Alrighty, time for a little update. Parts truck is out and the twisted core support is straightened. This is where I started.
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It's really twisted. I cut the bottom section out by removing the spot welds and seam welds and straightened it.
Before
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After.
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Then after a lot of cutting and tacking and twisting....
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Not perfect but seems to be close enough. Measures to within an 1/8" of the rusty one on my truck.
Sample of my welding. It's getting better.
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Still more welding and grinding to go followed by some rattle can paint to hold it over till I'm ready to sand blast everything.
While I was at it, I've been working on a process for cleaning up hardware. Picked up a HF vibrating tumbler and some rust cutter media along with a bottle of Evapo-rust. About 12 hours and things were pretty clean.
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The dark spots rub right off. They will get zinc plated. Ill save that for another thread.
Anyway, I'm ready to start the metal replacement in the cab. Since I'm doing rockers, I thought it would be a good idea to fix the door pins so that I could line the gaps up easier. Passenger side was so so. Drivers side was horrific. I had help to do the pass side so I left wires etc attached. Ground pins off and drove them out. Marked outline with a sharpie to put the hinge half back on the door. New bushings and back together it went. Did the drivers side by myself so I hung the door from the hoist, marked the hinges, unplugged the two plugs under the dash.
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And off came the door with 4 bolts.
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Took about 10 minutes to grind both pins out. I changed the bushings in the bottom hinge but not the top because if you look close the door holder is broke off. So that hinge is getting replaced. I put the new pin in just so it would be easier to pull the door off and put it back on when I need to move it outside for space.
Next up is to gut the interior and take stock of what metal is needed then a really painful order probably to lmc for sheet metal. Another unfortunate but not surprising find is that the doors are starting to rust at the bottom. May be adding that to the list as well.