Hello all. I purchased a 65 Thunderbird last fall and have recently started restoring it. I made a general introduction
here.
A little more detail about the car and my plans.
I'm pretty certain the car is a 65 landau with a 390. The build/VIN tag on the driver's side door confirms that. I haven't looked for the other tags yet to see if they match. The title transferred quickly with no hick-ups from DMV for what it's worth.
I say "pretty sure" because a couple of the details on the car don't match the info in one of the books I bought to help with the project and it's pretty damn easy to swap out a door or build plate from another car. The details that have me slightly scratching my head come from William Wonder's Thunderbird Restoration Guide which shows that the wire rims I have on my Tbird (Kelsey Hayes 14"ers?) were discontinued as an option midway thru the 64 year. No worries, they could be aftermarket (or the restoration book may be wrong). I've read the front disks were too big for the wire wheels and my center caps are red. FWIW, the spare tire is the same kind of wheel. The other thing is the roof sail panel is a Tbird vice the "S" and the structure of the bracing on the underside of the hood looks like the pictures of the late 65 thru 66 ones. It does have sequential turn signals.
The build tag from the driver's door reads:
63B F or P (it is scratched badly) 55 22M 72 1 4
Using my magic decoder ring, I see the car is a landau (63B), it was originally painted Lt blue (F) or Palomino Metallic (P), the interior should be crinkle all-vinyl red with head rests, it was built in December (M but don't know what the 22 means), it has a 3.00: 1 open rear end (1) and it has the 3spd cruise-o-matic. The VIN does start with a 5.
Anyway, I purchased some pubs to help with my project...
Reproduced Ford literature:
65 Shop manual
65 Wiring Diagram Manual
65 Feature and Specification Manual
65 Body/Interior Assembly Manual
65 Electrical Assembly Manual
65 Registered Owner's Manual
Additionally, I bought
Thunderbird Restoration Guide 1958-1966 by William Wonder
When I purchased the car, it ran decently under its own power and most of the absolutely necessary electrical equipment worked: headlights, taillights, turn signals and indicators, interior lights, wipers and fan blowers. I've seen the power windows go up and down under their own power though they've since stopped working. There is visible surface rust though there doesn't seem to be huge cancer rust anywhere. The landau top needs to be replaced and the overwhelming majority of the rubber trim parts look original and are therefore rotted to hell and back. The shifter has the standard out- of-tolerance play in it that serves as my anti-theft device now (you guys know what I'm talking about
: gotta move the shift lever into the sweet spot to get the car to kick over). The water pump is leaking from where it matches up with the engine on the driver's side.
My goal when purchasing the Bird in Sept of 2010 was to do minor work on it to keep it running as I did cosmetic work that would help with drivability (weather seals, steering column/ shifter restoration) as I spend most of my time and money on my other project car: 1995 Mustang Cobra convertible that's getting a twin turbo upgrade. The Cobra doesn't run (yet) so any work I do to the TBird has to be able to be completed over a weekend with one week lay up tops. IOW, I don't need two non-running project cars...
Once the Cobra is running under it's own power, I'm going to strip the Tbird down to parade rest/bare metal and fix/restore the cosmetics and power train.
Since I've had the car, I found that one of the plug wires was broken so it was running on seven cylinders, the Holley carb was leaking profusely from the accelerator pump and bottom of the bowls and the battery would not hold a charge. Not such a big deal. Everyone needs a car that won't start without jumping it, stalls at stop signs/lights as it drips raw gas on the hot engine...
I'll do a post about what I did to take care of those problems.
Later,
-Matt.