Woo Hoo It's Started!

[waynieZ]

Those new mounts look a lot better. Plenty of room now. If it comes out that nice every time you get side tracked I wouldn't complain of those 2 steps back! Nice.

[ccracin]

Originally Posted by waynieZ

Those new mounts look a lot better. Plenty of room now. If it comes out that nice every time you get side tracked I wouldn't complain of those 2 steps back! Nice.

Thanks Wayne. I guess that is why I am not overly disappointed with the redo. I really like the new design. No question!

[ccracin]

It seems we started this project forever ago. We have been trying to get the new firewall in the truck. Every time we thought we were ready to put it in we found something else that should be done before we put it in. All in all I'm glad we did it right the first time. Every thing fit just as it should. Here are some pics to show how we went about it.

This is the empty hole. The floor and trans tunnel are all finished. We then went around the face of the cowl area in the dark with a light and welded up any pin holes in welds from the rust repair. The new firewall has a mounting flange that covers this area, so I don't want any moisture to get between those panels and into the cab. After all the holes were taken care of, I coated the area with Eastwood's rust encapsulator. This was to help curb any development of rust from factory seams we did not take a part.



Before mounting the piece, we applied a bead of seam sealer to the mating face of the cowl. This is mostly to eliminate any potential vibration between the 2 sheet metal panels. We also sealed the bottom weld seam. This will be done on the inside of the wiper tray before paint as well.



I also coated the back of the firewall mounting flange with self etching weld through primer for an added level of protection.



We then used cleco's to hold the firewall on and braced it to hold everything flat for alignment while tacking.



And FINALLY, here it is all tacked in. The fit to all the mating panels is excellent. Now it's time for me to try to weld it in and finish it with out screwing up all our hard work!











Thanks for looking!

[HWY Nova]

Great progress!!!!!!!


--ET

[GregWeld]

You go girl!!

Looks great Chad!

[Ron in SoCal]

Originally Posted by GregWeld

You go girl!!

That firewall looks great Chad!

[HWY Nova]

Originally Posted by GregWeld

You go girl!!

Spoken like a true gentleman!



--Eric

[ccracin]

With friends like you guys.......................................... Thanks for the kind words, RON and ERIC!

[Hotrod1]

Looks great.

What did you use to curve the firewall to give it that capped effect onto the truck? Do you have any pics of the building of the firewall before install?

[ccracin]

Originally Posted by Hotrod1

Looks great.

What did you use to curve the firewall to give it that capped effect onto the truck? Do you have any pics of the building of the firewall before install?

We didn't build the firewall itself. We had Direct Sheet Metal in California make it. It is actually all separate pieces welded together and finished. The outer 90 degree bend with the radius has a 45 degree roll on each piece with the seam right in the middle. This helps with distortion when welding and makes the joint a bit easier to finish. That's how I was going to do it as well, but in the interest of time and money, we got it from them. If you go back a few pages in this thread you will find more of the story. Thanks for looking!