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Brian, I am, tracking your progress as when the weather cooperates I will be doing the same floor, inner and outer cowl patch panel work. Great job, I can only hope to have as good a result.

Boy, does that look nice! Great work!

Thanks you guys for the encouragement! I've done similar body panel replacement work on railroad passenger cars, but the metal is a lot thicker. And, since you're not working in such a confined space it's not nearly as tedious. This project has been quite the learning process.

Good job on the inner-to-outer cowl. That floor and firewall is starting to look like new.
I did nearly the same on the cowl piece, came close to cutting it completely apart and welding it back together. The fabricated piece is close to just raw material to make your own.

klhansen,

I took a moment to go through your flickr album. You've done some impressive work on that poor old truck! Way more than I will ever need to do. I really like the cab rotisserie you fabricated. I can't imagine doing the rear cab corners without turning the cab on its nose, or even getting the bottom of the cab cleaned and painted. I'm going to have to build one for sure.

Since my last post I found some stuff lying around the shop area with which to build a pretty decent rotisserie for the cab. Once the cab was on the spit, I was able to finish both of the lower cowls, clean up the welded seams at the new floor panels, and replace rotten parts underneath the cab. About half of each flange where the cab-to-running board seal mounts had to be replaced. Then I replaced the bottom sections of the inner rear cab corners. Once all of that welding was done, I cleaned, prepped and primed the bottom of the cab.

After rebuilding the rear cab shackles, it was a good feeling to re-install them instead of just putting them on a shelf for later. Next, I began the task of replacing the outer rear cab corners. To date I've got the left corner cut out and the inner area cleaned up and coated with truck bed liner. I'll use this coating on the floor under the fuel tank and seat as well. Once the cab corners are done, the bottom of the cab will get a top coat of paint then a coat of truck bed liner, too.

As a side note, the new floor panel for the driver's side toe board did not come with the seal retainers for the brake and clutch rods, or the accelerator pedal hinge, travel stop and seal retainer. My old floor was missing the original pedal hinge and stop as a previous owner had chopped them off to use a more modern pedal. Many months ago I had cut these pieces out of the floor of a truck at a junk yard. The seal retainers (with seals) I purchased through an eBay store called Bill's Truck Shop, Ltd. in Canada.

While the cab corner work is going on, I've also started cleaning up the front fenders. They are in pretty decent shape although it became pretty apparent that both had suffered damage and were pounded back into shape, more or less, many years ago. I've got one fender in primer now after many hours of sanding, and a whole lot of hammer and dolly work to (hopefully) lessen the amount of body filler I'll need to apply later.

Great work/progress. I am hoping to get my driver's side floor and cowl area to the point of pulling the cab off the frame in the coming weeks to allow the bottom side work you have completed and the rear cab corners that you are starting on.

Your fenders sound a lot like mine, pretty good shape for their age and experience but the closer you look the more "used" they appear.

I put some quality time in on the left rear corner of the cab yesterday. After test fitting the new patch panel onto the corner a couple dozen times, I came to the conclusion that the "L" shaped corner at the bottom rear (where the rear cab wall notches up) was not going to wind up in the right place if the new corner remained in one piece. It simply isn't the same size as the original corner. So I cut off the corner and clamped it where it needed to go. I figured it would be easiest to get the rest of the corner to fit then fill in the gap (which turned out to be about 1/2" wide). The first photo shows the new corner piece temporary clamped into place with the "L" corner in the right spot. Note the difference in the two surfaces. In order to get the corner to "lie down" and meet up with the rear wall, I needed to get the bottom of the corner to tuck in further. To do that, I had to cut off about half of the "Z" shaped lip where the corner attaches to the door jamb. Then I had to slowly grind away the remaining material until the corner piece was relieved sufficiently.

Before that whole process, however, I took some time to make a couple of patterns from the door. Using overlapping layers of tape, and some strips of manila folder for rigidity, I made patterns of the bottom of the door, and of the rear edge. These patterns allowed me to check the alignment of the new corner piece before I tacked it in. Unfortunately, because the other cab corner is gone at the bottom, too, I don't have any means of gauging how far out the new corner should be from the door jamb. I made an educated guess based on the thickness of the bottom of the door (including the rubber seal). I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the door and the corner faces line up reasonably well.

In the last photo, you can see that after I trimmed the door edge sufficiently, the corner laid down pretty well and was easily tacked to the "L" shaped corner at the rear. The gap between the two pieces is easily filled in with a strip. I will need to make some filler pieces for the door edge as well.

When I fitted up the new patch panel on the left rear corner, I had to cut away a bunch of the "Z" shaped leading edge in order to get it to lay down in the right position. That meant I had to go back and make pieces to fill in those gaps, too. The first photo shows the new pieces tacked in place. At this point I spend quite a bit of time double checking dimensions to be as sure as I could be that it was right. The second photo shows the end result after a whole lot of spot welding, grinding, welding, sanding, welding, etc., etc. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.

I then started in on the right side corner. In this case, I didn't need to replace the existing "Z" shaped section so I cut the old corner to leave that edge in place, and made the new patch piece fit up to it. I spent a fraction of the time fitting this corner vs. the other side. In the third photo the interior of that corner has been cleaned, metal prepped and then painted prior to putting the new corner in. I'm coating the interior of these corner spaces and the whole floor pan inside the cab with truck bed liner. Eventually I will coat the bottom of the cab the same way.

Your progressing nicely! I like your rotisserie! 👍