1984 K5 Rust Repair

[EBrawl86]

Good Afternoon Gentlemen. Moved this over from the wrong section. Been a premium member for almost a year, but have just been silently using the boards to learn and move forward on my project. Have gotten to a point where some advice would be welcomed. I bought my 84 last fall as something to keep me busy and boy have I been busy. Truck was originally from California and made its way to the Northeast in the last 3-4 years. It has some old battle wounds on the roof, which I could tell were deteriorating underneath a healthy layer of filler. I started to peel back the onion, for better or worse, and have revealed the extent of the rust. Its about what I expected. Finding donor sheet metal worthy of working with has been a challenge up here due to the typical rust of the Northeast. With that said, I have found a few donor sections to work with. I cannot find the passenger side door drip rail/door frame/roof section from a blazer which is where I'm looking for some knowledge/advice. The donors for me were from a late 70s early 80s (from what I can tell) roof section from a single cab pickup and a roof/windshield frame/pillar section from an 87 suburban. Has anyone here repaired this section of a blazer roof? From what I can tell the windshield frame, pillars, and center roof section are all interchangeable, but where the roof blends into the drip rail over the door is my concern. Has anyone tweaked a standard roof without factory rails into a blazer with factory drip rail section? Here are some pictures for reference. Thanks in advance. Eric

 

[metalmachine]

In for updates

 

[JoshHefnerX]

The way you went into it I assume you have experience, just take your time, that corner is structure - be sure to put it all back.

 

[K5Devil]

if this was mine I’d personally go the full vert route since you’re going to need to go so deep.

 

[EBrawl86]

JoshHefnerX - I appreciate the confidence, but I have no idea what Im doing. I have never attempted to anything to this degree, but I think if I move slow enough and watch enough youtube videos I might be able to make something out of it!

K5Devil - I'm not sure what going full vert means, but I'm guessing you mean going to a full top like on an early 70s rig? If the deeper I dig the uglier it gets I might have to go that route, but I want to try to keep the truck original to its roots. I'm an OEM+ kind of guy and love the 80s trucks.

Not much of an update. Between nursing a herniated disc that's an attention whore and final yard cleanup/prep for winter I only had enough time to work on the cab roof before going back to work. I got the outer skin removed and some of the bracing underneath. I'm going to keep going removing layer after layer on this and the suburban parts until I have what I need.

As far as the drip rail goes, I may delete it. It appears to only have some pinch welds on top and maybe some sort of adhesive on the inside of the door frame? I found a couple examples of trucks on the old google machine that appear to have the drip rail shaved. This might be my best avenue seeing as how I think I have the parts to make it work and I don't have the parts to save the drip rail.


Here is a few pictures of the progress I have made on separating the cab sections.




I suppose a couple pictures of the truck would be nice to show. A picture of it the day I bought it and a picture of how it sits before I started stripping, cutting, and grinding. I installed a 4" Tuff Country lift with EZ rides, and some used 35" BFG ATs with I believe are US wheel 97s. It will be getting a refreshed LQ9 out of an early 2000s Escalade as well as an NV3500 from a 1997 K1500. Ill be ginger on it until I cant find a later model NV4500 to replace it. Have a ton of interior parts to start going back together when its ready. Mint dash pad, manual column and cluster, bezel, headliner, interior trim pieces, door panels, tahoe third row seats for the kiddo. Still hunting for a decent set of black leather front seats. Late model BMW seats seem to be affordable and fairly easy to get locally. Anyways, end of my rant. Wife is sick of hearing about it haha.

 

[K5Devil]

Putting a full roof skin on will be way easier than splicing the roof down the center. Keeping that crown is very difficult to do even for veteran body guys.

 

[EBrawl86]

I absolutely agree with that. I plan on removing and installing the entire roof skin. I'm going to weld in some square tubing within the tub as an attempt to make sure it stays as square as possible while I fumble my way through the job. My biggest concern is how to modify the skin without drip rails to work with drip rails or just doing what I think I have to and shave the drip rails entirely.

 

[K5Devil]

I absolutely agree with that. I plan on removing and installing the entire roof skin. I'm going to weld in some square tubing within the tub as an attempt to make sure it stays as square as possible while I fumble my way through the job. My biggest concern is how to modify the skin without drip rails to work with drip rails or just doing what I think I have to and shave the drip rails entirely.

You could refabricate the drip rails if you need them on there just weld one plane of them at a time and grind your welds down.

 

[JoshHefnerX]

If you're gonna cut the driprails it's def the time to do it. The door side is seam sealer, kind of industrial caulk. But if you're gonna cut them and want to do so, it's def the time to do it as you're deep enough in. Go slow so you're not warping the metal.

 

[EBrawl86]

Well between the holidays, the little ones schedule, and my rotating shift work I haven't made much progress on the Blazer. I have gotten most of the way through removing the front clip so I can yank the engine and trans to make more room to work. Any tips on the radiator support bolts? I have them soaking, but even my big boy Milwaukee 1/2" impact wouldn't crack them. Also, note to self, install lift and tires AFTER body work and engine swap is completed haha. I have purchased the passenger side rocker, inner rocker, and floor pan parts to fix passenger side rust. I have also acquired another roof section, but from a blazer so it should all lay out. It'll take quite some time to break down all of the different parts I will need to scab onto the truck, but I no longer have to shave the drip rails to make it all work. A-pillar rust also appears to have stayed in the outer skin so its all looking superficial so hopefully its easily remedied. Looking to take advantage of the mild NE weather so I can to keep crawling forward.

 

[Conner]

Hey man, I am looking through your pics of the roof and A-pillar because I have similar issues on my truck (thanks for posting by the way), and then saw you have floor issues like I have recently fixed. If it would be helpful, here is my build thread with pics of rebuilding the floor / kick panel / rocker areas. I am definitely not a pro, but I think mine came out pretty decent. I have more pics that I didn't post if a pic of something specific would be helpful, just let me know. Good luck!

 

[EBrawl86]

Hey man, I am looking through your pics of the roof and A-pillar because I have similar issues on my truck (thanks for posting by the way), and then saw you have floor issues like I have recently fixed. If it would be helpful, here is my build thread with pics of rebuilding the floor / kick panel / rocker areas. I am definitely not a pro, but I think mine came out pretty decent. I have more pics that I didn't post if a pic of something specific would be helpful, just let me know. Good luck!

Wow, awesome pics. I have had a hard time finding anything to help figure out how all the panels lay together before I tear into it. I see you mention LMC a few times. Is that where you bought your floor and rocker panels? I Appreciate the reply and good luck as you move forward!. Ill be posting more pictures of the roof as I work my way through. Time has been a commodity lately!

 

[Conner]

Wow, awesome pics. I have had a hard time finding anything to help figure out how all the panels lay together before I tear into it. I see you mention LMC a few times. Is that where you bought your floor and rocker panels? I Appreciate the reply and good luck as you move forward!. Ill be posting more pictures of the roof as I work my way through. Time has been a commodity lately!

Thanks man! I look forward to your roof pics, I will definitely be using them as a reference on mine.

I did get my floor and rocker pieces from LMC. I’m
not totally sure but based on pictures, I think they are the same as the floor and rocker pieces available elsewhere. I suspect for those pieces there is one company stamping them for all the different retailers.

The outer rockers fit pretty well. The inner rockers were decent but for a K5 (vs a pickup), you won’t use all of them. The kick panels were basically a drop in fit, although getting them laid in correctly was a challenge. The floor pans only vaguely resemble the original floors unfortunately. I did numerous small patches (as opposed to replacing the entire floor pan) because of this. I also had to heavily modify some parts, such as the edge of the floor / inner rocker that the outer rocker welds to. There are pics of this in my build thread, but again if any further pics or info would be helpful, I’m more than happy to put them up. Just let me know!

 

[EBrawl86]

Quick update as I got some time in the shop today. Cut away the roof skin from the truck. Seems pretty clean underneath considering its 40 years old and has had a ton of moisture inside for who knows how long. Appears the vast majority of the rust has stayed in the upper windshield area on the passenger side which means I should have everything I need to make my repairs. Also worked on the passenger lower A pillar metal. Pretty much what I expected to find and not that serious. The blue sharpie line is about where my donor metal will cover so Ill have to fab up some small pieces which is no big deal. Once I get it disassembled down to where I have all the rust removed and the rest cleaned up I will start disassembling the donor sections, which will be very time consuming.

 

[EBrawl86]

As they say, a little progress is better than no progress at all. Slowly chipping away as I find time and motivation. Have gone as far down the rabbit hole as I'm prepared to go, and thankfully I think its far enough. Chased the rust down the passenger b-pillar and man oh man what a pain the drip rail was. Its cool to see how all these panels are pieced together with some of the seams just overlapping and bonded with seam sealer. To prep for reassembly I have watched countless youtube videos to find the "best" rust remover/converter and settled on Rust Kutter. So I will be applying that and then laying down a healthy coat of epoxy primer to ward off as much future rust as possible. Then I will start laying down the donor metal and seeing how it all lines up.

 

[JoshHefnerX]

A lot of work in there.

 

[CT-BLAZER]

That inner roof is a good candidate for sand blasting with fine sand

 

[Chickntrk]

Props to you, at that point I’d be making a copy of ORDs convertible K30 Enjoying following along

 

[EBrawl86]

Some more progress pictures from today. Finally got the entirety of the roof removed. Every youtube video I could find involving a roof skin replacement has been a single cab truck. After watching those I decided to make a cut along the rear of the roof to allow a clean weld line near an edge which would help maintain shape. Today I actually ended up removing the entire rear section where the cap bolts to the body. Good thing I did as there was a bunch of scale forming underneath that I can now properly take care of. Still have to work my way down the drivers side a pillar outer skin, but progress is looking good. Still have yet to peel apart all of my donor parts... joy. Have been drilling spot welds in my dreams... Hopefully be getting disassembly finished and prep done so I can start getting it back together. I'm ready to take a break from rust repairs and start looking at getting the LS swapped in.