Posted: 3/23/2012 3:28:24 PM EDT
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My '88 F350 has got a pretty bad case of rot in the driver's side rockers & outer portion of the floorboards, the B pillar is rusted through at the bottom, and the passenger side is better but still needs work. I'm not a body man, but I can weld and will give anything a try. I'm picking up another vehicle soon, so I won't be working under any kind of deadline to fix the F350. It's old with a lot of miles on it, but it's been utterly reliable and gets me 18mpg combined highway & city. Including the purchase price, I'm only into it for about $4K over the 2 1/2 years I've had it, and most of that was normal wear & tear shit like brakes, clutch, etc.
Here's what I'm looking at: 
Once I can pull the seats & floormat out I'll have a better idea of exactly how bad it is. On a difficulty scale of 1-10, how would you body gurus rate this? TIA. |
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I think you are going to find it's worse once you strip the interior. What are the cab corners and body mounts like? I'm not a body person but have been around many friends that are. if you can weld it shouldn't be a huge job.. you should be able to get patch panels for that truck. Taking the cab off the frame is going to make it a hell of a lot easier to fix. |
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Yeah, I was thinking of unbolting the cab, taking the doors off and building a framework to support it through the door openings so I have better access for repairs.
The center section of the cab floor actually looks to be in fairly good shape. Obviously that could easily change once I get the floormat out. If finding a rust-free crew cab from the southwest is a possibility I might just give that a shot, or maybe even installing a standard cab or king cab and lengthening the bed. Of course, if I'm gonna do THAT much work I might as well strip it to the bare frame, blast, prime & paint.... |
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I can honestly say you wouldn't catch me driving the thing on public roads. I'm going to suggest retiring that death trap buying a bus ticket to somewhere south of Kentucky and buy a rust free replacement to drive back north in.
Seriously there's no point in even using the seatbelts. If you get in a collision you the seat the seatbelts and everything else in that cab are going to become so much ejecta. As to fixing the truck. You can't weld r rust repair panels to more rust. At some point you're building a cab from patch panels. Which again calls for a replacement from Dixiland |
| That was my first idea, but a night of searching didn't come up with any crew cabs from outside the rust belt. The frame, bed, and fenders are all real solid, surprisingly. I guess parting it out is always an option; I don't NEED the truck. There's always someone looking to ditch their E4OD for a ZF and I could probably get almost what I paid for the truck just from the flatbed w/sides. The engine (7.3l) has about 465K, runs like a champ w/all 8 holes blowing over 400psi, and the nice shiny all-aluminum radiator would probably go quickly too. And I should be able to get a few hundred for scrapping what's left. |
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Quoted:
What about upgrading the front clip and cab to a younger one. If I can find what I need for a good price and without any rust I'd do it in a heartbeat. But if that's the way I went, I might as well strip the frame and restore/rebuild it from the ground up. Of course, then I'd be spending enough money to buy a late 90s/early 00s PowerStroke, but I prefer the old 7.3l over the PSD because it's simple and you can do any repairs it might need on the side of the road with maybe $50 worth of Craftsman tools. |
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Quoted: should be really easy to find a southern cab, front clip. Hell I can buy a Texas box an hour from me! Quoted: What about upgrading the front clip and cab to a younger one. If I can find what I need for a good price and without any rust I'd do it in a heartbeat. But if that's the way I went, I might as well strip the frame and restore/rebuild it from the ground up. Of course, then I'd be spending enough money to buy a late 90s/early 00s PowerStroke, but I prefer the old 7.3l over the PSD because it's simple and you can do any repairs it might need on the side of the road with maybe $50 worth of Craftsman tools.  |
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If you're going to remove the cab you're going to need to brace the door openings (weld in). If you do it on the frame you don't have to, but it is advisable (I didn't and everything worked fine but YMMV). Regardless you're taking the doors off, but before you do here's a trick to line them back up easily. Drill 2 holes through the door mounts into the A pillar. These will serve as guide holes to mount the door again and be able to get it lined up a hell of a lot easier. I also scribed around the door mounts . I'm doing the following on my 66 Chevy, pretty much every panel they have available. Outer floorpans, some inner parts too A pillar B pillar Kick panels Cab corners Front cab supports Rear cab supports Outer rocker panels Do some research before you order panels. I know ones for my truck vary greatly depending on who you get them from. Also expect that the rust will be worse than what you see...infact I guarantee it. While you're at it you will probably want to take a good look at your cab corner and cab supports. If you can see the bottoms of your A pillar and it looks sketchy order that part too. You don't want to start cutting away metal and realize you need to wait for another patch panel. Take a scratch awl and try to poke gto find thin spots. Where the thin spot ends add another 1/2" or so to it and make sure the metal is full thickness/healthy. No sense welding to pitted/thinner metal if you can avoid it. Sometimes you can't, but you make do in those situations. THe last bit of advice I have is only weld in what you need off of the patch panel. Don't use all of it, so if you jack up your cuts you can always get a new panel which is cheaper than a new cab. Your cab is far from toast. It'll be a lot of work, but it's repairable. I probably have 30-40 hours of work on my passenger side and about 10 so far on my drivers side which i just started on. That's not including the final bodywork, paint, ect. |
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On something non classic like your truck op, i say replace the cab instead. The reason I say this is I have yet to see a patch panel job in the rustbelt last more than a few years. The rust always comes back and usually faster than OEM sheetmetal. Some has to do with the final prep before paint, but a lot has to do with the cheap assed metal these panels are made out of as well. |
| What I've been kicking around in my head is to make my own rockers out of 2" x 1/8" square tubing, as long as I can figure out a way to solidly incorporate them into the rest of the cab. The floor patches would be made of 16ga or whatever the OEM panel thickness is. I know what you mean about cheap panels, I've bought quite a few from LMC Truck and they're closer to aluminum foil. But a cab/front end swap is definitely an option, if I can't find a crew cab I'll use a standard cab or super cab and make a storage basket to take up the empty space. |
| I cutout the right floor panel on my ford f250. It was rusted through, looking on the underside it looked rust free. Well I kept blowing through on the weld even with it turned way down and decided to tac it, and then sheet metal screw it down and then use windshield sealant over the welds and seams. It wasn't too terrible hard though. |