I am almost done doing rust repair on my truck, which I chose to do first, because at least for me and the goals for my build, it seems pointless to do anything else while there are still a bunch of holes rusted through on the body. I also wanted to get it out of the way since it's slow and not very fun, and then I would be able to do the fun parts of the build after that.
Not that my way is the right or wrong way, that's just my thought process that made sense for my build.
Other things you might consider when planning out your build might be:
- Will you be able to or want to use the truck throughout the build process? Depending on where the rust is, you may have to substantially disassemble things to get access to fix it.
- Along those lines, will the truck sit indoors or outdoors while being restored? You may need doors/tailgate/topper/windshield/etc off for decent chunks of time.
- If you do the paint/body work before big mechanical stuff like frame/suspension/axles, you will need to be extremely careful with the new paint. I think I will do paint last on mine for this reason.
- Frame swap may change the body panel alignment, so you may not want to have stuff painted before the frame swap in case you need to grind or weld to fix gaps/alignment.
- You may want to close up wiring/screw/etc holes in the sheet metal before paint, but you may not know what holes you need and don't need before doing a lot of the mechanical or electrical work.
- Tire size and suspension choices may mean trimming fenders, that's probably ideally done before painting if possible.
I hope some of this helps. I don't think there's a universally correct answer here, but more of a correct-for-your-build answer. Good luck!
