The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop How would you recommend fixing this?

Swiss Cheese

The interior front portion of my cab roof is riddled with little rust holes. How would you recommend patching that? Weld in a new panel or new sheet metal? Fiberglass? Marglass? Bondo? My truck is going to be a driver and will have some plastic filler on it so I'm not requiring that everything be patched with metal. At the same time I don't want to cut corners and want my work to last for many years. What would you suggest?

Looks like it's just on the interior piece? For a daily driver it wouldn't hurt to use fiberglass filler, assuming you are going to sand it down and finish it nice.

Yes, it is just the interior piece - the actual roof is in really good condition. It appears some mice made nests in between the two pieces of metal and trapped moisture which caused it to rust out. However I fix it I will be making sure it is smooth and painted nicely.

I have that on my 55 3600. The way I fix those is to "dimple" each hole so the hole edges are rolled inward. This creates more surface area for the filler to hold on to without building it up high. I fill with fiberglass paste...the type that has ground glass in it ..not fiber. I then sand that and then cover the whole area with bondo..fo the cosmetic repair.

Of course if your gifted at fabbing sheet metal and welding it in that would be great but since your asking this question I sense you don't want to do that....It's a bad place to open up a can of worms.

Best of luck,

Keith

I had the same rodent problem on my 57. I cut the header out and found a real mess. I started with this and had to buy this to put on here so I would end up with a good roof . I never had very good results in the past trying to cover rust with filler or fiberglass.

Hey Alan,

Where did you find the spare roof?
I've got to do the same thing to my 56.

Thanks,
Zeke

PS: If someone ever started making replacement panels for this area they would make a killing!

I got mine from JIMBO59CHEVY here on Stovebolt in the PARTS forum. He has a lot of TF stuff & has always been very fair with me. When you get ready to do the replacement let me know. I can give you a few pointers after doing mine.

You can buy a new repro roof and the inner header, but the inner is over $300 & the outer over $350 plus shipping. I'd go with the used parts.

I had to replace the roof on my 63 too. That's a reinforcing piece and I would cut it out and replace it. You can replace it with a home made piece as long as it was solid, it doesn't have to look like the old one. Also, a bigbolt's roof will work too,
Scott