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Posted by David Sherman on Sunday, May 31, 2009 at 13:23:40 :
The cowl vent (in front of the windshield) on my ambulance has never worked right and leaks a lot and now I see that what I thought was a good body was really a rusted out one with lots of bondo. Someone skillful in furnace duct work fabricated a repair piece out of galvanized tin to go around the cowl vent hole and bondoed it in place. I'm thinking that rather than keep messing with this mess, I'd be better off replacing that whole section with a piece off of one of my non-rusty donor M37s.
The thing is I've never done any body work and would like to keep it simple. My question is what would be the best piece to take out from the donor to use to replace probably everything between the windshield and the engine compartment? Is there a natural seam that can easily be separated? I really don't want to end up replacing the whole cab, especially since the M43 ambulance top part isn't made to just be lifted off like a regular hardtop cab. I suppose I could cut out just the section 6" or so around the vent and weld it in, but I think it would be better to take a larger section up to some pre-existing edge so I don't have to weld into a flat sheet.
Is a rusted out vent opening a common problem? Is there a common way of fixing it? Thanks for any suggestions!
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