Slick 60's

I need to remove the hinges from my cab to take care of the rust issues underneath them.

I ran into this problem: The two inner most bolts that hold the hinge to the interior pillar screw into a threaded steel backing plate. When removing these bolts, the steel backing plate snapped off from the pillar (after removing the top bolt and in the process of removing the bottom bolt).

It just spun around. It snapped off the pillar due to rust. Problem is: I have no way of accessing this...

What to do? Let it go? and just leave the hinge in place? Or, do I have to cut into the pillar and remove it, clean it, derust it? seal it and then patch it up again? I hate to do that...as I just completed all of the cab cut and patch work for the inner cab lower cowl areas, floor, step and risers etc.

Any ideas on how to address this? thanks. Tom

Sorry....this may need to be moved to the general truck talk section. tom

Tom
you can get to that area thru the vent hole in the kickpanel

not going to be real easy but you will be able to see it with the help of a mirror

heres a cutaway view of the top one

put the top bolt back in that will stop spinning to remove bottom bolt once bottom is out replace it with longer bolt, remove top bolt slide hinge out on long bolt and replace top bolt without hinge, remove long bolt and hinge, replace bolt now tighten bolt to hold plate tightand put a steel pop rivet between bolts to hold plate, hinge will cover it


Johnny

yes, you got it...spot on! that is the way to address it. Wish I thought of that myself! thanks! -tom
(what this shows me is that these things were not meant to be taken apart!!!! That mantra keeps repeating itself to me as I dig deeper into this thing. Built Ford tough!..with a little swearing along the way

)