My rust repair nightmare

[RCWD21]

Today I went to town and finally cut out 2 pieces of the rocker panels on the driver side.

 

The area behind the rear tire is very manageable and I'm not stressing that too much.

 

What I am stressing is the area in front of the rear wheel and up the front of the wheel well heading towards what appears to be either a seat anchor or a seat belt anchor point (plate with a nut welded to it viewable by looking in the rear wheel area on the body itself). It's right in line with the body mount bracket that is welded to the body itself. It was previously covered in an epoxy of some sort but whoever did it just slapped it over rust and went on their way...

 

The rockers on both sides have various holes in them. The drivers side is the worst but at the body seam on the passenger side the metal is very thin almost like a soda can. I was banging on it with the side of my fist and it crumpled. It appears that someone sanded the area and tried to stop the rust but it didn't do any good.

 

I tried naval jelly today and it didn't even touch the rust, it worked on the exhaust though! I have a spray bottle of ospho (phosphoric acid type rust converter) and it helped a little bit. I'm going to get a can of zinc spray paint and paint all inside of where I have cut open once I weld in new material to hopefully prevent future rust from forming. I've never attempted body work so any tips, tricks, pointers, or advice is greatly appreciated. Hopefully I'll be able to prevent this from turning into swiss cheese more than it already is until I can find a "less rusty" 2 door body to swap to.. I live on the east coast of North Carolina so salt isn't as bad as other states it's just always here year round in the air!

 

The rear most area:

 

Up inside:

 

The rust from inside the rocker panel after hosing it out and picking and scraping.:

 

The area on the inside of where the body mount is:

 

Inside the fender well area where the epoxy "patch" was:

 

And finally the sunroof drain which I think is the entire cause of the rocker panels on wd21's rotting out. One the body drain hole is clogged with dirt it becomes the perfect area for rust to form.

 

 

I'm debating on just cutting it all out and welding in some 3"× 2" tubing with caps on the end to reinforce the area but funds are very limited and motivation is slowly depleting as I discover more issues with this, most of which have already been fixed though.

 

I have no idea how much metal I'm going to have to cut out when it comes to the rear seat area but I think I'm going to use a very large plate of steel and weld it in as best I can.. I want this rig to be as water tight as possible because of some of the places I go camping/ fishing.

 

Also, mods if this is in the wrong section please feel free to move it. I posted here due to the nature of this repair and I'll be detailing my repairs until complete (also so I can match it up to the passenger side )

 

Sent from inside my potato

[RCWD21]

I took pics of the underside around the body mounts and the passenger side fender well area.

 

Drivers side:

 

Looking up inside of the cut out on the drivers side:

 

Passenger side:

 

Passenger side wheel well. It's almost as bad, you can see the dirt in the seam

 

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[adamzan]

Jeez mine isn't even that bad and I'm in Canada. I would see if you can get access to a sand blaster. All that rust converter stuff doesn't do anything. If you can see rust/pitting, it will come back. I would blast it, paint it and fill the rockers with oil spray once repaired.

[RCWD21]

Since I'm working in my parents driveway I don't know how well a sand blaster would go over. I'm buying a welder tomorrow so once I find some sheet metal to go back in I'm going to weld it up and reroute the sunroof drains on both sides and then fill the area up with oil and let it soak in. Or I might seal and undercoat the inside as far up as I can.

 

As for the rockers I'm leaning more and more towards replacing the entire length with tubular steel to also help reinforce the one body mount location. Plus I can weld directly to the new rocker for when I start messing with that mount.

 

The area below the body line is going to be sealed and have bedliner applied.

[Slartibartfast]

Yeah, that's some rust alright! Sorry to see that. I like the idea of replacing them with square tube, sort of an integral slider kind of thing. If you can get one in there, a wire cup on a grinder works wonders on surface rust--but make sure you've got a face shield and long sleeves, I've had those things embed wire in my arm before, and they do like to catch and kick if you aren't careful around the edges.

And practice on some of the scraps you cut off with the new welder before going for it on the truck, the body metal is thin and requires some practice. When I patched my floors (and a spot in the rear wheel well, about where yours is bad looks like), I had mine on its lowest setting and had to to basically make a row of tacks, or very short stitches at the most to not burn holes through it. It's easier if you're overlapping it of course but then you have to worry about seam sealer.

 

If you run into budget issues, keep in mind that it doesn't have to be new metal so long as it's solid. I patched my floor and wheel well with sheet metal from the roof of a scrap Mercury Cougar. Sucks having to torch the old paint off, but it welded up just fine afterwards and having part of a Ford on my Nissan doesn't seem to have jinxed anything.

[adamzan]

Exactly, I patched my old floor with part of an old Jetta hood.

[LittleFR]

Washing machine or dryer sheetmetal is the easiest stuff I've used for patching.

I wouldn't soak it in oil. Get the rust stopped and epoxy it and use bedliner or undercoating if u need to be cheap. At least a good anti rust paint and some hard enamel paint.

[adamzan]

It is common up here to use oil based rustproofing. Most of it is environmentally friendly now. It is about 100 bucks a year and they soak the @!*% out of the truck. My rockers don't have any rust at all because of this...

[RCWD21]

I didn't realize it's been an entire month since I posted but I haven't messed with rust much since I got my parts in recently. It's now 3 inches taller and there's a ton more rust than I though under the back seats. Like I can see the carpet sticking out. Oh well at least I have more room if I want to incorporate storage under the seats.

 

As for welding the tubes in for the rockers I've had a good bit of practice with the new welder and if push comes to shove I can have our local welder (family friend) tig weld everything in place once I tack it in with the mig. My plan for rust proofing the new metal is to spray it down with a few layers of good rust proofing paint and then scuff it up once that's cured and roll on a thick layer of bedliner. I'll have a piston pin out of a jetski welded in through the tube so the sun roof still has its drain in the normal spot. And if I do it right I may be able to use the rockers as an air tank for air horns. I'll have a larger tank for on board air in the rear or possibly on top of the shock hoop mounts in the rear, I've found several odd shaped tanks that should work great for that area.

 

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