I'm getting bodywork done on my cab/frontclip. Here is what I'm doing and I have some questions:

Truck is 4x4 1978 single cab, longbox, manual trans, 351M, with non-working A/C(compressor & lines & A/C rad, & A/C controls missing).

Getting new floors welded in, cab corners replaced, holes welded shut on exterior and inside cab, bucket seat frame modified, rust repaired. Also getting new cab rubber mounts and rad support rubber mounts.

I'm wanting to close up all the holes on the cab that go to outside air to keep out a lot of moisture and also to make putting sound deadener in easier. What is a good one to use, dynomat, brown bread, truck box roll on liner, others?

Filling all the holes from the trim and badges and mirrors should make it easier to wash and nicer to look at. Going to mount the mirrors to the cab itself instead of the doors, I hate seeing/cleaning rust streaks on doors and also trying to wash around the mirror mounts. Everytime I rinse the truck tons of stuff comes out from behind the trim so that has to go!

The PO cut a hole behind the door to mount an in-cab gas tank into this 1978 truck, thats getting filled along with all the other little holes he drilled to mount it.

I'm rerouting my speedo cable from the firewall to come up through the big removeable trans hump cover and then go up in behind the dash to the cluster.

I want to reroute my ebrake cable but am not sure quite where yet. I don't like that it's factory route takes it through close to the cab mount, so I want that welded up. I've given thought to having the cable come up through the trans hump and then hooking it up to a hand lever out of a different vehicle. Would a hand lever have enough strength to hold a fullsize truck?

Other questions later...

 

Lizard Skin or Dynamat (or generic equivalent) would do just fine. Personally, I'd go Lizard Skin because it can be shot into nooks and crannies like the inaccessible areas of the roof (to prevent roof rail rust).

2X with the factory mirrors. Horrible, clunky design. I went with early 90s Ranger mirrors. Two screws into a backing plate. Simpler than the bolts/nuts and or threaded inserts which always eventually leads to rust.

E-brake.. properly installed, a lever/ratchet action e-brake system can withstand the weight of a full-size rig.

 

Change the lift style door handles to the thumb button open style.....

Fill the cowl, and french/elec or remove the antenna all together.

Fill FORD letter holes on the hood (put a newer style blue oval in the grill center or lower left or right corner of the grill.

Complete elec rear window either side slider or full drop.

 

Custom can include significant changes to the wiring harness based on cleanliness of routing wiring and different accessories, lighting, etc. I typically lay out a general sketch of the vehicle with whatever changes I want to incorporate. In my case, this will include any lighting, HEI distributor, switches, relays, etc. Based also on the age of the wiring I will be building my own wiring harness front to back that incorporates everything I want to do instead of cobbling onto 30+ year wiring. So I'm including this as things to think of beforehand on a custom build.
Lighting in my case will include interior/underhood/bed/underbody-courtesy SMD LED, and front/rear aux HID lighting.

 

I stripped a lot of stuff off of the truck in prep for body work. Removed bed to provide access to cab corners, bed sits in the driveway for now before going to scrap, its too far gone to save. Removed doors/fenders, grille, bumper, interior, dash, a/c box, windsheild, rear window. It's a cab with a steering column and some wiring sittin on the frame right now! Left on the inner fenders and hood and rad support though, so it looks kinda strange but that's okay, it will be sweet when it's all painted up

Talked to the body guy today, he recommends line-x instead of dynomat, so I will have to price that out too. He came out to pick up the truck on the trailer. Should be out of bodywork and sitting in primer in about a month and a half, so I don't have quite that long to make any additions I suppose.

HIO Silver: I'll have to take a walk through the junkyard to see what kind of mirrors I can find. I was thinking of using the 6x9 or whatever it is called camper style rectangle mirrors on a custom mount.

77&79F250: The antenna hole will be filled, I got a hood that didn't have letters on it but needs a couple dents pulled out. I've been thinking about what to do with the door handles, if anything, at the very least they will be painted body colour.

Steel Toy: I'm deleting the stock interior light above the rear window, deleting the exterior clearance lights, moving the door switches that activate the interior lights to mount them on a bracket from under the dash(why they mounted them outside the weatherstripping is beyond me), I will be converting to relays for the headlights, and adding trailer wire plug-in eventually. I'm just using the old harness for now, may change it out in the future though. When things get added or deleted by me they are soldered and heat shrinked and repaired properly, don't like the aluminum connectors touching copper, they fail over time...stupid previous owner, grumble grumble.....

A stereo system will be going in eventually too, maybe some speakers in the dash facing the windshield, custom dash!

I was thinking of replacing bolts and screws with stainless steel ones to avoid rust, all of them, anyone found good sources?

 

There's always the local sources and the usual aftermarket suppliers, but I have ordered literally a few thousand bucks worth of hardware and all sorts of different things from mcmaster-carr online. I usually get at least a box of each type of fastener since I use a lot of them on different projects. I've got a wall of bins lol.
McMaster-Carr