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Jim rodman makes nice wood but he does make the A pillar (not sure if you know but the door posts are referred to using letters with A being the forward most) dado in the main sill slightly oversize. What I do is take an A pillar and check the hinge dados on the face with the hinges on the door. As I said Jim’s work has always been good so they should line up. If they do, assemble the two of them together with the upper dash cross brace making a “H” shape. Then put the metal A pillar covers on the A pillars and simply tape in place to hold them. If you put the A pillars in place in their respective dados, the bottom pillar cover should be about 1/16” above the top of the sill. Mount the A pillar brace to the bottom of the A pillar with one shorter than what’s used wood screw and tighten it up. Do this for both sides. Clamp the A pillar iron to the sill with a deep throat clamp from the inside of the car out. You will need to have the front of the sills unbolted from the chassis and the bolts shown in the tips of the sills removed. You can pull off the A pillar cover pieces and now install the cowl. Your A pillars should only be clamped in place and held with the one wood screw. You will need to slid the cowl on from the front and make sure the tips of the sills seat fully into the socket of the cowl on each side. A second or two additional people there to help spread the rear of the cowl over the pillars is a big help or make a spreader to hold the metal out if you work alone as I do. Once the cowl is fully to the back on the sills (you should be able to drop a bolt down through the front cowl iron and through the holes in the sill. Now your cowl is where it belongs as far as back and forward.
Now let the cowl metal relax around the A pillars and over the dash cross beam. It requires a little dexterity to get this all to happen but once it looke correct and is correct the metal kind of snaps or fits into the wood. I then take the two rocker panels and slide them in lace over the sills. The rockers should give you, by the notching in them the locations of the two pillars and their relation to each other. The rear notch or B pillar notch should be lining up with the notches in the rocker panels pretty much. Now you want to for the bottoms of the A pillars as far toward the back of the car which should really put some tension on the lip of the sheet metal where it bends around the a pillar. The lip should also have some notches that coincide with the dados for the hinges. This means remove the clamp on one side and work the bottom of the pillar to the rear as hard as you can. I’ve made small wedges of wood that I drive up from the bottom into the gap of the front of the pillar and the front edge of the sill dado. This gap is usually between 1/8-3/16” on Rodman’s sills but we’ll fill it in later. With the A pillar the correct height, the nail edge of the bottom of the cowl should be up against the sill or the nail rail on the bottom edge of the sill depending on the car. So basically you should now have your cowl up where it belongs and the A pillars as far back where they belong. Those little wedges from the bottom should be holding things pretty tight.
Now with you rocker in place, you car mount your B pillar in place using the pillar covers to set the height and the rocker to set the spacing. Put the bottom iron in place with one screw in the pillar and another clamp. I see your floor boards are in place so you have to maybe put one screw down into the sill but again try and use a shorter one in the case something has to be moved. You can now connect the tops of the two pillars with the roof rails and check everything up with a square. Measure the door opening to you doors and I, for shits and giggles, usually put a door in place to check the height and latch locations but I’ve never been off using this method. You now need to fit the rear wood in place and install the rear body sheet metal. Again the lip of the body metal should fit pretty tightly when you “pop” the lip over the B pillar. Once everything appears to line up correctly, mark the location of the pillars on the sills and make sure your pillar heights are right but they should be good. Now pull the metal off, yes, it sucks, but it comes off again, then screw the A pillars to the irons and screw the irons to the sills making sure the pillars are square to the sills (the door way openings) now make up those thin wedges to fully fill any gaps which are usually in the front of the dados. Remove the screws in the irons that go into the pillars, add waterproof glue to the joint at the bottom and tap in the gap filler pieces. I always make my filler pieces tight as a tight joint is always the best. You will then need to add two screws at the base of the A pillar that go into the side of the sill. I forgot to mention but use the proper spade type wood screw bits to drill all holes and soap all screws before screwing them in. I found Irish Spring soap with some spit on it makes the best lubricant for the screws. From hear it’s common sense working rearward but always check things by putting the body metal on before fully screwing and gluing anything. The sheet metal body on my olds was probably on and of 7-10 times constantly checking for fit. I did have to make my own wood so you are ahead of me there. You should use heavy roof felt both for anti squeak and a filler for small gaps between metal and wood.
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