When I was cleaning up the ramcharger I found that there was a couple inches of sand under the cowel panel where the heater and vents get the outside air. I am talking about the space under the grills below the windshield where the wiper linkage lives. Being sandy or silty, it laid down there smoothly and I was unaware how much was there until I started vacuuming it out. Then I saw all the damage it had caused. I knew this was something I could not live with, so I pulled the dash out to get to the rust for repair. This is a shot of the firewall below the left side of the windshield. The bolts in the oval hole are to the upper door hinge.

This one was easy to cut back to solit metal. The lower square hole in the background is where the dash wiring harness passes through the firewall and meets up with the underhood harness. You might remember that I was planning to keep the old style dash and harness in the cab. Being forced to remove the dash really saved me a lot of future grief. The wiring harness under the dash was cobbled-up and would have been nothing but a headache to make work.
This is more damage. Low center in the pic is the trottle petal bracket. Left is the bracketry that supports the brake pedal and master cylinder in the other side of the firewall.
This is to the right of the last pic. You can still see the fuel pedal. The hump is in the exact center of the dash about seven inches below the windshield. The ting on the low right that looks like a heater box is the heater box.
This is looking strait up though the aformentioned hump at the wiper linage and shop ceiling above.
A longer shot of the area with my initial cut.

A similar shot with most of the cancer removed back to healthy tissue.

Holding the camera up into the cowel, looking behind the brake/stearing column support, you can see what is left of this issue at the time that I quit working this afternoon. I will tackle the rest in the morning.