[richard2717]

Well I got some of what I set out to do and opened another can of worms as well.
I got the metal patches on the cowl ready for epoxy.
I got the heater box pulled apart, cleaned up, metal parts bead blasted & painted and have it ready to put back together once the paint cures. Got all new gaskets for it as well. Only hiccup is the fan blade is toast from leaves and dirt in the housing with it. I have a large pile of fan motors and not one had a real nice fan blade so I went ahead and ordered a new one along with a bunch of other stuff I wanted or needed.

The can of worms comes in the form of fender rust. It could not be seen until I pulled the front clip off the tub but the upper inner brackets that bolt to the cowl were completely rusted out. I had another set of fenders here that the outside of them were toast ,but the part I needed was in great shape. Soooo, I pulled them out, got to marking, cutting and drilling spot welds. Put them in the blast cabinet and cleaned up the surface rust and got them in etching primer. Cutting them from the old fenders was no big deal because the rest was scrap but getting the rusted section off the good fenders took some work. Drilled an 1/8" pilot hole in all the spot welds so I could keep an eye on the weld as I ground the old bracket away. I chose to grind it away instead of total drill out because the spot welds were almost 3/8" and I did not want to lose all the good metal as well. Hacked it up in smaller pcs with the cutoff wheel and it worked out pretty well. I got lucky on the 1st one and did not even have to trim anything. It fell right in place the 1st time. I will do the passenger side tomorrow. Gonna go work on the garden foe a bit before it gets dark.

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