Cab Repair

My chassis for my 1937 Ford pickup has been coming along really well so I've decided to take a little break from it. Other than the rear suspension and a few odds and ends it is pretty much finished for now. Looking at the beat up body panels laying around the garage I thought the time as come to start bringing them back to life. In my case the cab is the main body structure so I'm starting there. I actually started on the cab a while back when I didn't have anything else to do and made the firewall modification, but now it was time to tackle problems all old cars and trucks have. Rust and broken bolts.

I'm starting off with my lower cowl areas on my cab. On each side there are two mounting locations for the front fenders. Originally there are square nuts captured in a metal cage with the cage welded to the body. In this case the caged nuts are in an inclosed area at the bottom of the cowl. As you can see the front nut as been ripped from the cage and the rear one has the bolt broken off inside the nut.

For the front damaged area I decided to weld a new nut to the body but I would need to take care of the big whole first. What I found in this area was the cage was still hanging on by one spot weld and most of the deformed metal was still in place around the hole. I was able to get a hold of the cage and pry it back to its former location just before it broke free. Oh well, that just made it a little easier to pry, tug and beat the metal back into place. I threaded the nut onto a long bolt, held it in place with the bolt and welded it in place. If your hole is to big you can weld the nut to a washer, then weld the washer to the body.

With the first area taken care of it was on to the broken bolt. The surrounding metal in this location was perfectly fine so I had to decide on a plan here. I could cut out the area and repair it similar to the front or try drilling the bolt out. I decided to try the drill. I started with a small drill bit and drilled through the broken bolt followed by another pass with a larger bit near the size of the bolt. So far so good. I then used a tap and ran it through the bolt to rethread it to my bolt size.

It feels good when things go right and work so easy. I'm on a roll and there is plenty of time yet in the evening, let's go for the other side! The passenger side is very similar to the drivers side as the front nut as been removed from the cage and the rear bolt broken off. It also has a small rust spot and the front lower corner has a slight ding.

All that is left here is to drill and retap the rear mounting hole. The patch was then put in place and welded to the body. At this point I ground down the welds and straightened the lower corner. It took a small weld here to keep it in place and to fill in a small hole.

Next I used a cutoff wheel to cut out the rusted area on the cowl. To make the repair easy use straight cuts when removing the rusted area. It is easier to cut a patch with straight lines than it is to cut curved areas to fit. In this case I cut a template out of thin cardboard to fit the removed section and transferred it to new sheetmetal.

The front cage was again hanging on by one spot weld and luckily a good weld. I as able to pry it back in place and hammer the sheetmetal back into place. Luck was still on my side as the opening was larger on the broken spot weld side so I was able to weld the cage to the sheetmetal from the outside. Again I threaded a nut onto a long bolt, turned the nut just right to fit inside and welded it in place.