Fellow Stovebolters; I am looking for your collective wisdom on overcoming some challenges I am having in restoring my cab. Pictures included... First picture is front shot of new, complete floor and repaired toe board. After carefully centering floor front to back and making sure that is was level left to right, I spot welded floor to toe board along the line where they meet. I did not do the recommended seem welds (yet)... just the spot welds. As you can see, I have not yet ground down any welds. Next step (second picture) was to turn my attention to the back of the cab. I cut out the patches that were at each cab corner (they were not butt welded). I have the back of the floor cleeco'd to the bottom of the cab and also to the rear seat riser. I also used the original bolts and plates used to connect cab to shackles, as you know, they attach to the back of the rear seat riser. (Next picture) as you can see, the bottom of the passenger side hinge pillar fits snugly to the side of the floor assembly (the term rocker panel never made sense to me). While I have replacement for the lower hinge pillars, I think I will leave this side alone, maybe weld it closed at the bottom, then clean up and prime the area. (Next picture) The problem I am struggling with shows up on the river's side. There is a (say quarter inch) gap between the bottom of the hinge pillar and the side of the floor (ok, rocker panel, I guess). As a consequence of the driver's side hinge pillar bottom not hugging the rocker panel tight enough, as you can see in the next picture, the corner patch does not completely overlap the inner corner of the rear of the floor where the inner corner is supposed to be spot welded to the outer corner patch. Now I know I can make the corner patch fit... remember, it has not been trimmed to fit the hole in the cab so it is just overlaying cab skin at this point. Now comes the issue that I have been noodling over... the driver's side lower hinge pillar. I have a replacement and my current intention is to only cut the bottom of the hinge pillar as little as possible to replace the rusted metal. That will still leave the gap to fill between bottom of hinge pillar and rocker panel. How best to do this? I already shaped a piece of steel that I can weld to the side of the replacement lower hinge pillar piece to fill the roughly quarter inch gap. Other options... I could free up the back of the floor from the cab and nudge the back of the floor over to the driver's side maybe 1/8 inch or so, even though the front of the floor is welded to the toe board. Of course, I braced everything before cutting any metal so as to preserve door openings etc, so I do not dare to change the dimensions of the driver's side hinge pillar to more closely snug it to the rocker panel. Just for history sake, the driver's side outside cowl has that classic crease that indicates that the driver's side door was violently driven into the outer cowl at some point in the past. That might have something to do with the origins of this driver's side lower hinge pillar gap. Finally (last picture)... those door opening braces are the key to building my rotisserie correctly (don't look at any of my welding). Why I was blessed to inherit Kevin Hansen's original braces I will never know, but I am forever grateful. If and when I get my cab off the rotisserie, I feel obligated to pass them on.
