Rust NEVER Sleeps: Hilander's '66 C20 Restoration

[70short/step]

Great looking Project! The window upgrade you made it look easy! That dash looks awsome! Cant wait to see the whole truck finished!

[Woogeroo]

Very nice.

So didja replace the whole gauge cluster or did you just clean and touch it up?

http://woogeroo.home.mindspring.com/...142003/26.html

When I got my beat up '65, it had.. well still has this clock in the dash, but as you can see they cracked and splintered the plastic when they drilled the hole for the time adjuster knob. It keeps excellent time though... I'm not sure what kinda car it came out of tho'.

For those of you that notice the tach, it is a sun pro 2 5/8" tach like you buy at any parts store... it is held in place by one sheet metal type, short screw that goes into the side metal of the back of the dash. It was like that when I bought it, currently the tach is out of it... as it is fried(following the great electrical fiasco of 2004), pending replacement.

-W

[Frizzle Fry]

So, on the window conversion, you just cut the old inner panel below the upper seam, then you were able to get to the spot welds with the bit? Also, it looks like you just welded the new one in on the upper seam (as opposed to where it was spot welded from the factory), so are you going to weld and smooth the whole seam or run a full headliner?

[Hilandr451]

Originally Posted by Woogeroo

Very nice.

So didja replace the whole gauge cluster or did you just clean and touch it up?

-W

What you can't see from the pictures is that I have a total of 6 instrument clusters of which to pick parts from. What I did for this one is, I pulled the best looking operational parts from all of the rest, cleaned them up, re-painted the pointers with some testors flourescent orange, cleaned the back plane (black piece in front of the gauges) and polished the lense with some jeweler's rouge for plastic and my home made polishing wheel. I installed a new (NOS) ampmeter I bought on E-bay and the repro-OEM tach kit from Chevy Duty. I have more pics posted on my picturetrail.com album page.

Nice clock!! So was the back plane cut out by the dealer when they installed the clock, or was that a special replacement part as part of the kit? because the original non-clock dashes don't have the whole round hole cut out.

[Hilandr451]

Originally Posted by Frizzle Fry

So, on the window conversion, you just cut the old inner panel below the upper seam, then you were able to get to the spot welds with the bit? Also, it looks like you just welded the new one in on the upper seam (as opposed to where it was spot welded from the factory), so are you going to weld and smooth the whole seam or run a full headliner?

What I did on my build: I tried unsuccessfully to remove the outside roof panel from a previous cab (which came out looking like swiss cheese when I was half way there) this is the only way you can get to the spot welds on that upper mating flange of the inner panels.

So, I was left with two choices, basically,
OPTION ONE: Cut out the old panel about an inch down from the seam and hope I get the new one to match up just perfectly, then butt weld or crimp one side and overlap them and stitch weld them together.
OPTION TWO: grind out the old panel right up to the seam leaving the original edge intact, but grinding off the mating flange so the new panel would butt-up, then mate-up the seam edges and stitch welded the seam shut, thus removing the upper seam and taking away, albeit ever so slightly, from the stock OEM big back window look.

I chose option 2 because I'm not that good a welder, and I don't have the crimping tool to make the lip. I also think this would have taken about twice as long to complete.

I haven't decided on whether I'll install a cloth headliner or not, but either way, I'll smoothe the seam over like it wasn't even there. What I lack in sheet metal skills, I make up in my ability to apply body filler!!!

[Frizzle Fry]

I'll probably go the same route. I don't care if the seam is there or not. Thanks.

[Hilandr451]

I've been busy this holiday break. I removed the dash and started the cab corner rust repair. What I found when I looked under the tin patches on either side of the cab was ...uh interesting. The previous owner had used the Ostrich approach: "if you can't see it, it must not be there."

His solution was to hack huge holes in the kick panel, paint rustoleum primer over the rusted area, squeeze half a pound of silicone calking all over everything to ensure that any water would would be well protected as to avoid evaporation and stay hapily soaking in the rusting floor undisturbed. Then to finish it off, they tek-screwed a thin piece of sheet tin over the holes in the floor & panel. Then, covered the entire floor and fire wall with Dynomat. nice. silly-cone is so fun to remove.......NOT!!!!




This is the first stage of the repair - I prepped the metal and applied some fiberglass mesh reinforcement over the holes with silver POR15 paint.

[Woogeroo]

whatta ya use to remove silly cone anyway?

Oh yeah... the clock in my dash on my '65 - it was in there when I bought it, I have no idea what year vehicle it came out of... People have mentioned various year model chevy cars/trucks, but I do not know for sure.... but it works really well.

-W

[c10Mang]

Don't know if this helps but here is the link for that tach if anyone wants it: http://www.classicparts.com/1963-66-...info/24%2D735/