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Thanks for the advice! I'm not sure the original corner piece is repairable, but I was thinking of cutting it along the peak below the light and sectioning in the donor corner, which needs work on the rear face as well. Original:   Donor:  That said of course, no reason not to bash around on the original and see if it cooperates. Given that the rear face of the original is decent, and the side of the donor is at least better, I may end up combining them anyway. But keeping the original from that peak up is definitely the plan. This morning, I wanted to experiment a little with the hammer & dolly - it's not something I've done, so I started working the dent behind the wheel arch on the donor bed. I figured it was better to bang on it while it was attached, and I'm very happy with how it came out. Not perfect, but a whole lot better than it was. That success under my belt, I got to cutting. I figured that I can leave 2" on either end, and trim that back to 1" or even 1/2" later if needed, so I marked it as well as I could and hit it with the grinder.   And still riding high from the success with the dent earlier, I got after the corner piece when I got access to the back of it  Next step is probably taking the cutting wheel to the truck, which is a lot more scary. Oh, and I did get this from the PO:  Welp. Guess there's not much point in throwing a bucket of money at painting this panel either then. |
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Continuing on with the dissection of the long bed panel, there was the remainder of the upper bed rail on the lower panel I needed to get off, so out came the drill... Clean it up to find the spot welds  Center-punch them then drill through with 1/8"  And then I've found that the flat 3/8" bit made relatively short work of the welds, after chewing the teeth off one of the little hole saw types  Once I find enough brave pills to cut the bed on the truck, I'll trim this to size and start trying not to warp it beyond recognition... I think I have a plan on the corner piece. Because of the way I believe the bed was assembled, there's no way to get to the flange between the lower panel and the corner piece without destroying things, because the structure of the corner piece covers the flange like so:  I cut that one to get to the inside so I could bang on the dent, but those spot welds are to the inner structure of the bed. That panel isn't attached to the lower panel flange, which is welded to the outside of the corner piece. Maybe it'll help to see the passenger side of the long bed, which has the outer lower panel cut away:  However, if I cut back an inch into the corner piece, I can seam both the lower panel and the corner piece, sliding the spot-welded flanges behind that panel welded to the inner structure, without having to cut it up. Like so:  That will leave me with 3 total seams to get right, but this is 16 gauge steel so I think I can take my time and avoid too much warp. I guess we'll find out... |
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Well done !!
You are moving along beautifully.
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Dec 10, 2022 21:52:30 GMT
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Thanks grizz, the encouragement is welcome. After sleeping on it, the obvious dawned on me that I can get to the lower panel/taillight housing flange from the other side  Duh. So if that works, I only have 2 seams  It's only metal, if I have to I can cut the corner piece and put it back together. |
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You realise the work you are putting in makes this truck more and more part of your DNA every stitch you weld.
It is becoming the unlikely “keeper” in your collection.
Good thinking on the patchwork.
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Dec 17, 2022 13:51:47 GMT
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 Well here we go...  And there we are. Nothin' to it but to do it, really. The more I dig around on this truck the more I see how rust-free it really is, and having to cut it up like this almost makes me angry. The top of the lower panel flange, spot welded to the upper bed rail for 56 years with no particular protection, was still clean fresh steel in several places.  But as I said, it's only metal, and it's gotta be fixed, so...   This is the gap where the lower panel flange slides in and gets spot welded to the corner piece. The left side of that gap is the bed side of the stake pocket, and that's spot welded to the inner bed side. Anyway, a couple of broken drill bits later because the tail light opening forces you to drill at an angle, I have it ready to weld. That's today's task.  I really tried to take my time on fit up, and it's not too bad, I think. Plan is to spot weld the flange in place then weld in the bottom of the corner piece.  Then finish trimming the lower panel to length and start seaming it in. I'll flip the bed over so the top flange to upper bed rail takes advantage of gravity. |
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Dec 20, 2022 16:16:01 GMT
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I failed to take Christmas decorating into my plans for Saturday, and what with one thing and another it was yesterday afternoon before I got back out to the shop. I'm not really happy with these results, but it's on there.  These spot welds look ok, but there's a little more space than I'd like in the actual joint.  That's with a light behind and perfectly square on to the joint. Not sure how I'd do it any different, though, so I'll just be generous with the seam sealer. The lower section though, I may cut and re-weld the side. The rear face is as acceptable as I can do, I think, but I was feeling rushed and I should have stopped and adjusted the fit along the side after the first couple tacks.  Oh well. Lesson learned, I think. Grind, cut, adjust, weld...repeat. Not going for zero filler, but I would like to minimize it. And getting this end set before final trim of the lower bed panel should put me in a decent place on that. I hope. |
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Dec 22, 2022 20:06:30 GMT
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 Much happier with this result. It's still not perfect, but the spot where it's off is where I worked the dent out of the donor piece as well as I could, so I'm content with this. Now on to the side panel... |
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Progress with a capital P.
Looking very positive.
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What with holidays and vacations and all, it's been a minute. But today was the day... In preparation, we popped the bed off yesterday afternoon...  There's the original yellow on the back of the cab. We'll scrub that up and paint it at some point, but we still haven't found the right shade of spray paint. The good news is that this truck continues to impress on it's condition...  To get to the welds along the top of the lower panel, we flipped the bed upside down.  And found the only rust on the truck, the front bed support rusts out because the front of the bed collects water and everything else  That's another thing we'll deal with another time. I did slather it with rust converter, but that's not going to put any steel back in it. Really worked on getting the fit as good as I could  (that's a flexible magnetic ruler, I was using them for straight lines and measuring) Then started with the rail seam, which would have been next to impossible with the bed in standard position. It isn't easy this way, there's just not much room between the lower and inner panels to get the welding torch, some light, your arm, and some sightlines up in there. But it's not coming off.  With that done, I did the fender braces to hold it firmly in place, and started stacking tacks.   (these are the first welds I've felt confident enough to show before grinding) Then ground them down.   I'm really pleased with how it came out. I did throw some red oxide primer over it, and we'll put it back on the truck tomorrow. Then I'll start working up the motivation to crack open the filler and start sanding...  |
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 Next up, filling and sanding... |
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glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,353
Club RR Member Number: 64
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1966 Ford F-100glenanderson
@glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member 64
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Great progress. Well done. 👍
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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I am so pleased with the way you have approached and worked at this.
Just shows, doing it the right way delivers.
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eurogranada
Europe
To tinker or not to tinker, that is the question...
Posts: 2,556
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That looks like a quality repair!
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thomfr
Part of things
Trying to assemble the Duett again..
Posts: 694
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Wow! Deep bow!
Such a big panel and this result!
btw. I hope you throw some underbody sealer and cavity wax to it. Losing this condition would be a shame.
Thom
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73' Alfa Giulia Super
64' Volvo Duett
65' Volvo Duett
67' Volvo Amazon 123GT
09' Ford Focus 1.8
20' VW ID4
71' Benelli Motorella
65' Cyrus Speciaal
The difference between men and boys is the price of their toys
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Jan 17, 2023 14:45:52 GMT
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btw. I hope you throw some underbody sealer and cavity wax to it. Losing this condition would be a shame. Thom We will protect it, but there are mitigating factors: 1, this now lives inside; 2, on the rare occasions it does snow/ice here, they don't really salt the roads - typically around here it's "work from home for a day or two and it'll all go away," and 3, this is something we'll be under and around often, so the likelihood of corrosion running away unnoticed is quite low. I'm also doing what I can to resist "might-as-well"-ing this into a bigger project than it already is, so there are definitely things I'm noting to be addressed later. I have been working on it quite a lot, but not much obvious progress and I haven't been stopping to take pictures as I have been. I went out Friday and welded up the passenger side quarter brace that we found to be torn, then shot the red oxide up in there  And then worked this dent out we found on the back of the cab, mostly hidden by the bed  I wish I had taken a picture of that beforehand, but you can get some sense of the scale of it - it was quite a process involving improvised tools and extremely limited access to work it out, but I have discovered that that process is very rewarding. When we took the bed off, several of the bolts either broke or had to be cut, but I wasn't worried since I had already found replacements for not much money. However, when they arrived, it turned out they were not quite as generic as advertised  So I shopped around locally and found that no one carries 7/16" bolts. Amazon wants to sell 50+ at a time, but BoltDepot would let me order exactly what I needed, and they came in Saturday.  I then started trying to feather the edges of the scratches, nicks, and chips all over the bed that we plan to paint while we're at it (see, it's already started) This escalated rather quickly, because I kept chipping out the edge of the (surprisingly thick) blue paint.   Then last night I made a complete hash of the seam sealer. I was aware of the tip to run tape down the sides of the seam to seal to aid clean-up, but I now know just how important that is for seams on display. So after an hour or two trying to clean that back to presentable, I wrapped up the last of the welding by filling the 1/8" holes drilled in the spot welds to remove the wrinkled lower panel from the upper bed rail  Not that you can see anything there, it was black holes in a black panel, and this is after I ground it down and shot it with black again. But the goal was to look like nothing had happened, so...  If this afternoon goes to plan, I'll start applying body filler and see what "learning experiences" that has to offer... |
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Jan 20, 2023 22:59:19 GMT
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Smear it on  Sand it off  Repeat  Proof that most of it ends up on the floor  But eventually you have to call it good enough and make it shiny enough to see how it really is   And since I can't really see that I could do a whole lot better...  Runs are going to be a problem, but I was planning to sand that down anyway. I must say, it could be a whole lot worse... |
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I am still so pleased that you are doing this repair and keeping the truck going.
Good job from where I am.
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Jan 21, 2023 10:00:14 GMT
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Nice work
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