I initially eliminated media blasting of my body panels as an option mainly due to cost but also because I wanted to do as much on this truck as I possibly can. I started on the truck bed because I thought it would be easiest and I could start to hone my body working skills on flat panels.
So far I have only 1 bedside completely stripped and I am fairly pleased with my dent removal efforts. The dilemma comes from the rust I found under the bent and partially detached angle strip. The bed side has numerous areas of rust pits. The pits are smaller than the head of a pin and the deepest ones might penetrate halfway thru the bedside. All of the pits are separated by at least some full thickness metal. Overall, I would estimate more than 80% of the metal that will be under the angle strip is solid full thickness metal.
I will be attaching the angle strips by welding thru numerous holes I drilled to remove the old strip and attach the new. I originally planned to just treat the area with phosphoric acid before welding in the angle strip. Looking at the pits, I thought perhaps treating the area under the angle strips with a rust encapsulator product would help but I do not know how that would affect welding the holes. The outside of the bed side would be clean and the angle strip would be clean but the rust encapsulator on the underside of the bedside would have to burn off at least slightly. Not sure what that would do to the weld.
The better option would be media blasting. The problem with that for me is it would put everything on hold since there is no money for that for a while. I am hoping to hear from someone else who faced this issue and how you dealt with it.
Chuck
