Quote:
Originally Posted by ItWillBeSlow
Thank you, great info. You also mentioned in your earlier post there were a couple minor fitment issues with the new panel. Can you elaborate on those? This panel makes me more nervous than some repops in that it could only be “adjusted or modified” so much.
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I may get a little long-winded with this, so I'll give you the Cliff's notes version first so you don't have to read the story if you don't want to.
Cliff's notes: The replacement roof panel had a slight twist to it. When I test-fitted it to the cab, if one corner was clamped down, the opposite corner would pop up a little. This wasn't a big deal and may well have been caused by the shipping damage, or even the cab being 50+ years old and not completely square. The rear seam gap wasn't consistent and anywhere from 0 to +3/16 inch wide. This could probably have been fixed through spot welding sequence while installing, but I didn't want to tear into the cab to spot weld that seam.
All in all, this panel actually fit much better than the fender patch panels I've been using.
Settle in, here's the whole story and my opinions:
My truck is not going to be a show truck. It is going to be a driver that I use as a truck and have fun with. It is also a learning platform to figure out how to do rust repair. The end goal of it is to be something I pull up at the local trap range and the old farmers say that looks like a decent truck. From that standpoint, I don't need it perfect. I want the rust fixed, and understand that it will get dented and chipped up. That's OK, I'll just fix it again.
I was replacing the seam sealer in the drip rails on my cab roof. Like many have had issue with, my sealer was dry and cracked and started to allow moisture under it. I caught it before it damaged the inner roof. As I was cleaning the rust out of the drip rails, I found some body filler above the passenger's side windshield. As I got into it, I realized it was 1/4+ inch thick, about 8 to 10 inches back from the windshield, and about half way across the roof, something must have hit it at some point. I didn't want to replace all of the body filler and risk it coming loose in the future, so I started thinking about a patch panel. I didn't really want to do the whole roof to begin with because I didn't want to deal with the rear seam. I called the local shop that specializes in these trucks and parts, Bowtie Truck Stop. I get everything from them. Kevin and Lisa are wonderful people and I trust them completely to shoot straight and help me out. Come to find out, no one makes patch panels for the roof. But they had a roof panel that was damaged in shipping and they were willing to give me a smoking deal on it. I picked it up, and there were three small dents in the center of the roof where it looks like someone set something on it and maybe slid it a little.
I got the roof panel home and started playing with my hammer and dolly. I am not a body man. I just have a few tools, patience, and want to learn how to do this stuff. I managed to get the dents out to the point where no one would notice them unless they are doing a concourse level inspection. This may be where the slight twist of the panel came from.
After taking the old roof panel off, I started test fitting the new one. Aside from the slight twist, it fit really well through the drip rails. The rear gap wasn't very consistent. It didn't fit snuggly against the cab rear panel anywhere, but it could be pulled into place in most places, if I had access to the pinch welds. I decided that the good fitment in the drip rails was good for me, and since I was going to use adhesive anyway, I could get the rear seam close and fill any voids with body filler, again this isn't a show truck. The adhesive I used has some gap-filling capability, so I used it to fill the thicker gap spots. I used the lumber and ratchet straps to put a little pressure on the rear seam, so that some of the product did squeeze out.
There is also nothing saying that my rear cab panel is straight and correct. The rear of my cab has some dents that I'm really not doing anything about. This is a 50+ year old vehicle that has been used hard and put away wet more times than I care to speculate on. Personally, I don't think it would be realistic to expect a replacement panel of this size to fit 100% correct even if it came from the original tooling.
So the panel ended up working for what I'm hoping to achieve and for what I'm willing to spend on it. I've got pretty limited bodywork skills and so don't really have the knowledge to get it to fit better than adequately. I do have people I could have had help massage the panel and cab to get the rear gap better, but when it came right down to it, I didn't have the ambition to get it to fit better either. I'm happy with how it turned out, and I don't have to worry about a large chunk of body filler blowing off of my roof in the future, or worse trapping moisture against the steel and rotting it out prematurely.
Sorry for the long winded post, but I did warn you at the beginning!
