Thanks for the words of encouragement! I am looking forward to trying out that recipe from the Youtube link sent by Mongocanfly. From what I saw, I should be able to get the welds to look far older that they actually are. In the meantime, some progress has been made. The cab was removed using an engine hoist, and set aside so that I can do the required repairs on rust and “other stuff”.
The rust work was very easy, just a couple of edges where the toeboards and kick panels meet. Its just flat metal patches so I won’t bore you guys with those details. Things got a little more interesting when I dealt with the “other stuff”. At some point in time, someone installed a radio in the lower left corner of the dash. Of course the part that was cut out was on one of the raised lips of the dash, so I had to grab some wood to make a quick form to pound the replacement patch into shape.
The other item was however a little tougher. At some point in the past, someone had removed the under-dash mechanism that allows you to open and close the entire front windshield assembly. While that’s going to be a future pain for me, the big issue is how they did it. They simply cut a giant "not so round" hole in the dash, using some very crude type of saw. Of course there is no worse location possible, as the decorative ribs that adorn the centre of the dash are right there.
I normally would make a wooden buck with channels ground out to hammer these raised ribs out (like in my previous post), but I saw someone on this site who did this kind of stuff by actually making a form to press the shapes. It looked interesting, so I gave it a try. I grabbed a scrap of metal plate and cut out the female half of the form, and then used a piece of flat bar to form the male half. It took a bit of playing around with a die grinder to round the edges just right, but in the end it worked. By using my shop press I could easily form the raised ribs that I needed, and the shape was awful close to the factory ones. Here is the test piece I was playing with:
Once I was happy with the shape of the ribs, I cut out a piece of 16 gauge metal to make the final patch. Yup, 16 gauge, thats what this dash was made of! The patch panel looked like this, once all 3 ribs were formed:
Unfortunately the dash in that area is curved, so a 2nd form was going to be needed. This time I used some wood to again form the male and female halves, and again used a die grinder to shape them. This was a pleasure to do as a die grinder makes short work of wood. Once again I went to the shop press, and after a few gently squeezes and some adjustments of the forms I was able to put the curve into the patch panel. Using the shop press was a pleasure, as those raised ribs on 16 gauge metal make it hellishly strong, and very very resistant to bending.
And here is the final patch panel, loosely held in place by some magnets. It still needs a little hammer and dolly work, but the final result is presentable. I won’t weld it in right now, as I discovered that the giant hole is actually quite convenient for doing work inside the dash, so I will use it as an access hole for the time being.
More to follow!
Stephan