I thought I did a good job of documenting things as I took the truck apart but there seem to be a number of things that I must have thought were obvious. This is one of them. No mention in my notes or photos. Thanks for the help.

 

One guy says it's less, another says it's more. I must be pretty close.

I haven't bothered to count mine, yet, but I do know a guy that did once and he filled 108 firewall holes. I remember that because he made a pretty big deal of it at the time. He even wrote it on the firewall so we could all see it before it was painted. All I know is either way, it's a lot of very tedious work.

 

I believe it. Seems like I counted something like 13 completely unexplainable holes in just one side of the frame rail during a fit of boredom one night.

 

Here's a before and after on my 49. I filled tons of holes.
Before


After

 

I've been thinking about the hole filling procedure. I was thinking would it be easier to buy plugs of say a few sizes and drill the holes to fit the plugs and weld them in or did you cut your own? I assume the smaller ones could be welded with a copper backer but that would only work with the 1/4 in or so holes right? Any advice on approaching this not so fun task when it comes up?

 

For the smaller holes I used a copper backer. For larger holes I cut small pieces of sheetmetal and tacked them into place, then welded them in.

Bobby

 

Same here. I did fill some as large as 1/2-5/8" or so with a backer because trying to cut one out of scrap with a grinder was tough.

 

This is what I did to my firewall. I cut the old one out and welded this in.

 

Does anyone have a picture of a restored stock firewall with a 226 straight six engine? I'm trying to see what screws / fasteners are coming through from the interior. Is there anything other than the fasteners for the firewall insulation that come through from the inside.

 

Heater box mounting studs and hose nipples from the heater core certainly would come through from the inside. And are we considering the throttle linkage which goes through from the engine side but has nuts on the inside? You've also got choke, throttle and speedo cables, vacuum wiper hose (if equipped) and all sorts of wiring.

I'm not sure if this is helpful for your year, but here's a shot of an original '48 firewall.

 

My 56 had so many holes chopped in the firewall I cut out the worst of it and put in two solid panels, then redrilled where I needed. I still ended up filling about 40 holes in the rest of the firewall and floorboard. If you can find a fabrication shop with a turret or automatic punch have them punch out a paper cup full of 1/2" - 1" blanks out of 16 and 18 ga sheet. Use a unibit to enlarge the holes to the size of your plugs. Use a welders magnet across the hole on the back side to hold the plug in place until you can put in a couple tacks then use a dolly and a hammer "on dolly" to flush and swell the plug to a tight fit. I only weld fill holes 5/16" and smaller using a copper spoon. Start the bead on top the surrounding metal not on the edge (unless you want to make the hole bigger instead of filling it ) and spiral the bead in to the center. See my Filling holes gallery for pix of the process I use.

 

Thanks for the picture. It helps a lot although there are several things setup different than the way mine was before I took it apart.





As you can see, the wiper hose and choke cable go through holes in the upper right. There isn't a hole large enough for the wiper hose in the indented area in the middle where yours goes through. I don't have a heater so I don't have to worry about those. I figured out the throttle linkage but I'm having trouble picturing where the throttle cable would go through. It doesn't look like it was set up right when I got the truck.

 

Here's what it looks like after getting sand blasted. I'm trying to restore it back to stock so I'd like to fill the holes that were added by previous owners but leave the extra holes from the factory even if they weren't used for the 6 cylinder setup.

 

All of those holes look stock to me.

 

I'm beginning to think you may be right. Do you know what the four holes on the left side, below the the rib under where the data plate goes are for?