Thread: '32 Cowl Reshaping

Tweet

Listen to Dave---He knows what he's talking about!!! If you fill a gap that big, you will have a big mess on your hands. That flat, horizontal section of your car gets the most sunlight, and a humungous build up of material in the top of the cowl will expand and contract at a different rate than the rest of the glass body, causing it to crack out and ruin any finished paint job. I think the only way to fix that properly is to make about 5 evenly spaced relief cuts which extend from the passenger compartment about 3/4 of the way to the firewall across the top of the cowl, parallel to the centerline of the car. Work from inside to jack all the peices of cowl out to the proper position, as determined by your windshield frame, then put a layer of mat and resin on the outside to hold everything in place. After it kicks, wait 24 hours, then remove all the jacking from inside and lay up a couple of layers of mat and resin on the inner cowl surface. Wait 48 hours after it kicks, then bondo finish the glassed area on the outside. It appears that the cowl is the correct shape at the firewall, as the hood seems to fit okay. That being the case, the actual "bodyworked" area will be relatively small. It looks like they may have pulled that body from the mold while it was still "green" and without proper support the area directly below the windshield has sagged.