I can understand your Frustrations with the restoration shop,my hardtop has had three different shops work on it! Lots of money spent lot more work to do and some of it is redoing the shops unsatisfactory work! The last shop took me for $10,000! I have no nice words to say about this shop! Going to cost me more money to correct thier chit work! You can use a post quarter on a hardtop ! You have to leave the lip of the quarter window and the door jam and splice it in! You can use a four door section to patch the back half of the quarter !You have to go from the horizontal body line where yours is cut! Anything above this is different as the sail panel roof line on a four door differs!
A outer wheel housing from a gto can be used to patch the lip! They are available and this is what was used on the left side of my hardtop! I see that your car is a post!
Sorry, to hear about your experience. I'm finding it is a common one among 64-65 Skylark owners who attempt restorations at the "resto" shops. Many of these shops run through later 60'searly 70's unibody cars all day long...Cuda's, Camaros, Mustangs etc. Parts for those are readily available in the repop or aftermarket world. As you already know, you can actually buy a brand new replacement body for some.
The difference in our cars, as you probably already know and I have learned is that they ARE different than doing many other 60's cars. There is essentially nothing available for them in the repop or aftermarket worlds. It really takes a preservationist and a fabricator restorer to restore these cars...not just a "panel popper", as my current restorer calls the other shops.
It is really obvious when you walk in the door of either kind of shop...once you've blown thousands of dollars in the former. In the big restoration shop, there were wire welders, lifts, lots of air tools all around, big tool boxes lining the walls. In the restorer's shop I'm in now, there are different sized lathes milling machines, jigs and clamps of all kinds hanging from the walls, metal shears, metal rollers, a couple of english wheels, one lift, a wire welder AND a very nice TIG welder.
For vehicles in next to mine, there is an old 40's Chevy pickup with a late model Corvette rear end assembly and full front and rear Corvette suspension fabricated into the custom designed and built chassis. In front of that is a 62 Impala that was pulled out of the desert and is getting a full restore done.
In the original shop my GS started, there were two 71 Challengers, a late 60's GTO, a 69 Mustang and a late 60's Charger in there. All were there getting panels popped off and new ones popped on. Big difference. I understand now. Lesson learned.
I could berate the shop mine started with, but maybe my expectations were too high. I honestly believe they don't even understand what they did to my car. Life is short...I just need to move on and get my car done. It is in the best possible place now.
Good tips on the parts that will work for mine. I'll pass this along to my guy. Incidentally he has some old GM cross-reference books he picked up at an auction when one of the GM plants shut down long ago. It lists every single part on our Buicks and what they cross-reference to in the other GM cars, from a line assembler's standpoint. I'd never seen anything like them.. It has been quite helpful in hunting parts in the junk yard.
