1965 11 window, Zelda the Bus

[pondoras box]

Some passenger rear corner filler glory shots. Just showing it all for others to maybe show it’s not perfect but it’s good enough to save this bus and you can do it too!
_________________
Looking for anything from Hal Casey Motors out of Hamburg New York, from license plate surrounds to matchbooks.

1961 23 Window (Bobo)
1965 11 Window (Zelda)
1965 13 Window (Lucas)
1957 Oval ragtop
1988 Cabriolet VR6 conversion
Plus a lot of other rusty junk

[pondoras box]

Here are some progress pics on the passenger corner, it’s ready for a coat of high build primer then smooth it out with 350 then red scotchbrite pad. After that sealer.

_________________
Looking for anything from Hal Casey Motors out of Hamburg New York, from license plate surrounds to matchbooks.

1961 23 Window (Bobo)
1965 11 Window (Zelda)
1965 13 Window (Lucas)
1957 Oval ragtop
1988 Cabriolet VR6 conversion
Plus a lot of other rusty junk

[pondoras box]

I apologize if these are out of order and may cause some confusion with progress but I am trying to catch up with about 3 years of work.

Here is the cargo floor in. Many mistakes were made here. First is make sure your floors are tight up against the outer walls of the bus and not tight up against each other at the center seam. These were made to float and the overlap in the middle “adjusts” for how wide the over all floor width is. My long rocker side ended up with some thin filler pieces made to fix this mistake. There were WAY to many spot welds to remove to fix it correctly. The second mistake was fix your lower bulkhead before putting the floor in it will be a lot easier that way.

Two things to note on the lower bulkhead is that at the time Klassic Fab did not have a correct one for a 65 and the other is that I had to cut it in two to fit it into place because of the floor already being in place. Ugly welds ensued.
_________________
Looking for anything from Hal Casey Motors out of Hamburg New York, from license plate surrounds to matchbooks.

1961 23 Window (Bobo)
1965 11 Window (Zelda)
1965 13 Window (Lucas)
1957 Oval ragtop
1988 Cabriolet VR6 conversion
Plus a lot of other rusty junk

[pondoras box]

Time to cut out the passenger side dogleg. Whoever said that replacing the doglegs are hard, they are right! Holy cow there is a lot going on here.

Mistakes made, oh yeah there was. As soon as the A pillar was free and of the rest of the floor it jumped out and forward. Didn’t make that mistake on the drivers side I triangulated it with support to hold it in place. But more on that latter.

_________________
Looking for anything from Hal Casey Motors out of Hamburg New York, from license plate surrounds to matchbooks.

1961 23 Window (Bobo)
1965 11 Window (Zelda)
1965 13 Window (Lucas)
1957 Oval ragtop
1988 Cabriolet VR6 conversion
Plus a lot of other rusty junk

[pondoras box]

Next is getting the inner dogleg in. The Klassic Fab piece is good but not perfect and I tried to force it to fit to the existing seat pan / wheel tub area. I learned from this on the drivers side. But you’re going to have to wait for that.

Disclaimer I know that the bulkhead repair listed above happened before this but all this was done a while ago and I’m trying to catch up with progress pics and it might be out of order sorry if this caused confusion. I just trying to show what a total novice can do and hopefully motivate someone who was nervous to try it themselves. Get out in the garage and just do it.

_________________
Looking for anything from Hal Casey Motors out of Hamburg New York, from license plate surrounds to matchbooks.

1961 23 Window (Bobo)
1965 11 Window (Zelda)
1965 13 Window (Lucas)
1957 Oval ragtop
1988 Cabriolet VR6 conversion
Plus a lot of other rusty junk

[HUGO bOSS]

Fantastic work!
10 years allready?
_________________
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=538182

[pondoras box]

@ Hugo Boss

Thank you, I can’t believe it’s been 10 years since I pulled this bus out of its hiding spot. It’s almost road worthy but still a bit to go.
_________________
Looking for anything from Hal Casey Motors out of Hamburg New York, from license plate surrounds to matchbooks.

1961 23 Window (Bobo)
1965 11 Window (Zelda)
1965 13 Window (Lucas)
1957 Oval ragtop
1988 Cabriolet VR6 conversion
Plus a lot of other rusty junk

[pondoras box]

The seat belt mounting point had rust forming around it and was not secure anymore so it had to be cut out and fixed. I was able to save the factory hard point mount. I cleaned it up prepped it and welded it back in place.

_________________
Looking for anything from Hal Casey Motors out of Hamburg New York, from license plate surrounds to matchbooks.

1961 23 Window (Bobo)
1965 11 Window (Zelda)
1965 13 Window (Lucas)
1957 Oval ragtop
1988 Cabriolet VR6 conversion
Plus a lot of other rusty junk

[pondoras box]

Was originally going to go with the standard swing axle conversion using a 68 transaxle. Had a bit of a change in plans that required going to an IRS conversion. You might have also noticed the 930 stub axles as well, but that’s the only hint I’m giving as to what’s happening here. I used the Wolfgang international kit. Very easy to install but not super adjustable.

_________________
Looking for anything from Hal Casey Motors out of Hamburg New York, from license plate surrounds to matchbooks.

1961 23 Window (Bobo)
1965 11 Window (Zelda)
1965 13 Window (Lucas)
1957 Oval ragtop
1988 Cabriolet VR6 conversion
Plus a lot of other rusty junk

[dtadpole]

Looking good, doing a great job!! Have ya got anymore updates by chance! So muddy here I am unable to even work on mine! Always looking for inspiration.
_________________
1965 velvet green walk-thru standard
scrappythebus.com
https://youtube.com/@dtadpole

[pondoras box]

@dtadpole Thank you, I do have more updates, the bus is much further along that this thread would suggest. It's just difficult getting the pictures off my phone and onto the site to use. But I will try to get more proactive about catching up here.
_________________
Looking for anything from Hal Casey Motors out of Hamburg New York, from license plate surrounds to matchbooks.

1961 23 Window (Bobo)
1965 11 Window (Zelda)
1965 13 Window (Lucas)
1957 Oval ragtop
1988 Cabriolet VR6 conversion
Plus a lot of other rusty junk

[pondoras box]

I am putting a bit more horsepower in this bus so decided to increase the stopping ability since this bus will be driven a lot and for long distances once I retire. Ever since a blown wheel cylinder in Washington DC traffic in my 23 window back in the 90's that I have dual circuit and more powerful brakes than the horsepower of the bus would dictate. Just because you can't accelerate quickly doesn't mean someone won't pull out in front of you.

I am putting Porsche 944 brakes on all four corners to both increase the abilities and balance out the stopping force front to rear.

I found a set of complete brakes of a non-turbo car but they were in pretty ugly condition after being on the car for decades.

After a good clean up and wire wheel session they actually looked pretty good.

Of course they wouldn't stay looking this good so they got a coat of primer and sea blue to match the bus.

After paint.

During rebuild.

Ready to be put back into service.

_________________
Looking for anything from Hal Casey Motors out of Hamburg New York, from license plate surrounds to matchbooks.

1961 23 Window (Bobo)
1965 11 Window (Zelda)
1965 13 Window (Lucas)
1957 Oval ragtop
1988 Cabriolet VR6 conversion
Plus a lot of other rusty junk

[pondoras box]

Moving to the front, I wanted to save as much of the original metal as possible to include the dents and scrapes. Remember my goal is not to have a restored looking bus I want it to look like it survived and I just did a few mods to it.

This is the lower valance before and after repairs. I will let the pictures do the talking here because it was pretty rotted and repaired at least once very poorly. I am not bashing the previous owner because she obviously loved the bus but just did repairs commiserate with the time frame and the value of the bus when done. the last inspection sticker on the bus expired in 1979. She kept it since then.

I learned a few lessons from the passenger side dogleg repair that I applied here, I triangulated the braces that held the A pillar in place in relation to the dogleg area. This kept the A pillar from flexing forward and outboard avoiding difficult realignment when I go to tie this area back together. There is a lot going on at the A pillar dogleg junction.

Hope you guys are enjoying these.
_________________
Looking for anything from Hal Casey Motors out of Hamburg New York, from license plate surrounds to matchbooks.

1961 23 Window (Bobo)
1965 11 Window (Zelda)
1965 13 Window (Lucas)
1957 Oval ragtop
1988 Cabriolet VR6 conversion
Plus a lot of other rusty junk

[pondoras box]

Out of order but it fits with the continuity of the lower nose repair. I tried to save as much original metal as possible. The rust on the lower nose was actually pretty minimal being confined to about the lower inch. But of course that’s to easy right? Once I got started removing paint to be able to weld I found evidence of another old repair. I knew the nose had been repainted in the past but wasn’t sure why. The original owner must of got too close to something and pushed the center of the nose in. It was fixed with the tried and true method of drilling holes and pulling using screws. The holes were filled with bondo. So I had to cut higher and got into the lower part of the V style line. Something that I had hoped to avoid but you got to go do what you got to do.

Here you see the drivers side dogleg is already in so I must have done that first

_________________
Looking for anything from Hal Casey Motors out of Hamburg New York, from license plate surrounds to matchbooks.

1961 23 Window (Bobo)
1965 11 Window (Zelda)
1965 13 Window (Lucas)
1957 Oval ragtop
1988 Cabriolet VR6 conversion
Plus a lot of other rusty junk

[pondoras box]

Looking for opinions on my wheel choice. Obviously everyone likes the Fuch, I do too but I have always loved the cookie cutters. Since the 80’s I have loved the look not to mention they are a true magnesium wheel.

I would use 6 inch rears and 4.5 fronts.

These would be 7 inch rears and 6 fronts.

Would value your opinions but keep in mind the cookies are real and the Fuch are fakes.
_________________
Looking for anything from Hal Casey Motors out of Hamburg New York, from license plate surrounds to matchbooks.

1961 23 Window (Bobo)
1965 11 Window (Zelda)
1965 13 Window (Lucas)
1957 Oval ragtop
1988 Cabriolet VR6 conversion
Plus a lot of other rusty junk

[ddutch]

I vote for the Cookies! I like them too, and they are different from the beautiful but much more common Fuchs. Besides that, wheels can be swaped out easily all the time.

[pondoras box]

[pondoras box]

I guess now would be a good time to discuss the drivers side dogleg. I made some mistakes on the passenger side that helped me be a little more efficient on this side.

One was that I didn’t support the a pillar enough and when I sliced through the old dogleg it sprung out and forward and the took quite a bit to realign. I used several pieces of scrap metal and welded in support pieces and it worked very well maybe needed a few millimeters of tweaking on reassembly.

I proceeded to remove the old dogleg completely at this point.

I had to cut out the seat belt mount on this side as well.

One of the issues I had was aligning the outer edge of the floor to the dogleg they didn’t want meet up on the outside edge. I wound up putting a relief cut length wise in part of the floor to be able to pull the two edges together.
_________________
Looking for anything from Hal Casey Motors out of Hamburg New York, from license plate surrounds to matchbooks.

1961 23 Window (Bobo)
1965 11 Window (Zelda)
1965 13 Window (Lucas)
1957 Oval ragtop
1988 Cabriolet VR6 conversion
Plus a lot of other rusty junk

[rudygetz]

This is awesome work. Thanks for posting so many pictures. These types of threads give so much inspiration and ideas! Love the Sea Blue calipers. I'm running 944 disc brakes all around too and might have to borrow that idea.

Did you use proper L360 paint or did you rattle can it? I only ask because if you found a close match in rattle can I'd love to know.
_________________
1965 Standard Sunroof Bus build
1967 Beetle

[pondoras box]