Did a little more cab scouting today. I found the tin worms had been busy while the truck waited for me to get back to it. This is what the roof panel looks like on both side of the cab. Looks like I have some more cut and paste to take care of.

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On a positive note I started to take care of some of the other things the cab needs to get back to its former glory. I pounded out a dent someone had made in the top of the dash just in front of the radio speaker hole. I also started filling in the dash where someone had cut the dash over the original radio holes to install an after market radio.
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Thats before
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After the big hole welded closed. Still have to fill the small ones and then redrill the round holes.

 

A little more work on the FUBAR radio hole some previous owner cut into the dash.

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Looking smooth!!

 

Thanks Ted still have some touchup welding to do and some regrinding. Its getting there.

 

About as good as it gets. A little use of filler should clean it up for paint.

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Turned out nice. Once painted it'll look factory fresh.

 

From 15:06 to 19:35 hrs is 4hrs and roughly 30 minutes. In that time there was some more welding and a whole lot more pounding. The harder I tried to get it perfectly straight the further it seemed I got behind the curve on it. Finally threw in the towl and just said a little filler will take care of the rest. Thanks Ted next I move to the roofline. It may be ten times harder than this job as there are no panels available for this work and the roofline repair. Im going to go for it and see what happens. All the rest of the repairs I can get patch panels for the needed repairs. Might be a while though as I have to get going on my 65 again.

 

Every time you do a weld on sheet metal it's going to shrink the surrounding metal. That causes low spots. So you can try to fill in the low spot with more weld which causes more low spots. Or you can try to hammer/dolly out the low spots. It can be enough to drive you nuts. In those cases filler can be your friend!!


How bad is the roof?

 

Not totally sure how bad the edges of the roof are. Ill find out more when I start to cut into it and find out. You can see in a few posts back that there is some rust out there. We shall see. Wish me luck. Ill probably need it.

 

Hey Ted you are right on the frustration level. That dash sheet metal is so thin. I put it at about 18-20 gauge. Second night I was blowing holes thru it till I finally got the setting right on the welder. That last 4 hrs of work last night was mostly pounding out low spots and getting up under dash with a hammer is not all that easy to do. Kind of had to pound overhead looking up at where the hammer blows were landing. Then getting my head far enough back from the work so my eyes could focus was a battle too. Im not whining but it was a challange. This was the look on my face when I was about 2 hrs in yesterday. Its all done now but the crying as they say.

 

Sorry about that. I've got a nasty head cold right now so I'm not all there right now. Or maybe the cough syrup I'm taking is just really strong. The rust pictured is in a straight area so no compound curves to deal with. Just use a pipe or something with close to the same radius to form the curve in your patch pieces. Hopefully it won't be as hard to weld as your dash was. It's been a while since I had a 60's truck so I don't remember. Can you get to the back side of the rusted area of the roof? If you can a backer in there while you weld it'll be a little easier.

Hopefully your gutters are solid. If they aren't rusted thru it save a lot of headaches.




There's a fine line between getting good weld penetration and just blowing holes in it! Were you using any kind of backer behind the area you were welding?

That sounds miserable! Did you get a bunch of dirt/dust or rust in your face with every hammer blow? That's what usually happens to me when I'm hammering above my head! That's one of the reason's I plan on cutting the dash out of my 54 and making it removable!

 

I had saftey glasses on the first time I was up under there to start hammering. Yes the dust and dirt came raining down. I got smart and took the air hose back there and blew as much of tha out so it wasnt to bad after that. I have a little bit of a pinched nerve in my back rt shoulder area so after that twisting and hammering Ive had a headache the last few days but nothing I wont survive. Well worth the headache to get it to where it is.

As to the top I can get slightly to the back of the gutter area but it is tight. I have some but weld clamps and I will try to keep the cut tight so hopefully I wont need andy backing behind the weld. Im going to make a copper spoon out of some copper pipe if I need to fill some wide holes. Anyway thats up next so stand by.

 

See I'm not smart enough to do the blow out the dust and dirt trick! I just sit there hammering away while whining and complaining about it. The pinched nerve sounds like it sucks! I've got back and knee problems so I know about putting up with some pain and suffering while and after working on the vehicles. My truck is a pain in the back and yours is a pain in your head. What we won't do for the hobby we love!!

 

Yeah it only hurts when I smile or talk or walk or stand or sit or crawl or you get the idea. Ha ha.

 

Well I hope your headache goes away soon.