i have started to remove my rotten sections of cab and noticed that my doors and pillars are in good shape. i dont want to remove the doors if i dont have to. i was thinking about tack welding the door shut to keep some of the structural integrity. i need to replace inner and outer cowl plus the peice in between. does the door need to be removed to do this? in everybodys pictures i have seen they have the doors off but their gaps or sills are bad to begin with, mine are not. what do you think? thanks- Robert
You have to remove the dors to get to the welds.look at my builds on the 50 and 53 to see how I did them. http://picasaweb.google.com/rpettycustommurals/JimS53 http://picasaweb.google.com/rpettycustommurals/DaveS50
Saving Body Alignment I am not a bodyman but , I know from many years of experiance that all the high dollar shops do indeed , tack weld the doors shut to prevent the body from buckling when doing structural repairs , then later you can cut the welds and remove the doors as neceesary to rebuild the hinges etc. Maybe it's different for AD's but I know of one '53 AD that had the passenger side cowl skin replaced without taking the door off..... Be careful , work slowly as once bent , it's extremely difficult to get the cab anywhere near aligned again ~ these trucks were wretchedly jigged up when new .
You can't get to the weld surface inside the door surface without taking them off. replace one piece at a time and the others should hold it in place. During this process you can sometimes correct some alignment problems from the factory. I reccommend replacing the panels with the full repro panels and drilling out the spot weldsall around. Classic Trucks has an artricle about a spot weld remover that looks pretty nice.
Russ i really appreciate your pics and have a ton of questions all pretaining to the 50. sorry if its too many. 1. in what order did you replace the outer, inner/outer, inner and floor? 2. in photo 36 what kind of seats and mounts are those? do they work well? 3. in photo 40 what is the ax for? 4. in photo 32 what size fan did you use 5. in photo 41/45 why did you change headers? 6. in photo 57 did you change the entire outer cowl? is it easier than part of it 7. in photo 94 your door is cut, i assume its for power windows, did you replace the section you cut out? how do the power windows work? 8. in photo 120 what is the center console out of? 9. do you have a recomandation on the metal supplier? 10. i have heard alot of people have problems with the inner/outer piece not fitting so well. did you have any problems with this piece? All of your work looks really nice i hope my 51 comes out as nice. thanks- Robert
Now, class...Raise your hands and 1 at a time..... I replaced all of the pieces together. When we cut out the steel kick panels and floor(Torched out of a Caterpillar) The whole cab sagged. This truck came from a west virginia coal miner...back yard tech was definately employed! I replaced the under floor mounts, floors(seat foreward)inner, outer, and the c channel in between. The axe handle is propping things up. I didn't have the luxury of welding in braces, as the thing nearly fell off the frame. I put in the c channel first on the poassenger side, then the inner kick panel because the panel goes between the floor and the inner structure. Next came the body mount, drilled out holes to filler weld to the floor panel. After both floor pans were in, We decided to put in a smooth firewall from D.S. Sheetmetal...a VERY nice piece. The seats are Jeep Cherokee, mounts are from Speedway, cut and welded together to bridge the tranny tunnel. The seats are a little high backed, covered some of the window, but were very comfortable. Don't remember the size fan...that is just for the A/C. get the biggest that will fit. Full tube headers were hitting the frame and hang down a bit low. Block huggers are almost a neccessity in these trucks. Yes, I reccommend replacing the whole cowl, it is easier, but you will loose the side vent. This truck was so full of rust and bondo that the vent was almost rotted out, so we replaced it. By doing the whole panel, you don't have to worry about old body work or rust issues, because these trucks are rusty inside the cowl all the way up to under the dash. I don't think they painted these sections at all. The door is cut for power windows. We used the kit from its a snap. went in pretty easy, welded tabs to mount to the door and to help reinforce. Made tabs to screw the door panels back on afterward. The console is home made from 1/2" plywood. Just make a cardboard template, transfer to wood, screw together, smooth the edges and cover. I used metal from Truck shop, Jim carter, and Chevy duty. They all seem to come from the same place. Most pieces fit with minimal finnessing. The c channels are a major pain in the situpon, no matter who they are from. While you are putting all this together, you can tack pieces in and hold up the door to see what the gaps are. some adjustment can be made to correct the factory job, but if you expect even gaps on these trucks, you are in for a world of hurt. I didn't separate the door sill from the hinge surface, so the door opening didn't move. If this area is rotted out,you might look at replacing it first, otherwise weld a brace from front to back in the door frame. The problem with tacking in the door is that you can't get in to fit/weld the panels in. There is a lot of back and forth fitting, grinding, finessing, swearing, clamping involved in this. Good luck. Feel free to ask any questions if you need. Also check out the 53...I did many of the same panels on it and have more pic.s of the process.
Cab pictures Here is how I did mine. One piece at a time as others have recommended, measure twice cut once. http://community.webshots.com/user/RugerWSM?vhost=community
