Thursday’s progress looked kind of misleading because I was working on lots of fiddly stuff, and I did a terrible job of taking many pictures. I started the day camped out in the garage because of threatening rain clouds, so I started by working on a patch for the cowl itself out of some 20 ga. steel. When I had the pattern the way I liked it, I laid it on top of the cowl and cut around it, then trimmed it with the grinder and cut some notches in the lip.

Carefully bending it at the same curve, I tacked it into place and then used my patience to finish welding it in. While that cooled, I busted out the sanding gear and cleaned up the other sides of the cowl to even things out.

When I had that in place I banged out some of the obvious bends with a hammer and skimmed it with some body filler. As that dried, I flattened the original air baffle from the driver’s side and traced two patterns out on some fresh steel. I bent them both according to the pictures I’d taken on disassembly, prepped the vertical face of the inner cowl, and welded them both into place. Then I put both flappers in and hooked the vent cable back up to the driver’s side—I still have to drop the heating unit out to refurbish that, and there’s no easy way to reconnect the cable up unless it’s out of the way.

There was lots of sanding, priming, sanding, and priming, and I used some ACE Rust-Stop International Implement Red to coat the entire inner section of the cowl.

On Friday I got lots more little fiddly bits done and ready for welding the cowl back in on Sunday. I skimmed some body filler on the welding seams on each side to smooth them out so that when water runs down to the drains it won’t get stuck in the texture from the seam sealer.

The cowl is prepped for welding and will probably need some touch-ups to the body filler after heat warps some of it, but that’s OK. I did a test-fit to ensure it isn’t warped and that the welds still line up.

I also worked on some Scout stuff too; I still have to adjust the timing and do some minor maintenance.

On Sunday I welded the cowl back in place. I test fit and trimmed and test fit and trimmed and then clamped the crap out of it and started tacking it into place slowly.

By about 5PM I had the whole thing in, the welds ground down, and a coat of etch primer on all the bare metal.

The perimeter of the windshield frame has two coats of IH Implement Red in preparation for a clean new gasket and brand new windshield. The bottom of the cowl has some Bondo that I skimmed over the welds, and that will get smoothed out before I paint the rest. Now I just have to screw up my courage up to attempt the window installation.

I’ve been so busy on this project, I’ve made some basic updates to the thread on Binder Planet but I’ve been too tired to add them here, so here’s a dump from the last three days. The weather has been fantastic since Sunday—clear skies and mid 80’s with no humidity to speak of, so it’s been a rare treat to working outside all day. I burned through all of my backed up podcasts by Monday morning, so I switched to an audiobook loaded on my iPad and I’ve been enjoying listening to that while I work.

On Monday, I began the day by cutting out and replacing a section of structural 18 gauge steel on the A pillar after flooding the cavity with rust encapsulator. I used a cheap brush from Harbor Freight to get in there and hit every surface I could touch.

When I had that cleaned up, I put the main vent section in. This part went pretty smoothly; I’d etch primed and seam sealed the underside on Sunday eventing, so I got it where I wanted it and burned it into place. Then I put the section in behind it. Things had shifted somewhat between when I’d cut it and when everything got hot, so it didn’t line up as cleanly as I would have liked. But I can close those small sections up pretty easily. There’s a small section at the far right and a larger one on the far left, and left them for Tuesday morning.

After cleaning up the edges and knocking down the beads, I started working on the lower mounting lip. This took a lot of test fitting and tack welding and banging and cutting, because the cowl mounts to this and then the top corner of the fender bolts to it, and there are a lot of complex curves in the original sheet metal that have to fit just right. I made the decision to go for close enough and figured I can shim things out if I need to. Again, this is my first major sheet metal project, so I’m learning as I go. The wing got welded into place, and I knocked the edge down to a smooth curved corner. This got cleaned up with a flap wheel and skimmed with a light coat of seam sealer so that the water will just drop over the edge. The circle-X is where the drain hole will go.

As of Monday evening I was about 24 hours into it in total, including pulling the cowl and windshield, and my hope was that I could keep the momentum going.

On Tuesday morning I finished off the passenger side, cleaned, it, etch primed it, and smeared everything with a liberal coat of seam sealer.

Then I went over to the driver’s side, cut an even larger hole out of the cowl, and started fabricating the vent on that side.

Because I had a template already made for the barrel, that part went quickly and I had just enough steel in my sheet to cut both sections of metal out.

When I had the vent built, the flapper in place, and everything lined up, I started welding it into place. I had learned a lot about how to cut and fit the barrel in this one—I was much more precise with the measurement and the hole I cut, so it fit much better, and I didn’t have to count on filling large gaps with wire.

There’s a section tacked in place behind the vent, and that ugly hole in the upper right is sealed up tight.

On Wednesday I got a late start because I hadn’t sealed my gas cylinder tight enough and lost the remainder overnight. Lesson learned. Once I’d gotten a refill I closed up the edges as tightly as possible, ground everything down with a new disc, and cleaned it up for etch primer. I also bent and installed the front of the drip rail that the cowl gets welded to and the fender bolts onto.

The seam sealer I have this time isn’t as good as the gray stuff I had last time; this doesn’t lay down smoothly at all. It looks like I’m trying to apply it with a broom. Anyway, while that was drying I took a wire wheel to the cowl itself and cleaned out both sides.

I cut out the rust in the passenger side hole in the cowl, and with the last small section of 20 ga. sheet metal I had, I made a patch for it.

With some patience and a lot of grinding I fit the patch in place and hammered out the funky spots, as well as sealed up other holes. Thank god I have a bench grinder and Dad’s old vise set up in the garage; I’ve used them extensively for this project.

The edge took some time to work on but with wire and time I rebuilt the lip and shaped it with a flap disc. Then the whole underside got a bath in Rust Converter and then a coat of black primer, except for the edges to be welded. I also wire wheeled the entire edge of the windshield and hit it with etch primer to cure.

Tomorrow I’ll get new metal delivered (it got delayed today) and I can finish the patch on the driver’s side. It’s supposed to rain on and off until Saturday so I’m going to tackle what I can when the weather is good and retreat into the garage to work when the rain starts falling. I’ve got the hood leaning up against the Scout and the cowl in there ready for the final patch.

Here’s the Sunday update. I got a bit of a late start because I had to run out to get supplies, but put about 7 solid hours in. First up was bending the metal to fit and getting things aligned.

When I had it squared up and ready, I looked over the barrel from the old vent and cut the rusty metal off the edges. What remained clearly wasn’t enough to make a template from, so I took measurements from the driver’s side and built a new template. With that cleaned up and bent, I tacked it together and continued shaping it correctly to fit.

When I had it set up correctly, I bent the mount for the vent cable stay and welded a support to that so it wouldn’t move.

Then I spent about an hour tweaking the barrel, test fitting it, tweaking it some more, and finally being satisfied with the way it fit. When I had it the way I liked it, I dialed in the welder and started tacking around the edges. This took time, and I did wind up warping the metal a little bit, but nothing I can’t work around.

When I had that the way I liked it, I started trimming a section of metal for the back wall. I bent several sections of the rear section upwards so that I can use that to help secure the whole structure. Then I hit the bottom of the vent with etching primer and seam sealer, and I’m letting it dry overnight. Tomorrow I’m going to start tacking it into place and getting things ready to install permanently.

I’ve got time this coming week to focus on getting the Red Bus cleaned up and out from under the canopy, so I’m going to take as much advantage of it as I can. The big focus is to get the rusty areas under the cowl cut out and replaced, everything rustproofed, and then to replace the cowl and install the new windshield. I figure I can get the first part knocked out if I’ve got all the tools and time next week, so I’ve been stockpiling supplies. Today was 80˚ and sunny, so I figured I’d get a head start.

I started by pulling the four bolts on the hood hinges off and taking that off completely. Then I took the two fenders off—I’ve had them hung with one loose bolt since the first day I took them off—and put everything behind the truck. I dragged a folding table out and started walking tools out to the truck. When I was ready, I started drilling all of the spot welds at the base of the cowl out with a set of Harbor Freight bits. After about ten minutes I figured out a good method and I made pretty short work of it. After about an hour I had all the welds out around the base, including the sections hidden by the doors. Then it came time for the point of no return: removing the windshield.

This was actually much easier than I thought, and only took one cut around the edge of the rubber gasket for the glass to come loose. What I found after I got the glass out amazed me: the entire perimeter of the windshield frame is clean. And not East-Coast-it’s-covered-in-surface-rust clean, but original red paint clean. All of the Scouts I’ve ever pulled the glass out of (four? five?) have had some kind of rot on one of the edges, including Peer Pressure. This one is mint. And now I’m going to attack it with a spot weld cutter. 

That process actually didn’t take long either, and after about three hours’ work, I had the cowl up and out, safely stored on the driveway behind the truck. What I found underneath was both better and worse than I’d hoped for. Both cowl edges are, predictably, pretty crispy. The driver’s side is worse than the passenger’s. At some point someone got in there and stuffed some kind of thick painter’s putty or other heavy gunk behind and around the vent chimneys, which both protected them and collected moisture, further weakening the metal.

I figured I’d start with the bigger hole, knowing I could look at the other side for a guide to follow, so I started doing exploratory surgery on the passenger’s side. After cutting away the area around the vent, I was able to pull that out and clean up the area around it. I had to cut a section of the overlap off and I’ll have to fashion a new drain vent, but I planned  on adding a lip on the new metal that will go down over the vertical edge and give me enough material to weld to.

That strange gasket thing in the photo above is the collector for the heating unit, which I’m going to have to disconnect and pull out tomorrow in order to weld directly above it. I’ve been putting that off because it’s messy and I don’t want to completely fuck up the heating ducts under the dash, but I can’t avoid it any more (and it needs to be overhauled anyway).

I started building cardboard templates for the new metal and got the flat section that provides the floor of the vent laid out. Then I drew out and cut the vertical back wall of the cowl that will wrap around to the door.

From here I have to figure out where the round vent itself will go, cut that out of the center, and either build a new round structure out of 20 gauge steel or see if I can cut and weld new metal to the existing metal, which came out mostly in one piece. I’d prefer to not have to rebuild the whole thing on this side, so that’s what I’m hoping for. I might not get that lucky on the other side.

I left off with a metal section cut and ready to be bent. What I have to do tomorrow morning is go out for a 3′ length of angle iron to act as the top of the vice for my metal brake. With that I can start bending this metal to the proper angles and start fitting it into place.