1967 Pontiac Lemans #2 - budget build - Episode nine - Hood, windshield gutter, Cowl and firewall, back glass gutter, roof **updated 3/5/25

 October 5th, 2024:

October 6th, 2024:

Episode one, introduction, here.

Episode two, disassembly and assessment, here.

Episode three, rough body work, here.

Episode four, quarters, here.

Episode five, toe panel, rockers, here.

Episode six, fenders, inner fenders, here.

Episode seven, the doors, found here.

Episode eight, tail light panel, hood, found here.

Episode nine - Hood, windshield gutter, back glass gutter, found here.

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This post is going to be a sort of catch-all for various small repairs. 

Before we move on, a status report: These parts are ready for paint:

That leaves the trunk, plus the driver quarter, the roof, and the rear glass area. As you can see, the hood is done, and that's covered in this episode. In addition, the lower windshield is done, and is also covered in this episode.

The Hood

On first glance I thought the hood was going to need little or no work. But once I stripped the paint I found some small dings and this crease on the peak:

This could be a problem. There's bracing on the back of the hood which means there's no access to hammer out dents. And, I don't have a pin puller. So I thought I was doomed to just fill this with Bondo. But when I turned the hood around I discovered a factory hole in the brace that was exactly aligned with the dent:

How lucky is that? So I was able to push out the damage, put just a little filler on it, and them prime:

The Windshield Gutter

The hood was pretty easy. The windshield gutter is not. 

It was a known issue:

I called up my local glass guy who came out and removed the windshield. He managed to get it out without breaking it:

Underneath, it's ugly:

The rust has crept up from the gutter into the dash itself. At present the dash seems to be just scaly and pitted, but it wouldn't be long before it would have become perforated if not for my intervention.

The passenger side was worse:

The telltale perpendicular lines on the dash near the gutter indicates that someone has been here before. That is failing Bondo. Someone likely started out to replace the glass only to discover the gutter was rusted out.

I cleaned out and wirebrushed the gutter:

 

There's two ways to fix rust, the quick and easy way (cover it up with Bondo), or the hard and right way (remove the rust and weld in new metal). Here we have both, actual metal patching as well as Bondo. It's not a terribly good repair, but I admire the person for actually putting in new metal.

We will choose the hard and right way for our repair. But rather than attempt to correct the previous patching, then do a whole bunch of little rust repairs, I simply chose to buy a patch panel. This was $64.00 and free shipping on ebay, so for the money and the time it will save me I consider it a bargain.  

I laid it in place:

The patch panel includes the gutter, the outer (forward) part that connects with the cowl grill panel, and the extensions that extend the gutter to the A pillars, but there is no part of the actual dash. Both ends of these extensions were discarded because they were not shaped correctly and weren't wide enough to cover the damage.

The first step is to remove the old metal:

This was a lot harder because of the previous welded repair. Also, those repairs were just welded right over the top of the rust. I cut out all the old work, which extended outboard past the A pillar covers. In fact, the previous "craftsman" welded his patches to the lips of the A pillar covers! 

The windshield gutter is actually part of the factory dash stamping, which is spot welded to the cowl flange. After trying to drill out a couple of spot welds I decided to cut it along the ridge of the cowl panel flange. This allowed me to remove the outer piece where the cowl grill panel attaches, which meant I could insert the cutoff wheel into the seam and cut the spotwelds along the length to separate the two pieces:

I aimed the cutoff wheel at a slight angle to avoid tearing into the cowl flange. This was largely successful, but I burned through in a couple of places. This, along with the need to repair some rust on the flange, added to the amount work.

Here's the driver's side after removing the previous patch:

As mentioned, the replacement panel does not adequately cover this area, which is why I cut off the extensions. Thus the need to rebuild both sides from scratch. 

You can also see that there is nothing connecting the upper dash to the car. I could move the dash in and out, which actually turned out to be a real advantage when setting the welding gap with the replacement panel.

Time to rebuild the substructure. I cut and fit a couple of patches and welded them in:

I repaired the passenger side in the same way:

Kinda ugly, but no one will ever see it.

Then I painted on some POR 15:

I laid in the replacement panel, lined it up, and put in a zip screw into the flange at each end. It seemed to fit pretty well, but the real proof is how the cowl grill panel fits:

This was not the first try. The slots that accept the cowl panel tabs were stamped too low, so the panel could not slide into position at all. I took my Dremel to the slots and ground the top edge of each slot until the cowl panel would slide in.

I can live with the fit. The cowl panel almost touches in the center and is away at each end by about a sixteenth. Frankly, that's just about how Lemans #1 fit as well with all original parts, so I'm calling it good.

I moved the A pillar covers back into position and discovered the patch panel was almost 1/8" too long between the A pillar covers. I did a little cutting and shaping of each end until the replacement panel fit.

I carefully lined up the panel and put a couple of plug welds into the flange.  

Time for the big test: Does the windshield fit? I laid it into place:

I couldn't ask for better. That's a load off my mind, for sure.

It's now time to put in a few stitch welds in order to connect the dash. As I mentioned, the top of the dash was movable, so I touched up the cut along the front edge of the dash with my angle grinder until it perfectly mated with the replacement panel, then put in a weld about every four inches:

Fully welded:

Ground out:

Putty:

And primed:

Very pleased with this.

Cowl and Firewall

Both side cowls were in really nice condition so I simply sanded them down and primed them:

My friend Taylor came by to help, so I put him to work wire brushing the firewall:

Heater Box:

The outer cover was damaged and a little rusty:

I did some hammer and dolly work and gave it a thin coat of putty:

I sanded it out and primered it:

This turned out really nice.

The inner box was not damaged but it had some surface rust, no doubt caused by water leaking in from the roached out windshield gutter:

I gave it a good sanding and a coat of semi-gloss:

It cleaned up really well.

The Back Glass Gutter

This was a known issue, but the extent of the damage was not known. You can see below the hacked out package tray as well as the suspicious perpendicular cracks, indicating failing Bondo:

And indeed, that is what I found:

So I commenced the cutting, which revealed some more damage:

As far as I can tell no one makes a replacement panel, so I am forced to fix it. This will require extensive work. The package tray hacked, rusted through in several places, plus each end of it is disconnected from the rest of the car. Though I have the deck filler panel (which includes the gutter), the inner structure and both corners will need to be rebuilt from scratch.

I did a little rough straightening on the package tray, which helped quite a bit:

But it's supposed to look like this:

This pic is of a Chevelle piece, I think. 

I hung it on the car as a reference but I haven't decided how much of the package tray to re-create. Those humongous speaker holes means a lot of sheetmetal was hacked away. I may just add in some metal where it is obviously compromised. 

So I started cutting and patching:

Not my best welding, for sure.

These patches reconnected the floppy end and stiffened it up nicely. So after some grinding this portion is done. 

With this fixed I can start on the sail panel. The first patch was the continuation of the vertical pinch weld flange, which curves down around the corner and meets the spot weld flange that connects to the deck filler panel. That was an easy one.

The second patch fixes the sail panel itself. It has a compound curve at the lower edge, so the patch needed to be shaped in two directions. This involves stretching the metal, but since the curved area is small I managed to do this with a bit of hammering.

I welded it in:

Ugh. Ugly welds.

Like a doofus I didn't account for the curve of the patch taking away from the length of the patch, so it came up short. And there was some thin metal that blew out when I started to weld. So that means a couple of extra patches.

More to follow.

Roof

I'll add to this post as I complete more work.