above picture is not my truck, unfortunately the bottom one is.



The inner cowl on my 65 F100 has some serious rust damage, the lower half is completely gone.
I need some expert advise on how to go about repairing it, a junk yard for a donor truck is not an option since none
of the yards near me have F100's. I don't believe anyone makes an aftermarket version, but I hope I'm wrong, I just have been unable to find one when searching the web.

I think I'm calling it the correct name, it is the area that is behind the side panel air vent. The rusty pic is what I have to work with,
the other picture is to show what I'm talking about.








Thanks in advanced


John

 

Welcome to the club, I made my own patch panels, you can't see them. I had replace everything, cab mounts floors, lower hinge area. On both sides.

 

That came out nice, Thanks for replying,


Did you need any special tools like an English wheel or a brake to fab that?


I'm at the starting stages of my restore and I'm coming up with a game plan, so your post will defiantly be helpful.

 

I made my own lower cowl corner out of one piece taking my time with just a vise and a body hammer and dolly

 

Where is home? I see in your profile CA. but where?

 

I had a good pic of the pieces I made, some reason it's corrupted and won't upload so I took a pic of the pic, I made it all out of 16 ga steel.
Charlie




Another shot of what I dealt with.

 

Garden Grove

 

Thanks for the picture of the picture, Charlie.


Thanks TxStang2010, that came out nice.


Mine looks the same from what I can tell, I haven't removed the fenders yet but I can only imagine the mess I'll be in.

 

It might save you some time to make a template first.






And don't forget about what you can't see inside the cowl.

 

was your upper cowl rusted through too? I have that problem also, a hole under the dash. can you share how you repaired it

 

Nice repair, thankfully thats probably the one place mine didnt rust.

 

The holes here are what you would see from under the dash. My repair was to cut the top of the cowl off (as shown) and make a new floor... tack welding it on top of the original floor. I sealed the edges (potential leaks) with POR-patch and top-coated entire the floor with POR-15 paint. There's probably a better way to do this, but it worked fine.



Cutting off the cowl is not hard.. it just takes time. I used a spot-weld cutter from Harbor Freight to for the welds at the windshield. I bought several, but it only took one for the job. A cheap body saw did the rest.

You can't really see it from here, but the new floor is L shapped at the front. The vice grips are holding the new piece tightly to the front.







I'm looking now for an "after" pic, but I haven't find one yet

 

thanks, these trucks are like a Pandora's Box of never ending surprises, looks like I'll be doing a similar repair.

 

If it was mine and I lived in southern California (which I do) and it needed that much repair, I'd just find another cab......

 

Believe me the thought crossed my mind, But this was my grandfathers truck and it was a given to me when I was about 8 (I'm 40 now)so the sentimental value is the drive to keep it intact. Without a long sappy story I had it shipped to CA from Indiana last year and the price of shipping was a hell of a lot more than the truck is worth.