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Old 12-23-2007, 07:06 PM   #18
Rokcrln
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Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Winters Ca. 95694
Posts: 4,843
Re: Rocker replacement 101

I had a few hours this morning to finish up the rocker replacement and even had time to fit the fender to it all. I was in a hurry so the pics are not the best but they will do fine. I had to raise up the rear of teh rocker a bit to even up the door gap but did not want to have the rocker and the cab corner not aligned. So what I did was raised the rocker about 1/8" or so and this made teh door look right even know it was still off about 1/8". This look fine now and you can not really tell their is any differance but if I had left it you would have seen a 1/4" gap differance in the bottom of the door or if I had raised it a full 1/4" to be perfectly even with the door then the rocker and cab corner would have been off by that 1/4". I feel this was the best solution. So now it was time to weld it all inplace. I just plug welded it thru the 5/16" holes I drill before. Then a quick hit with the grinder and it is as good as new.

Then with the door adjusted and the body lines all looking good I mounted the front fender. Now I had a problem! The bottom of the fender was out almost 1/2" from the door and rocker. So the first thing I checked was to make sure it had full conect with the fender mounting cup (bottom fender mount) and it did not. Turns out the new A pillar bottom was a bit to long and bound up on the fender bottom. So I trimmed that off and it helped but only by a 1/4" so the next place I looked was the fender it self. The fender brace is spot welded to the fender and looking at it I saw and extra 3/16" of space between the fender and the back side of the brace. So I poped it apart, slid it back and welded it back up.
This truck always had real bad door gaps and panel alignment. So bad my wife even made fun of it so you know it was bad. It has panels and doors off several different trucks and non of it worked real well but I keeped telling my self for the price I can't complain right! I am not trying to get it perfect but good enough that she won't be able to find anything to laugh at, truck wise that is

Kevin
LFD Inc.
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Last edited by Rokcrln; 12-24-2007 at 06:51 PM.
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