Paint prep and a few questions

[91f2504x4]

I was almost finished with paint preperation last week when I found a speck of rust at the very back of the bed below the taillight, as I picked at it, it opened up more and I found some bondo from the previous owner I assume, which would have been 10+ years ago. I was going to buy a patch panel but I really hate them because of how hard it is to keep the metal from warping when welding, and it seems like you always have to use body filler to make it look decent. I decided against the patch panel because I also wasn't really please with how the wheel arch turned out on that side anyway (took lots of filler work to make it come out good), so I decided it was either a new bed or a new bed side. I looked all over and the nearest bed was a quite a few hours away and the wife said no, I love road trips and I will usually jump at any reason to hook the trailer up and head out for a couple of days, but I don't want to make her mad (again). Well anyway, I found a bed side from a wrecked truck that was perfect, it took me a few hours to get it off the bed without destroying it and now I need to remove my bed side and attach the new side to the old bed.

My first question is, is there a better way to remove the spot welds. Do body shops really have to do crap the same way that I was. I drilled with a junky harbor freight spot weld remover for a while and it broke and made the rest of the job a true PITA. I finally, carefully used a torch to remove a few parts on the old bed that was junk anyway, to get the bed side seperated. I can't really use a torch on my good bed and The spot weld cutter won't really fit into a couple spots (I guess I will go buy another one).

Does anyone have any tips to get it all lined back up before I start welding? I thought about using 2x4's fastened in place of the tailgate to hold everything the right distance apart til I get it all welded.

Does anyone have any experience with changing bedsides? I would have rather just swapped beds but I could not find one close enough and without buying another whole truck (which the wife frowns on as well), She told me I need to sell something before I can get anything else.

 

[Diesel_brad]

Take the bed off the truck and set on a pair of good , level horses. Make sure it is sitting on the horses flat,not on the heat shields.

Take some 2x4,conduit, and make an X across the back of the bed to hold it square.

Get a spot weld drill bit(snap-on,blair, whoever). pilot drill all the spotwelds w a1/8 bit. Then use the spotweld bit to drill out the spot welds. Remove the bed side.

Get yourself some panel adhesive glue and a bunch of vise grip pliers. Clean all the mounting surfaces on the bed and the new sides.

Use the body adhesive glue for the bed rail, wheel well arch and the front of the bed. Get it set where you want it, clamp in place and spot weld around the taillight assem. Let the adhesive sit for 8 hours while it sets.

If you want to further prevent wheel well rust, remove the inner wheel well arch. Just make 2 straps out of some 16ga steel to support the side from flapping.

 

[91f2504x4]

Well I got the old bed side cut off and the new one put on, now I am going to go ahead and paint everything before I put the bed back on the truck if I can get a few nice days.

Here are some pictures of the bed with the new side on it and a couple pictures of the old rusted bed side.

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The old bed side

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Does anyone need a good inner bed side for the driver's side? Free to good home.

And my wife wanted me to make sure that anyone who seen this knew that she helped!

 

[ericboutin]

Holy Crap!! That is really impressive!! I would have probably just tried to fix the busted up bondo! Of course I'm just starting to perfect my lousy welding skills... Your wife did a great job no doubt helping line everything up for welding! That looks really awesome!

 

[BigRigTech]

Nice work...But the last person I would ask for help on my truck would be my wife...She might "smell like oil and grease".....Like I usually do....

 

[91f2504x4]

It would have made it easier if I had a spot welder. It wasn't too bad with my wire welder in the spots where I had drilled out the spot welds on the ends but the long seem in the middle where I had cut the two pieces apart and there where no holes. So a spot welder would have been nice but I just drilled some more holes and welded it together there.

And I have really paid for the little bit of help my wife gave me, I have been shoveling mulch all day.

 

[Agnem]

So did you have to dismantle two beds to make one good one? I'm curious about this, because I have rust in those floor seems, and there doesn't seem to be any way to stop it, since the water runs down in between them all the time. How did you get these parts seperated in such a way that you could re-use them?

 

[91f2504x4]

I drilled out all the welds other than the ones in the seem that runs almost the length of the bed. The way I seperated them was, I took a torch and cut really close on the side of the seem that I wasn't going to use, then after I got all that out of the way, I took a grinder and ground half way through the spot welds on the scrap side. Once I did that I was able to take vice grips and just pull that scrap side of the seem off with a little force leaving a good flange to spot weld back together.

The light blue bed side came from a really mint bed that a teenager smacked into an electrical pole on the passenger side.

I really thought it was going to be a lot harder than it was, It would have been fairly easy if I would have had a brand new bed side to work with instead of having to cut 2 seperate beds apart, but bed sides are almost $400 new.

 

[Agnem]

Kinda what I envisioned. So there is no way to really seperate a good bed side from a good floor just to deal with the seem rust. Guess I'll just keep spraying it good.

 

[Diesel_brad]

mel. You can take it apart. Just have to drill out the spot welds. Very simple. and where the inner side meets the bed floor, there should be seam sealer at that joint to seal out any water

 

[Agnem]

Unfortunately the seem sealer wasn't designed to last a quarter of a century. All mine has hardended and broken out. I'm trying various rust stop products, and of course it's garage kept, but it will rust more in the next 11 days then it has in the last 365. Mother nature just can't wait to get her hands on the Moose Truck.

 

[91f2504x4]

If you drill out the spot welds in the seem the hold the side to the floor it doesn't leave whole lot to weld back together. On both the beds that I cut apart the majority of the spot welds were right on the edge of the seem and would not have been much fun to try and drill out, and wold have taken away a lot of the flange. There is a spot weld about every inch along that seem.

 

[Diesel_brad]

you dont drill out the whole weld. Just the weld on the panel you are relpacing. You need a special spot weld driller. After you dril and remove the old pannel.it will look like this
This show when completed

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This shows new piece w the "weld" holes ready & where the old spot welds were in the rocker

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This show new piece just befole welding

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[91f2504x4]

That's what I did, if you look at the front of my bed in the pics you will see where I used a spot weld cutter to cut the spot welds and then welded those holes back in to attach the new bed side. I am just saying if you were to try and drill out every weld on that seem it would leave a lot less flange there and would honestly suck to cut because of their location and not being able to get to them with a rotary tool very well until you cut the bed side out of the way and by then it is easier to just grind them out and the metal will be left with no holes or pieces of the flange missing, which would make it really easy to spot weld back together if you have a spot welder. It was just easier for me to cut the old crappy bed side out of the way and the lightly grind where the spot welds were and, it made it really easy to just pull the scrap side of the flange off, it left a really clean hole-less flange.

 

[Diesel_brad]

I'm curious. why didnt you just change the skin, instead of the WHOLE side? At least then you could of gotten in the wheel well to clean and slow down the rust

And all you need is a 90* drill and it is a piece of cake to get to the floor/inner side spot welds