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Glad to have you back Mike!

Appreciate the shop safety note and glad to hear you have managed a full recovery!

Don't forget to keep those pictures coming. Since you have been gone for a while, there have been some upgrades which now allow "10" pictures in each of your posts, with much larger sized files allowed.

Looking forward to seeing your project progress!

Welcome back Mike. Good thing you recovered from those bites.

Welcome back Mike! I for one follow your progress, although my truck is a 59' the repairs you are making are much the same.... I learned about insects in boots and clothing while in the Middle East, Camel spiders are nasty.

Mike,
Glad you're back in good health.
I did have a pair of old shoes sitting in my garage that I had used, but I tossed them in my last round of garage cleanup. Fortunately I don't think we have any real venomous spiders up here (no snakes either.) So that wasn't a bit worry. They were full of metal dust though, and were grey instead of their original brown.

Looking forward to your continued progress.

Welcome back, glad that you recovered and are making progress on your project again. Those inner, inner to outer, and outer cowl parts can be a challenge as any of us that have tackled that area know well.

Hey Everybody,

Been hacking away at my welding punch list since my last post. The heavy lifting is done. The outer cowl, inner-to-outer cowl and inner cowl are now permanently installed! Connections made per the welding instructions in the FAM plus replicating the factory welds that were on my truck. The welds were dressed and shot with some primer to keep them from rusting, while I finished up the installation. Mostly, that finish work is using some body filler to cover the seam between the outer cowl and top cowl. I decided not to use lead, for safety reasons, as my grandkids are frequently at my house and I don't want them exposed to the lead, if possible. I'm attaching three pics. The first is of the original parts that I cut out of the truck. They are laid out on the driveway in general proximity to each other, as they would be in the truck. The second is of the outer cowl. The third is of the inner cowl. Once the body filler work is done, I'll give both the inner and outer cowl a good coat of primer and a coat of paint. Then, it'll be time to tackle the driver's side.... Kinda like deja vu all over again (thanks Yogi Berra)!

Looks like good progress. Like Alvin says, 15 minutes a day will get it done.

Hey Everybody,

A quick update. Still plugging along on passenger side sheet metal. I ended up having to make a patch that covered a part of the firewall and toeboard. It now covers one of the factory holes for the fresh air heater tubes. The factory sheet metal that has that opening is preserved in the cab, so that a future owner can open it up if desired. I'm sticking with my recirculating heater, so it isn't needed. The factory sheet metal also preserves the holes for the screws that attach the filler panels. This metal wasn't good enough for structural purposes, so the patch that I made covers that area and more. You can see in the pic that I used quite a few plug welds, plus edge welds to hold it all together. I'm sure it will be cringe inducing for some, but that's ok. It appears to be solid and does what I needed. I've included several pics. The first is a 3/4 profile showing all of the cowl pieces that I replaced. I used the FAM for locating the plug welds for all of the parts. The inner-to-outer cowl piece was very difficult to weld into place, as many of those weld locations were right up against the inner edge. It required a longer than normal stick out to reach the inner cowl metal and was hard to manage. In retrospect, it would have been easier to weld it from inside the cab. We'll see how I handle it on the driver side. The second pic shows the outer cowl and the body filler work, so far. It's really close, but not quite there. The final pic shows looking down the cowl. If you look closely, you can see a small flat spot in the body filler area. That was a low spot that was revealed with some sanding today. It's currently with another thin coat of filler that is curing. I'll look at it tomorrow. Hopefully, that's the last of it.

Hey Everybody,

Here's where I'm at. Single coat of primer across the outer cowl, including the wrap around part in front and the body filler seam. I intentionally allowed overspray on the upper cowl, mimicking the primer spray job the PO did. So there, the cats out of the bag...this truck will be ratty, not pretty. Doesn't mean I half censoredEd it, quite the contrary. The filler edges that remain visible are all under the hood, so I worked them as best I could. The edges that are on the visible part of the cowl are very small, but not entirely gone. That's the best that I could do. So, almost ready to start on the driver's side.

That actually looks pretty darn good. If you were to put a couple more coats of primer on the filler edges and blocked it, you could probably get a real nice color coat on it. I know that's not what you're looking for, but still. Good job.