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Next thing I wanted to do was the rework the headlights. Shout out to Drewski and John as this is their idea.
Started by drawing the outline of the new trim rings and a cut line inside of that.
Cut the head light ring to suit and welded in some tabs for the trim ring.
Created some mounting tabs for the buckets to get fastened to
Cut some spacers to hold the brackets after figuring out how far in I wanted the headlights to sit. Then welded in the brackets.
Put everything together and the final look for one side.
Second one was similar and now I have a '53 grill with '56 style headlights.
For a guy that has never done this before, it looks like you're doing a nice job.
Thanks Drew. I set the bar high for myself all the time, whether it is work or play. If you shoot for the stars and miss, you will still land on the moon.
I love the holidays. This year I had no honey dew list to look after so lots of hot rod time. Got a heater in the garage a month ago as well so staying toasty warm. With the gas tank now located in the back of the truck there is no need to keep the filler hole. So with some careful cutting, spot weld drilling and a bit of magic from an air chisel it is gone. The inner part was in good shape so I just took a piece of steel and filled in the hole where the filler tube went.
It took some work to get the new panel to fit. Ended up having to drill out the spot welds of the inner panel and move it. Still not enough so out came the bigger hammer. Fits now. Many spot welds grinding, more welds, more grinding, hammer and dolly work and it is installed. It is very close to perfect. Will be sand blasting the cab at some point and after that will start with the filler to fix anything that is now not perfect.
Next up is the front cowl on the drivers side. Something happened to it before I bought this project. It was banged up pretty good and filled with bondo. I didn't think I could fix it so when I bought the cab corner and a few other things this got added to the list of stuff to buy.
Lots of cutting, carefully , drilling out the spot welds and some help from the air chisel and it is all gone.
The pace of rebuild/rework will slow down as I need to get back to my regular job on Monday but for now here is the finished panel in place. As others have said, the panel was close but still needed some surgery to get it better. Still some work to do right at the bottom but wanted to get the doors on first to see how it all lines up. Apparently nobody stocks 5/16-28 x 3/4" serrated head bolts anymore to bolt the hinges to the truck. Go figure, lol.
Next was to patch the firewall. Why did someone think that 53 holes in a firewall was a good idea.
And after
Next to go was the cowl vent. I am attempting to make the truck as smooth as possible. Started with this.
After trying a couple of different ways of doing things to make a cover plate for the vent, I had the most success with cutting a piece of wood to match the existing radius on the front where it meets the hood.
Once that was cut I then took a piece of metal and slowly hammer formed it around the cut part of the wood. That gave me a very close bend to match the rest of the cowl. It still needed to be formed to copy the crown in the cowl as well. The shrinker helped with that. Some hammer and dolly work to make it smoother. Lots of cutting, trimming, more hammer and dolly work and now it looks like this. All metal is butted together. Next I will weld that in place.
The firewall and cowl vent look great. I have been trying to decide if I clean up my firewall or cut it out and go smooth (which is beyond my current skills). Think I will try filling in the holes first.
Looks great. I liked the look of a smooth firewall too. Once I saw John Niolin do that to his truck there was no turning back! My firewall had 60+ holes and it had 6 large, ragged holes where the PO had installed different heaters/cores over the years. Once I finished my firewall, I got the same idea and filled my cowl vent. I was installing A/C, so no need for that being in the way!
No filler yet, but I like it!....Be very careful...before long you may want to smooth the dash by eliminating the radio, speaker, ash tray,
Your progress is amazing! Very inspiring. Keep it up!
Nice job, I have to fill a few holes in my firewall too, but not as many as you, my truck still uses most of them. I am going to have to fill a ragged antenna in front of the drivers door hole that someone cut out with a pair of tin snips. My friend has a plug cutter and knocked me out a 1 5/16" plug I hope will work.
