Holy schnikey work has been busy. Haven't had a day off in close to three weeks and thus haven't had much time to work on the car lately but found myself with a couple of free hours tonight. So I decided to remove a big heavy thing from the car:
The heater core. Lead, brass, ugly and GONE!
But.....a big gaping hole. A number of different things I could do here. I could buy one of those DSE panels and pay quite a lot for what in reality is a simple hunk of steel with a bevel rolled on the edge.....nah! I could do the street-rod-esque firewall smoothing bit......nah!
Which begs the question; "What Would Smokey Do?"
Well.....I'd like to think Smokey would have just tossed the factory delete plate on the hole and moved on. I went a tad further than just that, by welding up the mounting holes from the OE heater core, and welding in a fill plate in the original hole. Then drilled and cleco'd in the panels to check the fit. Took me just shy of two hours.
I'll finish it up with seam sealer and rivets after I paint the firewall. Of course that won't happen till the cage is finished.
There will be a heat/def unit of course. Vintage Air makes this nifty little heat only (no AC) unit.
http://good-times.webshots.com/photo...65608932BKChyx
Yes.......I am avoiding climbing under the car and removing the undercoating.