New Glass!
Before the glass got installed, I had a few issues with the windshield opening on the passenger side of the truck. At some point, early in its life the truck was at least laid on the passenger side, and caused damage to the roof above the passenger door. I discovered that early on, and spent a lot of time shortly after the truck arrived here addressing that problem. The roof had been pushed down a couple of inches, and someone cut the front pillar and attempted to "repair" it. The repair amounted to jacking it back to close to where is originally was, then poorly welding it back together. After that, they piled on the bondo, to the point most of that 1/2 of the roof had filler over 1" thick. The front fender, roof post, cowl and door was also jacked around and filled with huge amounts of filler. I dug the filler all out, cut loose the pillar again, and put and the front door post back into the proper location, as best as I could determine at that point. I welded it back together, and made a replacement patch for the roof above the door.
Once the cab was bolted to the frame, I could measure and square the cab. The entire roof was swayed towards the driver side nearly an inch, and the windshield opening was not square. The opening on the driver side of the cab was 1" higher then the same location on the passenger side. Who besides me would suspect that the glass isn't going to fit well with the opening that far off?
I was able to push the cab square with a porta power, and add some bracing at the door frames to keep it square, but the height was still way off. I had to cut the pillar apart again, add a piece to the post, and get the height correct, and the cab was still square. This truck has a two piece split flat glass windshield. Originally there is a two piece center brace, one part on the outside of the center rubber, and one part on the inside of the rubber, with 4 sheet metal screws going from the inside piece, through the rubber, and screwing into the outer piece. My truck didn't have those center braces, but I was able to find a really good one online.
Pic 1, You have seen this one before as well, but this time I want to attract your attention to the roof and the area around the door. Everything under the yellow paint was ground down to bare metal, the yellow paint was something I had here that I sprayed on to protect the bare metal from the weather while the truck sat outside for a year or so. You can see the weld line above the roof where I welded in the patch onto the roof. That patch starts at the front corner of the door, and extends back past the visible curve in the roof, its about 6" wide at its widest point. Notice that patch has an outward curve? The piece I cut out had a concave curve in it, and was filled with over 1" of body filler to form the outward curve. On the pillar, about even with the bottom of the sun visor, you can see the section I first extended and welded. Also at the top center of the roof, just towards the passenger side the place that looks like a spot is a dent in the roof about 1" in diameter, it is pulled nearly 1" deep, but never pierced through the roof skin. I believe that was how far over the truck was rolled and whatever caused that deep dent probably stopped the truck from going over all the way. You can also see that the top left (as you are looking at the pic) of the windshield opening has a fabricated pinch weld area around the entire corner. The rain gutter has also been repaired.
Pic 2, Because of all the metal work and bare metal, I picked up a couple spray bombs of acrylic enamel semi gloss black and some acrylic enamel primer in a spray bomb, and primed all the areas around where the glass was going to be installed. My thinking was the glass is going in for good. The acrylic enamel would protect it for as long as I would need it it to, and the semi gloss black was close enough to the color of the rubber, when it was time for a real paint job, we could tape up to the rubber and not be too concerned about a perfect tape line, the black would blend in.
Pic 3, The windshield install from the driver side.
Pic 4, The rear corner window and center rear windows installed. Notice that the original door handle is still on the door? The front and rear glass must have been installed before the Dakota door handles. So much stuff, its hard to keep track of what happened first.