Dash Removed and A Pillar Repairs

Since the dash at this point is only held on by a couple of welds, I decided to pull it out of the car.  This should make it much easier to work on the necessary repairs.  I proceeded to clean it up with my wire wheel and grinder.  With the dash out of the car it was much easier to avoid those angry , screaming badgers (Alex found one during his dash cleanup).  After I cleaned it up as best I could, I found quite a few large holes that will need new metal.  Shouldn't be too hard with the dash out.

Next was the removal of the cowl side panel.  It was in a rather sorry state.  I cut the welds on the A pillar and the front part welded to the firewall was rusted through, so it didn't take much effort to remove.  After I had it removed, I could get a good look at the inside of the A pillar.  New metal is on the agenda apparently.  With it being tight in this area, and the fact that I have wanted one for a while, I picked up a small twenty pound sandblaster.  It did a great job of cleaning up the metal.  The downside is that the black beauty tends to get everywhere.  That was even with the area tightly closed off with tarps.  Good thing I know how to use a broom.

I could now get a really good look at what needed to be done.  Needed some patches up top, and I needed to pound out a dent that was in the middle of the panel.  Using my various methods of cutting, I was able to get all the weak and rusted metal out, and new metal welded in.  Didn't have to do too much weld cleanup since nobody is going to see it anyway.  Just smoothed them out a little bit.  Got it all painted and ready for the next stage.

Dashless!

Cleaned up

This is rather ugly.  I am going to try and reconstruct it.  I will need to find some pics of this area to help get the proper contours.

Just some small holes, shouldn't be too difficult.

Some more small stuff.

and it gets ugly again.

More ugly.

Not too bad

Going to need to find some pics and measurements for this area as well.

Good riddance.

You can just see the dent in the A pillar on the right.

Inner view of the rust.

The metal is practically rusted away in the top left corner.

Starting the repairs

Looking better.

Not too shabby if I do say so myself.  No more dent.

Got some paint on it, and it looks pretty good.

I didn't take a whole of pics during the cleanup and rebuild of this whole thing.  I kinda just got started and blew through it.  You can just see some of the welds in the top corner.  Looks much better now.