Project: Montezuma

[May70]

Rear - Lower cab wall repairs

Chased rust in a few spots. Pretty thin in places around the factory welds.

[May70]

Sealed up the seam on the firewall and rear of the cab where the floor will be welded up against. Going to topcoat the epoxy sealer with eastwood rust encapsulator product for added measure.

READY FOR THE FLOOR PAN!!

[68Gold/white]

Job well done on ALL the work, AND the parts selection. An old set of rusty rotors that can take a little machining is a very good thing!!!

Was really glad to see your drum stuff go away!!!

[May70]

Originally Posted by 68Gold/white

Job well done on ALL the work, AND the parts selection. An old set of rusty rotors that can take a little machining is a very good thing!!!

Was really glad to see your drum stuff go away!!!

Thank you, definitely been learning as I go. A lot of head scratching.

Really excited to put in floor pan and hopefully it goes smoothly.

[May70]

Floor pan install

I cut 1" off both the front corners of the pan to make it easier to fit into place.
I cut off the lower firewall brace at an angle to make it easier for the pan to fit up into place.
I cut notches out on both sides of the front to fit around the humps over the firewall supports that connect to the floor.
I made a pie slice along the front drivers side edge to bend in the floor pan lip to fit past the pillar

[May70]

I fit the front edge up into place ( with the help of two people) and trimmed where needed (as mentioned above). I didnt take pictures but I had to trim the front pan lip where it sits in the firewall lip, the 4" or so where the 'hump' comes up, that lip on the pan was too deep and caused the pan not to sit flush.

Once the middle of the front of the pan looked good, I clamped it, then raised the rear of the floor pan up to my old 'white line' I marked on the original floor.

I then took self tapping metal screws and started on the front, working my way on the inner halves of the floor pan. The outer portions needed to be bent down and really did not want to snug up to the firewall. Lots of screwing, pulling to get the whole pan to move forward. its close and my old measurements line up. It took about 2.5 hours for me to get it in there. I also had to take out the kick panel replacement because it was too tight to fit in floor. I will have to trim it and then weld it in once the floor and all is done.

The pillars are reproduction, and the rear holes in the floor do not appear to be forward enough to be bolted in to the floor. The forward holes look good. So I will probably just bolt the front two holes and weld in the back two. Not real happy with that but I didnt have much to work off of. I was pretty careful when replacing those, making sure all the angles and measurements were right. Im not sure why its like that, I gues its just the difference in repro parts. Not too comfortable with it though (inputs welcome).

Now im going to put the doors on and start test fitting with corners/rockers.

Next (i think) I will do the cab corners and then outer rockers. Leaving everything in with those metal screws till I get it all straight.

[May70]

Holes not quite where I want them, but again my old measurements between the floor and bracing are basically dead on. A little confused. Not sure to keep going or what. Thats why I think ill see what doors/rockers/corners look like mocked up?

[SCHRUMGMC]

Exciting progress indeed

It blows my mind how people learn to weld and fabricate because it’s something I can not personally achieve

[May70]

So the metal screws are great for smaller patches. For the big heavy pan that needs pulling into place, I should have started with the clamps, then used bolt/nuts to suck it up into place in the corners, especially. That did the trick.

Also had the rear of the floor pan (DS) a little high so my door didnt want to shut. Looked at the line I drew on the back of the cab and it showed the same. Adjusted it and now we are good there. Doors shut pretty good and line up.

Now ive got the task of rear pillars, corners and outer rockers. My outer rocker is giving me issues.... TBD

PICS of the floor sucked a bit more up into place. The PS pilar not quite lining up I think is a mix between inaccuracies with reproduction pieces and me not having a floor pan in place to know I needed another splice to give me more flange area to bolt to.

[May70]

Rocker fiasco (possibly?) Looks to be meeting the inner rocker too low and gunna need quite a bit of pie cuts where it meets the cab

[Kronald_70GMC]

Looking good. Hope you get you rocker problem dealt with.

[May70]

Checking the situation...

Inner rocker is not in the right place on the high-hump complete repro floor pan. The inner rocker ledge where the outer rocker sits on is slightly too high.

Pretty sure thats the tweak I need but going to get some measurements on a factory cab... Also im trying to find a set of original doors to avoid door skin and lower section repairs.

[May70]

Cleaning up the old cab corner job. They cut off the bottom few inches of the original corner and put the replacement over the rest. Used about a gallon of rubberized sealer and filler. Removed all of the old...

[May70]

Mocked up cab corner. You can see the back will need to be spliced and dropped to match the rear cab line (but ill deal with that after the rest is done). Also had to cut a small piece off the floor pan to get the corner to sit in where it needed to. Small cuts around the curve to get it to shape right.

[May70]

Corner cut to fit and put in place

[May70]

Rocker mock up and inner pillar cut to fit. Pillar will need a few splices and metal added. Cab corner is going to be cut along the door gap and moved over to match the rest of the gap distance. Rocker will need big time cutting along the outer edge and tweaked to get gap to match.

[cornerstone]

Nice work man. It'll be worth all the extra time to do it right. Keep at it!

[KMC3420]

Awesome job on making the patch panels work. Seems like all of mine will need pie cuts as well. Keep posting as I have the whole floor to do as well, and you going first and documenting helps us all.

[May70]

Cab corner tweaks to get the gap right, had to split it and move it over towards the door. Also had to make a few cuts on the lip to get the curve right.

Pillar tweaks coming.

[gmc684x4]

Nice work

[May70]

Fender had some bad rust pitting. Did a patch on that and got it in sealer. Did some shrinking on the door, plugged up 3 point window mount holes and sealed the door also. Sealed the inside of the cab corner and floor pan where I wont have access to it once its welded up.

Now I can go ahead and weld the corner on and proceed with the I/O rocker. I plan to get the outer rocker in the right position, then build the inner to the outer.

[May70]

Continued

[Jason Banks]

Just found our build from your comments over in Paint and Body.

My truck had very similar rust to yours. I didn't opt for the full floor because it was a lot of money and I could just buy all the patch panels. After I got done, I said I should have got the whole floor. Now, I'm looking at the struggle you had and I feel better. ha

Just yesterday I redid the passenger rocker and cab corner. I'm pretty sure I didn't get the outer floor mounted far enough out. Even though I lined it up with (what was left of) the factory cab corner. There was even less metal on the drivers side and I put the outer floor in once and the had to take it back out and add a pie slice to move it out further at the back. Pretty sure this is what I should have done on the passenger side also, but I didn't know enough to know it at the time. It is what it is now, It's held in too well now and I may have to make a piece to seal the cab corner to the floor since it's not up against it by about 3/8

[May70]

Okay so cab corner is buttoned up. As you can see there was a stupid amount of slice and dice involved. First thing I noticed right off the bat was the curve on the bottom of the rocker was not very close to that of the lower cab corner.

At the time of putting on the cab corner, I knew my outer rocker was going to require a massive amount of work to get it right. I also couldn't get the rocker into position close enough to realize how different the curves were.... Since I burned in and did extensive work on the cab corner I was not going to cut into it, and worked with what I had.

I made a smooth transition between the corner/pillar/rocker. Even though its going to be filled with seam sealer, Im hoping my work will prove to last.

[May70]

Ill let the pictures do the talking. You can see how much splicing and adjusting this outer rocker has taken. Its basically in position now with the right gaps and alignments, I just have to finish welding/grinding this up. Im hoping the drivers side is a bit better stamping, probably wishful thinking i know.

That corner where the corner, door corner and outer rocker meet is a dead giveaway to the amount of detail someone poured into a restoration. Getting that right takes a whole lot of patience...