Rebuilding the cab.

The floor had some serious cancer.







Repair involved using my die grinder and cutoff wheel to remove all the old rusted metal, then fabricating new pieces.




Using a wire welder (small mig with gas) I was able to weld in the new metal. The floor was about 16 gauge, which was too heavy to bend multiple angles by hand. I needed several bends next to each other to form the lip that holds the wooden floorboards in the middle so I scored the metal about half way through where I wanted it bent, then bent it, then laid a bead down the bend. Poor mans way to fabricate, but it seems to work.






Piecing in the last piece and welding it completed the repair. It is obviously repaired, but is sound and will be under the floormat, so it accomplished all I wanted. There are 3 pieces of sheet metal that overlap and creates the place where the body bolt holds the cab to the frame. (If you look closely in the glare, you can see the bolt hole) The flat part of the floor, the part that comes down and bends from the angled part, and the part that comes down the side and turns under the angled one (you can't see it here). The three of them make a pretty solid attachment for the cab, and each had to be welded back to the remaining original metal.






The left side is also repaired. This is the finished repair.






I also wanted to make the firewall look a bit better. Originally, it had all the factory punched holes - many never used - and all the holes the owners put in over the years. This included a number of holes for the heater, which didn't align with the factory's holes, and quite a few for the air lines for trailer air brakes and air horn, and holes for the tach.






What I did was take the wire welder and start welding at the edge of the hole, and kept building up until I got to the other side of the hole. Then I ground it until smooth. About half of the holes are filled here.


Now they are all ground down and primed. I'm sure the engine compartment will look much better, even if it isn't how the factory produced it.


Now - the cab got painted.


And - a painted firewall.




This roof was caved in along the back.I wasn't sure the creases could be removed. A friend who has been a body man and custom car builder for years came over and explained how to do it. Worked great - no bondo! I also pecked out about 12 hailstone dents around the roof.


There was also one crunched in place on the right front. It came out nice as well. Even thought it seemed to be fixed and not visible, I wasn't sure until the paint was on.


The back also had some caved in places on the lower part. No, it wasn't from accidents over the years as it worked, it was from when I removed that old winch from the back. It was way off center of balance and hit the back of the cab when I cut it loose. The back is not as straight as it looks in this picture, but it's not bad and I think I can live with it.

It'll look much better when it's mated with the chassis in front of it.


I had to see what it would look like with all that roof chrome installed.



Re-assembly continues.

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