I've gotten some garage time over the last week and thought I'd provide an update.
I've wrapped up work on the lower hinge pillar. As I mentioned in my last update, I reinforced the reinforcement box that surrounds the hinge itself. After that I added the patch panel for the bottom of the hinge pillar. As usual, I took an unorthodox approach. Instead of cutting the hinge pillar to fit the patch or cutting the patch to fit the hinge pillar, I added it to the front of the hinge pillar, essentially as a doubler in some places and filling in what's missing for the rest. I thought about this for a long time before making it final. My thoughts on this surrounded two areas. First, I still don't trust my welds for something that will be subject to the loads that the bottom hinge will be subject to. Second, it occurred to me that the hinge pillar gets a lot of its strength from the single piece of metal stamped into a C shape. I wanted to keep as much of that strength as possible, so I went with the doubler approach. For alignment purposes, using the hinge opening and bolt holes made alignment easy. I trimmed the edges of the new panel, so that it would fit, bolted it to the existing hinge pillar and welded up the holes that I punched in it and the edges. It seems pretty solid. I know what you're thinking...how will the door close with the added thickness? I thought about that, too. The patch panels do add thickness if you use them the way that I have. I'm just not convinced that 1950's manufacturing tolerances for sheet metal fab were that tight. Tolerance stacking is a concern, but i think I'll get away with it this once. The rear pillar (lock pillar) will need a patch panel, too, but I'll attach that one in the traditional way as that won't have to hold the weight of a door.
With the hinge pillar completed, I went on to the inner cowl. Initially, I had purchased a partial panel, with the hope of grafting it to the remains of the original inner cowl. Once I really got in there, I concluded that there was no real way to save the original panel. The metal around the opening for the fresh air heater was so thin and rusty, there just wasn't anything to weld to. So, I went ahead and bought the complete panel and what a shock! The complete panel was 100% better quality than the partial! The complete panel was fully formed, including the correct shape on the flange that meets the floor and the firewall! It also had weld nuts installed for the fresh air heater or delete panel and had the flanges that connect it to the firewall and to the inside of the cowl! Needless to say, I was over the moon on that bit of good luck! I spent the last couple of days fighting the old inner cowl to get it cut out and just a bit of grinding to get the huge replacement panel to fit. Voila! It fits! And it looks like that stupid inner to outer cowl panel just might fit, too!!! Holy cow Batman! Right now, they are both held in place with clamps for their initial fitting. Next up is to remove them and prep them for welding. That means sanding off the EDP in areas that will get welded, punch some holes along the edges where the panel meets the floor, firewall and hinge pillar and paint on some weld through primer. Once that is all done, back it goes and the welding begins, again. Exciting times! Once that is done, I think I might do a test fit for the door...just to make sure that I haven't bollixed up anything. If that goes well, it will be on to the outer cowl panel.
Attached pics are: hinge pillar patch panel in place, comparison of old and new inner cowl panels, initial test fit of new inner cowl panel and outside view (with lots of clamps) of inner/inner to outer cowl panels.
As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.
Mike
Last edited by Phak1; 09/19/20251:15 PM. Reason: Typo
