The cowl repair has been ongoing for quite some time now. Not only was the bottom rusted out as seen in previous posts, but the firewall and cowl sides panels were rotted at the very top also. I ordered both side and patched for both corners of the firewall. The drivers firewall patch never came and was always back ordered. I finally took some left over scrap metal from the cowl side panel and fabricated the piece I needed to repair the firewall.
The passenger side was the first to be repaired. The side cowl panel replacement is shaped too low in the front by about 1/2 inch. I had to reshape it to fit. I later dicovered this to be the case on the driver’s side too.
What a pain in the butt!! Nothing about this repair is easy. The replacement patches are a heavier guage metal than the stock so it’s more difficult to shape to fit perfectly. The passenger side of the repair is a easier than the drivers side because it doesn’t have a hole for the window washer arm shaft. On the drivers side, I placed the parts where I belived they should go and placed the top half on the lower then used a hole saw to drill the wiper arm shaft hole. In retrospect, I did this too early. Now that I’m welding the patch panel into place and test fitting the top half of the cowl and the fenders it appears the hole is slightly off to one side.
At this point in the repair. I’ve welded the lower cowl patched into place and I’m test fitting the top half with the fenders in place to made sure it’s all going to line up properly.