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72 K5 - Project 'fixing POs ghetto fab' MAYBE IN WAY OVER MY HEAD? [PICS]

Okay, so on to the rust. Like I said before, I wasn't planning on doing any rust repair, but one thing just led to another.. :D

My main concerns were the drivers side floor and the rockers, because those were visibly in need of repair. PO did a hackjob floor patch, and I've always hated it. Rockers were rusty, dented, and barely welded on. I wasn't sure what else needed help because:

1) Couldn't see what was going on behind the rockers

2) This is my first old chevy truck (and metal resto) and I have no idea what I'm doing

Here's what I started with.

Drivers side:







 
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And in order to go further... off with the doors!

(heard these were a pain to get off, but I took them off myself no problem..?)

 
Removal of the rust begins! Not too tough to take off the rockers, since they were barely welded on to begin with..



Look at all the crap inside there! :)





Only 4 spot welds along the top of the rocker (and 2 of those were totally rusted out):

 
Discovering some more rust behind the rocker.. not much of an inner rocker here:







rocker off, inner rocker (remnants) off, and a nice pile of crap from inside:



 
With the rockers off, I'm finally able to assess the situation. I could see the rusted sections that needed new metal, but the tricky part was I wasn't sure which patch panels were sold or what they were called. After hours of scouring replacement metal distributor websites and restoration threads, I was able to piece together what I needed.

Here's the driver side door jamb. It sits at the bottom rear of the door opening. It gets covered by the outer rocker.

Summit patch panel



Here's the driver side door pillar. It sits at the bottom front of the door opening. It bolts to the floor support (also rusted out) as well as the fender. Without this, the fender will shake all and make wonderful rattling noises. Ask me how I know :)

Summit patch panel



A better shot of the door pillar (with fender off):

 
Guess I didn't get a good shot of the floor support. Its a metal channel that sits inside the rocker box, towards the front, and supports the floor. On left side of this photo is a straight on view of it (driver side):



Note the lack of flanges that connect it to the other pieces. It's supposed to look like this:

 
Passenger side had a similar situation. Here's the rocker off (there was NO inner rocker!):






Passenger side door jamb, bottom rear of door opening:

Summit patch panel



Passenger side door pillar, bottom front of door opening. This one was actually worse than the driver side, it was totally missing. LOTS of play in the passenger front fender.

 
Welcome to hell....

You should probably order up some front floor sections while you're at it. There's no way you'll get those front cab supports installed with the floor in place (unless you completely remove the torsion boxes from underneath)

There is a structural section available for that b-pillar area. I've got pics in my thread that show it. The part you ordered is the cosmetic top piece only.

Finally. If you ever want your doors to fit again you'd better get those openings braced up SOON!!! There's almost nothing left to keep your truck from folding in half in the door area.... There are plenty of builds here that show detailed images of those repairs.... Read as much as you can until it starts to make sense.

-G
 
Greg72 said:
You should probably order up some front floor sections while you're at it. There's no way you'll get those front cab supports installed with the floor in place (unless you completely remove the torsion boxes from underneath)
Click to expand...

Ha, wait til you see my next post :) Yes, the floor IS HELL. Those floor supports are reaaaaally difficult to get out. Lots of hidden welds and such. Anyway, I ordered the driver side floor section, but not the passenger side. I'm hoping to be able to just patch the very end of the pass floor support (it's not as bad as dr side).

Greg72 said:
There is a structural section available for that b-pillar area. I've got pics in my thread that show it. The part you ordered is the cosmetic top piece only.
Click to expand...

I'm aware. This section was particularly tricky to figure out. Build threads helped a lot. The structural sections seem easy enough to fab from sheet metal so I'll just do that.

Greg72 said:
Finally. If you ever want your doors to fit again you'd better get those openings braced up SOON!!! There's almost nothing left to keep your truck from folding in half in the door area.... There are plenty of builds here that show detailed images of those repairs.... Read as much as you can until it starts to make sense.
Click to expand...

Ha! Well, the doors didn't fit to begin with.. and the frame keeps the truck from folding in half :D

Honestly, the structural pieces were so rusted out that I haven't reduced any strength by removing sheet metal so far. A top might help, but I didn't have one to begin with. :dunno:
 
Alright, I'm going to get some crap for this next part. I KNOW you're supposed to use as little replacement sheet metal as possible, but I couldn't resist replacing the whole drivers side floor section.

About 1/3 of this section was crap thanks to PO floor patch. The rest was mostly solid but had some pitting. My big issue is that PO hacked up the fold joint where the floor and firewall meet, and I didn't think I could fab up a seamless fix. My solution: remove the seam altogether, replace the whole floor section.



The sheet metal cuts were easy, but grinding out the factory spot welds was a time consuming pain in the ass. When I started, I didn't have a spot weld drill bit so I used a small and large bit. This worked, but took away a bit too much material (note the holes in the longitudinal floor support).

I didn't get a shot with the floor support still in, but that thing was the worst part. Glad it's gone now, will not be repeating that on the passenger side.

 
Needed access to the front floor pillar, which requires removing the fender. Not sure if removing the hood was necessary, but I took that off too. BYE HOOD!

The funny thing? ALL OF THIS IS HAPPENING BECAUSE I WANTED TO FIX MY TAILLIGHTS. :whistle:







 
Some good news is that the rocker boxes are rock solid. Only minor surface rust. YAY.

Getting ready to put the new floor support in. Primed all exposed steel, applied rust converter / inhibitor to surface rust. Too cheap for POR-15, and there's a limited selection of chemicals for sale here in CA. This stuff should be better than nothing at all.





 
Sidenote. A tool cart would be a wise investment at this point. Getting tired of carrying all these tools into the garage every night, then carrying them back out again, only to throw them in a huge pile:

 
Heed Greg's advice about the bracing. The cab does sag and fold even with the frame there. Those old soggy body mounts allow it to move a ton. Mine sagged enough to cause a problem even with some bracing.
 
One other tip for you...

Those "universal" fit cab supports are lousy. Be prepared to make substantial mods to get them to fit right. Easier than starting from scratch but certainly not a good reproduction of the OEM item.

You'll see.

-G
 
Greg72 said:
One other tip for you...

Those "universal" fit cab supports are lousy. Be prepared to make substantial mods to get them to fit right. Easier than starting from scratch but certainly not a good reproduction of the OEM item.

You'll see.

-G
Click to expand...

:doah:

Yep. I thought they looked a bit off as soon as I took them out of the box, now I'm having trouble test fitting the driver side.

Problem is, since I'm replacing several pieces that are interdependent, it's anybody's guess on how this stuff is even supposed to fit. There aren't many constants to work with. I'm sure you guys have all gone through this :laugh:
 
loren said:
:doah:

Yep. I thought they looked a bit off as soon as I took them out of the box, now I'm having trouble test fitting the driver side.

Problem is, since I'm replacing several pieces that are interdependent, it's anybody's guess on how this stuff is even supposed to fit. There aren't many constants to work with. I'm sure you guys have all gone through this :laugh:
Click to expand...

My first, and best piece of advice is listen very carefully to Greg72 when he is doling out advice on this. There are maybe four guys on the entire site that know what it takes to fix this as intimately as Greg does. When he says brace it up, your next question should have been "where and how?"

My second piece of advice is to spend a few hours reading his build thread, a lot of the info you need is there in excruciating detail with thousands of pictures.

That is, unless you want to fix it half-assed and end up with frustratingly poor results...:whistle:

It's your truck after all.
 
tRustyK5 said:
My first, and best piece of advice is listen very carefully to Greg72 when he is doling out advice on this. There are maybe four guys on the entire site that know what it takes to fix this as intimately as Greg does. When he says brace it up, your next question should have been "where and how?"
Click to expand...

Confirmed: Greg is correct, and I'm an idiot for not bracing before. I just checked the play by pushing the top of the windshield frame. With no fender, doors, top, and floor, there's a good 1/2" of play at the top of the windshield frame. That play translates directly to the bottom of the A-pillar, and has quite a bit of effect on the floor pan.

Nightmare begins now.

:eek:

Seems the thing to do at this point is put everything back together before cutting any further, figure out bracing, then come back.
 
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