty mangled from a previous repair. who ever tried to fix it grinded it way to thin in spots so there was severe oil canning in the very center of the panel. I had to lay quite a number of shrinks to iron it out enough to stop the oil canning none the less to straighten the thing out. I got it as flat as I could but I still have to skim the whole thing to make it look like I want. I hopefully, with more practice, can get better so I can do it with little to no filler. Thats the goal! I just think its amazing how people can do that with metal and I really admire the talents of those individuals who can and hope some day I can do the same.

anyways heres the pictures to show the progress!

 

bttt

 

Looks great! Luv those Falcons and always like to see one saved.

I wish I had your skills when I was that age. Hell, I wish I had your skills now!

 

Nice work! We are in the process of a complete restoration of a 64 Falcon convertible. The lack of replacement sheetmetal for thses cars gives a guy a chance to hone his fabrication and welding skills!

 

Update!
Just for fair warning this one has quite a load of pictures!

This week has been quite a leap forward for the old bird, First off I had a little bit of a side track of doing a big box side repair on a 2010 ram 1500 on monday, My instructor said that the experience will do me good! I finished the thing today. from the street right to paint. Anyways, I finished up the passenger side door and prepped it all in 180 and ready for primer.

Next I Prepped the inner door jams and trunk lid, along with all the interior metal pieces that are able to be removed from the car all in 180 and ready for primer.
I put the doors and the interior pieces into the booth and cleaned them with some final wash and tacked them off a couple times to get them nice and clean.






So my plan for getting this stuff done was to prime the fronts of the doors, trunk lid, and interior parts, then flip them over (minus the interior stuff). Prime the backs then paint the jams with the single stage paint. What i did was prime the fronts, put it on a 45 minute bake cycle after the 20 min flash off, flipped them over, sanded the dried primer on the interior stuff with 400, primed the backs, waited the 20 minute flash off and hit it with 2 coats of ppg onmi single stage tropical turquoise, the original color of the car.

Top side primed






Bottom side prepped and primed






PAINT!






Im pretty excited about the turnout. the ppg single stage really layed out nice and flat for me and I am very impressed with the workability of it. the omni line is apparently the low end paint line for ppg and people say they have problems with it but it gets the two thumbs up from me!

 

Bttt

 

Very impressive work, congratulations on the Falcon. Nice color also. I will subscribe to this build also. 2 thumbs up.

 

thanks! Im glad i decided on the original color, it just suits the car i think

 

Congrats on the good work.

 

Thanks! I am now looking for the right color black to do the roof in. I know for sure that the falcon did in fact come with a black roof as a factory option in 1965 and I do like the factory black color, but I was thinking of doing the roof in a black mettalic. The 2010 dodge that I painted last week was painted brillant crystal black metallic and there's enough leftover to do my roof. A verry hard decision! What do you guys think, metallic or solid black? Any suggestions?

 

Metallic always Looks Nice But In my opinion if the whole car wasnt done in Metallic it just wouldnt match. Car is coming along Great and It is soooo good to see a young man taking his time and doing it the right way, young people now days dont want to put the time and hard work in to do things right...you are in a class by yourself! Good work my man.

 

Today I made some good headway on the falcon. On tuesday I pushed the car into the booth and prepped it up for some primer after smoothing the lead on the sail panels on monday. When I put it in the booth, I masked it up and put it on jack stands so i could get to the inner wheel lips, bottom of the quarters, and rocker panels with ease. I also had time to prep the dash for a nice coat of primer. Hopefully by friday I can have the jams for the doors and trunk, along with the dash painted turquoise so I can align the doors and put the rest of the interior pieces I painted into it. All I have left to do body work wise is to weld up the trim holes on the front fenders and prime them so they can be put on the car. I have a couple small things left on the body to deal with that i missed, which I was expecting, but nothing major. Just some scratch marks etc.

For the dash I was thinking of putting a black stripe down the center where the style line is. I am going to be using a 64 falcon dash bezel with the camera case black crinkle paint so I think the black stripe will tie it all together.




Heres the rest of the car. In the college shop we use basf's glasurit paint line. First I put a coat of etch primer on, and then hit it with 2 wed coats of primer surfacer. I talked to the paint rep about doing it this way, and it is guaranteed to have the same corrosion protection as an epoxy primer. And the best part is that If the paint fails, It will be replaced at no cost!

 

BEAUTIFUL! I have a '65 Falcon I'm working on getting my hands on, belongs to my sister but it's 300 miles away with a cracked head and I already have a project car and no money to trailer the damn thing down to me. Oh well, maybe when I'm 18.

This is going to be a bitchin' car, your handiwork is immaculate! Can't wait to see the 351 get crammed in there and you chose a great color for the whole thing. You'll be a coachbuilder by the time you're 30..

Was there side trim going all down the side of the doors and quarter panels? Yours reminds me more of a '64 and there were no trim holes in the first pictures so I'm guessing not, but I'm on the look out for Falcon chrome.. Keep up the badass work