After looking at her in the garage every day and still waiting for her new home to be built I decided to start the job that I have been dreading since I first looked at this project... the cowl. Due to the poor welding that was done in the USA when the donor upper and lower cowl was installed this became a mammoth task and after 5 hours and lots of dremel cut-off wheels the upper cowl was off.
The plan was to repair the lower cowl as the condition was not too bad but after further investigation the welding was that poor it had not fused with the firewall flange and with a air chisel 70% of the welds just let go with no effort, due to this the decision was made to remove the lower cowl, repair the firewall flange and install a new lower cowl. Removing the lower cowl cost me another 3 hours but this is nothing compared to the work that will be required to repair the firewall flange. You may also note that the dash is missing in the photo below that is because this also had not been fully welded in and fell out once all the upper cowl spot welds had been removed.
After another 4.5 hours all the holes had been welded up 2 patch pieces were welded in the flange and the 2 ends were created (as these were missing), and a whole heap of grinding it was starting to resemble a functional firewall flange (still need to grind the left half of the flange).
Well finally finished the firewall flange grinding and filled in a few more holes. Also have fixed the plug welds in the a pillars and given it a couple of coats of copper weld through primer to protect it till the replacement part arrives.
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