hello everyone, i have been working on my passenger cab sheet metal.i am leaving the driver side alone for now so i have a reference. i have decided to cut around the hood indent and the factory leaded seem. i am currently repairing part of the rocker as the other was too far gone. the cardboard you see is the template for my new kick panels. all the horror stories i have heard about the inner/outer cowl piece are true. they just dont seem to fit "right". i think i can get around this because i am making my own kick panels. i have a few questions maybe you all could help with. 1. in one of the pictures i am holding a square to the door pillar, are the door pillars supposed to be cocked at an angle? 2. on my replacement panels they state the gauge as "1mm" what gauge does that translate into? 3. i am destroying all of my drill bits on spotwelds; what are some good bits, type, size, length? 4. the doors were pretty tough to get off. i assume this is because they havent been removed in 50 years. does this sound right? --thanks for everything - Robert http://s277.photobucket.com/albums/kk45/rtnnhazel2/z My Husbands Truck/cab floor/passenger side/
Wow Thats a serious amount of metalwork your doing there fella! going to be one hell of a satisfying job by the time you finish. You can buy specific spot weld drills from most bodyshop suppliers and metal works suppliers, they are short bits with the cutting end ground in reverse, ie the edge of the bit is highest apart from a spike right in the middle, the spike gets you centered on the weld where the outer edges of the bit start to cut round the weld, a bit like a starrett cutter if you have them over there. They will wear out but not as fast as a normal bit so buy a couple of them. Welds are a hardened bit of the steel so will wear any bit out. I had to at one point wedge both feet against the hinge panel to get one door to slide off the hinges, suckers can get real stuck on.
Yessiree! Yikes! You have quite the job going on there! The doors are going to be tough to get off. May even want to shoot some PB Blaster or equal in there to help. I've had my doors on and off so much... One thing I've learned is to scribe a mark on the hinge arm that shows where the door was before you took it off. This will take out the guess work of how far onto the hinge arms you need to slide the door when you put it back. As far as the rest of what you're doing... Oooooooooooooh, Evan!!!!
I used a thicker metal paint scraper blade, wedge it between the panels and whack the snot out of it. It busted more than about 90% of the spot welds. Just watch that you don't put the edge through the underlying metal. Eastwood sells a Smacker Whacker blade for this also. If you already have the whole side cowl patch panel, drill out the few remaining spot welds around the hood hinges and just replace the whole thing.....you are almost there, and will have less body welding to do.
Doors can be a pain, and now is the time to correct any fitment problems Chev left in the door opening gaps.
thanks for the replies. i used some rope to to support the door and hung it around the trusses in my garage. a rubber mallet and the wife helped me get it off, i just wasnt sure they were suppossed to be that tough. as for the spot welds i got a pretty thin air hammer chisel and that did the trick. i just dont like using an air hammer because one can get carried away very quickly. im gonna go get a pneumatic punch to reproduce the spot welds. i think the type of weld im going to use is called a rosette weld. i will keep all of you in the loop, thanks- Robert
Your not hesitant to jump into a major job and that's A-ok in my book. I can see some very right steps you are taking like the door opening bracing, getting the gas smell out of the cab, and putting all that work into the much prettier 3W cab (we might get a TINY difference of opinion here). Neil, "Brit 50", gave good advice on spot weld cutters and there is nothing wrong with the air chisel but be sure to dolly out the waves it leaves around the sheared spot welds so the new panel fits up close. Speaking of new panels, you are 100% correct in stating that the only thing that matches your truck is the label on the package it came in. Many times we trial fit and then make cuts with a thin saw blade to allow the panel to form into place. Where you have to compress the panel one side will overide the other at the cut and you can saw a second time in the same cut to trim away excess metal and where you have to stretch you might have to add a pie shaped filler piece. The joy of using products made by people in another country that have never seen an AD truck. The factory door fit was terrible and that's being generous. This is a good time to put the hinge boxes and door straps where they need to be to have the gap acceptable and the lower rear curve on the door actually match the curve of the cab at that point. If this is a bit much on your plate to start with don't worry, there are other ways to do this as long as it's before things are painted. All in all--looking good.
