K5 Tail pan welds

[73K5BlazerSS]

Hey guys I know this has been discussed in detail many times, although my tail pan is not coming out as easily as some say it does. I've drilled all the spot welds on the floor pan and cut the tail pan so the center section fell out. Now my problem is the corners. I see a bead of weld where the floor pan meets the corner post and another bead down where the bumper would be. It seems as though the sheetmetal inside the tail light is spot welded to the tail pan as well. Can anyone who has done this say this is true or not? Also if it is spot welded... how the hell do I drill those spots out? Or do I just cut out that L shaped tab at the bottom of the corner post inside where the tail light goes?

 

[wazzabie]

Did you figure this out?

 

[73K5BlazerSS]

I jumped over to the engine for now because some parts came in. I thought about it and it seems obvious that the L shaped tabs in the corner posts in the 1st pic get cut out with the tail pan. They sit on top of the floor which then sits on the tail pan. I will try and make small L shaped tabs to reconstruct the bottom of the corner post instead of just welding what is left after cutting. Overall not as easy of a job as I was thinking.

 

[73K5BlazerSS]

I finally got the tail pan corners out. Now what do you guys do to clean up inside the tail light pockets and hard to reach spots? Sandpaper on a stick ? Tell me there's an easier way !

 

[oakknight]

just tackled this myself with a buddy over a long weekend. What we did was cut the tailgate support back up to good metal. Carefully cut out the bottom of the taillight bucket. sectioned in a new patch for said tail light bucket. Replaced the damaged tail pan. Then skinned over the tailgate post( replacement wraps over existing.).

 

[Blue85]

I did the same thing and sectioned that part together. To put everything in whole requires the bedsides to come off, really.

https://ck5.com/forums/threads/repa...ailpan-and-floor-patching.333499/post-3882950