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Fixing the Leaky Windshield in my `68 American
Part 7 - The Welding is Finished!

June 3, 2002

After what seems like an eternity, I've finally finished welding in the last of the patch panels on the cowl of my car. I've put down my welding torch and soon, I can put the grinder away. Here's a mess of pictures I took while welding in the last two patches.

Here's the second patch panel tack welded in place. As you can in the picture, there are a few problems with how the patch fit that I had to address prior to going any farther. The first was that there is no gap between the patch panel and the cowl on the front which caused a hump in the middle of the patch. This was fixed by cutting the tack weld with a chisel to free the front of the part and running my cutoff tool along the seam. I made two passes to get a nice even gap. Also, there are a few large gaps in a few places around the patch. It took a lot of welding and grinding to fill these gaps. Lesson learned: Measure twice, cut once.

Here's the same patch after I fixed the problems noted above. Notice that there are a few places that have a very wide weld bead. These areas are where I had big gaps.

Despite the slip-up on measuring, I did manage to get the gap between the slots in the cowl vents pretty nice. I think I got better alignment on the first panel but the people I've had look at it in person haven't been able to tell any difference.

Here's the patch after many, many hours of welding and grinding. The little bump in the seam (middle left) is where I couldn't get my angle grinder. I ended up buying a die grinder for this (I just hate it when I have to buy a tool!) which worked perfectly.

Here's the panel after a bunch of filing and grinding. I still have a little more grinding to do along the front seam of this panel and the front seam of the first panel I welded in but it's really starting to shape up.

Here's the third patch panel. This replaced the rusted out section of the pinch weld that I found during the initial inspection.

Here's the cowl with all of patches welded in and most of the grinding done.

Up Next: The [almost] finished repair.

Last Updated 01/04/04 09:28:43 PM