OK, so to recap, this is what a PO had left me with
Got to be honest I wasn’t looking forward to this as it took me long enough to figure out how I was going to do it.
Anyway I measured up the dash and the repair panel turned out to be about 20mm – 25mm to wide, so I marked it up and trimmed it
Then it was out with the old
BTW this was some earth connection!
Its about 3" long. Think it was doubling up for a local substations main earth!
Anyway with the old bit cut out it was a case of offering up the new section and just altering the gap bit by bit while keeping the overall width at the bottom.
Unfortunately the patch panel is not an exact fit (there a surprise) ant is slightly shallower on the bottom but that’s not really and issue as nobody will see it.
The top needed some trimming. Again about 25mm.
Final cutting done (left the wee “lugs” at the bottom just to locate the patch panel though I joggled them slightly
Clamped in place
Then tacked up
There was a bit of a gap on one side at the bottom
But that was filled with a bit of offcut
Although I did tack weld most of the outside I fully welded it up internally
Still needs a lot of filler, sorry bondo, but in my opinion at least its already 100x better than it was.
Oh and I found this in the glove box
Does that mean this truck was on the road possibly as late as December 2013 or do you have to have this even if the vehicle is off the road?