Kevin and 52Carl; somehow, I knew that you two would come to my rescue. Thanks.
I am guilty of a rookie mistake that this build may not recover from: I never looked at how the doors fit before I started to disassemble the cab. I am enclosing pictures of the truck as I bought it and drove it for some months without ever being cognizant of a significant door fit issue. On the positive side, the truck had a lot of solid structure before I started restoration.
So I took the doors off, welded in support structures to preserve the geometry just as it was on the frame. Fitted in Kevin's custom made door braces, and built a rotisserie around Kevin's braces. I removed the floor but kept the back of the seat frame as a reference point for replacing the entire floor. The rear of the seat brace gave me an upper bound for fitting the new floor.
So once the floor was completely removed, I had the cab media blasted and that is where the driver side door damage became evident, as well as the rust holes in the kickboard and the inner cowl panels. I fixed the kickboard first to give me a solid front reference for installing the new floor. Once I had the floor secure (front and back, not left and right), I cut out the rear corners because they were poorly done and the "poorly done" was hidden by lots of "mud". With the new corners tacked in, I finally secured the back of the floor to the lock pillars, and the bottom of the lock pillars to the back of the rocker panels.
Now turning my attention to the cowls, I first checked that 8.xx number that Kevin has referenced in the forums for ensuring that the tab on the front of the rocker panel (I can never remember that phrase, "rocker panel"... it just does not compute for me) was correctly positioned relative to FOD (front of dash). The measurements were within a couple of hundredths on both sides. That made me feel good relative to floor placement.
I don't notice any twist to the driver side hinge pillar as a result of the door damage to the outer cowl, but that does not mean it is not present. When doing the cab corners and ensuring the "lines" matched to the remaining lines on the lock pillar, I discovered that the width of the bottom of the driver side door is maybe 3/8 inch longer when compared to the bottom of the passenger side door. I made sure to preserve that difference as I tacked in the cab corners.
So here we are at the cowls. Please correct me or adjust my approach. Here is what I am thinking:
I THINK I can tack in the inner cowl (side kick panel) before I deal with the other 2 cowl pieces. Yes? If I can get the inner cowl fitted to the kick board and firewall up front, the hinge pillar on the other side of the inner cowl, and properly positioned the inner cowl at the bottom between the rocker panel and the bottom of the hinge pillar, that gives me a firm foundation for dealing with the other 2 cowl pieces. Please confirm or give me some perspective to change my approach.
Now for the two outer pieces of the cowl structure. It is clear to me that the curvature of the replacement cowl side rail does not match the curvature of the original one. I have read enough to know that I have to work that out. I am aware of the FAM measurements for ensuring that the fender mount holes in the outer cowl are positioned correctly from the horizontal ground zero, but I also marked the sides of Kevin's door braces with marks for the top and bottom of each of the original fender holes, hoping that I could position the replacement outer cowl with its fender holes tracking to the marks on Kevin's door brace. I know this is no substitute for a true ground zero measurement so I will keep noodling about how to ensure I get it right on the positioning of the outer cowl piece.
That's it for now and thank you again for caring to take the time to help this rookie think through next steps.
