Quote:
Originally Posted by CWPASADENA
Just a suggestion:
It appears you are working on an early '30. These firewalls had a bad habit about cracking around the radiator rod mounts. Ford later made a revision and added reinforcements to the back side of the firewall to help keep this from happening. You may want to think about adding something to reinforce this area. I have a early '30 Tudor that had this same problem and did not want it to re-occure so I reinforced this area when I did the repair.
Just a thought.
Chris
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Yes, I didn't want to be the one that said something but since Chris mentioned it, this is true. Honestly, it appears the way this has been repaired will very likely allow the crack to return since there is no welded strength around the rivets and it appears the ending-hole was not drilled to eliminate the continued spreading of the crack.
Below is a few images showing the cracks drilled, vee-ed, and filled. The reinforcing plates are added to the back side and the 4 holes are plug welded and metalfinished smooth to look more like a spot weld. The firewall rivets are heated & bucked in with a 3X gun to entirely fill the firewall hole first, then it is ground nearly flat on the backside and then waffled. The reason it is done that way is so the shank of the rivet can be red hot during installation for maximum swelling. The waffle tool is designed to be used cold, so thus it is done in two stages.
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