The interior work continues…...along with the vinyl & masonite, I also did a quick & dirty temporary job on the dash. I had welded in the various patch panels and couldn’t leave it that way as rust sets in awful quick here, so I did a quick filler & hand sanding job, followed by a rattle can spray of black paint. I’m a dummy for not having finished it when the cab was stripped bare, and I had unlimited room to work and the dust wouldn’t have mattered. I suspect I will eventually do a steering column replacement along with another big thinning out of unnecessary wires, so at that point I will strip the cab and do a decent job on finishing the visible metal surfaces.
I worked my way towards the front of the cab, doing the kick panels and A-pillar pieces. This involved masonite backed kick panels, sheet steel A-pillar covers, and windlace strips. The windlace strips were a little weird as they start off at the floor and trim up the edges of the kick panels, then cover the tiny gap between the dash and the door opening, then trim up the A-pillar covers and then finally disappear under the steel trim pieces that run along the top door edges. The A-pillar covers I made were sheet steel as they required a bend along the windshield edges. Here are the pieces, ready to install for one side of the cab:
And here are all the pieces installed:
The wiper cover plates that you see in the above pic are temporary (they are version 1.0 which was an initial shot at getting overall dimensions correct). Version 2.0 will cover the exposed wiper motor ends, and will have some spiffy raised ribs like the originals had. My son Brian is doing the 3d printing of these covers for me.
Overall I am pleased with the interior. I still have to do door panels and the firewall cover, but for these I will use ABS plastic. I also need to do one small curved panel that sits over the passenger’s shoulder (I cracked the masonite backing board on that one). I will do that small curved panel out of ABS to see how it is to work with ABS on curved stuff. After that, I think I’m finally going to have to deal with the door latch assemblies. They have apparently been on backorder for close to 2 years now, so I think I’m gonna have to order some bear claw latches and do a bunch of fabbing (will the fabbing ever end on this build?!!!).
More to follow!