Mountain Man Trails: 1967 Pontiac Lemans #2 - budget build - Episode nine - Hood, trunk, windshield gutter, cowl and firewall, heater box **updated 3/24/25

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, trunk, windshield gutter, cowl and firewall, heater box, found here.

Episode ten - Back glass gutter, grill, found here.

Episode eleven - headlight extensions, roof, found here.

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This episode and episode ten are 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 driver quarter, the roof, and the rear glass area. As you can see in the pic, the hood is done, and that's covered in this episode. In addition, the lower windshield is done, which 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 then prime:

I started sanding the inner surfaces:

This is only about half way.

A lot of work, but I finally got it in primer:

The Trunk

I received two trunk lids with the car. The original was less rusty:

...but had a dent in the rear, right on the corner of where the lip of the panel rolls into the horizontal plane:

I put a red arrow on the pic since the dent is kinda hard to see.

Ugh. went through a very similar repair on Lemans #1:

I consider that repair to be my worst work. The reason for my dismay is that a hit here pushes the metal forward, which carries damage into the broad flat surface of the panel. Little dent, big problem. It was very hard for me to repair, and now I'm faced with it again.

I really wanted to use the trunk lid that came on the car because the spare was more rusty. But it also had very little damage:

Also, the original trunk lid came with the accessory trunk light and it did not have the two emblem holes, which I thought was sorta unique. But the spare won out.

I sanded it out, wire brushed the rust thoroughly, and fixed the minor damage:

And, it wasn't as rusty as I thought.

After some more surface prep I primed it:

Then I turned it over and started the lengthy sanding process to the inner surfaces:

I fixed a little dent and primed it:

This is ready to go.

The Windshield Gutter

The hood and trunk were pretty easy. The windshield gutter was 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 really 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 have been long before it would have 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:

Not encouraging.

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 did an initial test fit:

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 extensions into the A pillar were discarded because they were not wide enough to cover the damage.

I started cutting out all the old work:

This was a lot harder because of the previous welded repair. Also, those patches were just welded right over the top of the rust. 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 of work.

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

As mentioned, the replacement panel extension did not adequately cover this area, which is why I cut it off. I'll be rebuilding 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.

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: