Obviously most of the work was needed on the cab. No surprises but mainly my floor board was pretty rusted on both the driver's and passenger side.
The inner cowl panel on the driver's side and the passenger side, both of the inner to outer curved pieces, were also rusted thru.
Since I was a stainless steel TIG welder that manufactured galley/kitchen equipment in a former life, replacing and welding sheet metal on a truck came pretty easy.
I removed the spot welds from the seat base at the front and cut it off at the radius on each side. This would allow me to put my joint for the replacement floorboards under the flange and hide it completely once I put it back together.
My first picture shows the seat base already reinstalled on the new floorboard. But you can see my weld on the top flange where I made my cut thru it. In the same picture, you can see the passenger side inner cowl panel reinstalled. As a matter of interest, I decided instead of trying to plug weld the inside door gasket channel back onto the cowl panel, I reinstalled it with 1/8 csk head pop rivets on both sides. There is really no strain on it so this worked quite nicely.
The second picture shows I had to replace more of the floor up into the firewall on the passenger side only. At this point I also welded in a plug where the foot starter hole was. The truck did not have any of those parts and the previous owner had installed a conventional key start which I intended to go back to an original key. Then I tackled the driver side inner, outer and middle cowl panels, virtually this whole corner. I used my truck assembly manual to verify the door opening dimensions and checked it against the passenger side.
When I got the truck, I believe someone had backed up with the door open and hit something as the bottom of the door and frame was pushed to the front of the truck. It is amazing what some Bondo can cover up.
The rocker panel door frame around the hinge area was good, just a little beating and banging to get that door frame where it was supposed to be.
The third picture shows all these parts removed. I did not worry about any rust inside of these parts since my intent was to have the whole cab dipped to kill the rust and EDP coated after to protect these type areas.
The 4th picture shows this area back together, welded and ground down.
Another thing I did to maintain the original look is, after grinding the plug welds down flush, I took about a 1/4 punch and dinged the spot to make it look like the spot welds were originally there. It's just me!!
You can see by the 5th picture showing the back that a previous owner had been in there and added primer paint to the back behind the gas tank.
The 6th picture is a nice angle frame stand that I put together and added wheels to roll around my shop. I added a leftover piece of aluminum sheet metal to the bottom to set junk/tools on. With both rocker panels resting on each board, I knew nothing was going to move vertically and I could still get under to weld or cut parts out.
The last bit of tedious welding required was the radio opening. Again a previous owner butchered the opening to put a radio in but I knew my plan was to have an original radio when completed. So I needed to fix it also and that is the last picture.
