Budget Shortbed: welding, grinding, rust oh my

[Onry69CST]

I was never much of a shortbed guy, but I have had a change of heart.This old shortbed needs some love. Sitting under a pine tree for years with no windshield, and no doors has not been kind. This is the poster child vehicle for goodmark repair panels.Luckily I thoroughly enjoy this type of work, and I'm very happy to be working on something I'm not restoring, just fixing and daily driving.

Initially I thought I could get it driving reliably for under 2k, including purchase price. Since I started doing the floor, and what seems like every thing from the rockers down, I'm going to be over that by a little bit. Other than that, my plan is to daily drive it as is for a long time.

What it needs:
Inner roof, floors, kick panels, door pillar repairs, cab braces, rockers, cab corners, windshield, doors, engine, trans, brakes, and a seat.

Luckily! I saved a whole cab for $100 just before I found this shortbed. I'll be able to swap many parts, including the windshield, door stuff, seat, seatbelts...lots of other stuff. Most importantly the roof was in great shape. Unfortunately he mangled it by moving it with forks, same with the doors, but they were garbage anyway. So I was forced to cut out just the part I needed out of the roof.

It looks tiny next to my k20

[Onry69CST]

I read on here about panel bonding in the rear pinch seam and thought that was a great idea. So i glued in the short end sections with flanges and tacked it in to cure. After a considerable amount of spot weld drilling, fitting and trimming of course.

I chose to cut on the radius edge you see because it was a good guide, to judge where to cut each panel. It worked out allright. I will say that the OE edge fittment along the windshield and door top was stunningly spot on. I wish the Taiwan garbage patch panels were half as close. Hats off to the guys back in the stamping plants.

Also, yes that is daylight coming through most of the upper roof to seam. The flange had somehow lifted up over time. I knocked it back down and welded it as needed.

After about 9 hours of overhead grinding I can ajust the rear view without pulling down the whole roof.

[Barnfind46]

That is nice work. Until someone does this they don't realize how much work it is.I used to do restorations and rust repair is work.

[Onry69CST]

Thank you, it is quite a bit of work and the outcome allways makes it worth it.

I found a decent set of non matched doors from Texas, after looking for a reasonably priced pair for months. They will need some work for sure, but they're solid.

In preparation for reconstructing the drivers floor, I rebuilt the door hinges and mounted the drivers door to take reference measurements. After the frame was on stands, I measured to the bottom of the door to the floor. I'll subtract the panel gap from this and make it my measurement to the rocker panel reveal when I get that far.

I removed the door and took a few more reference measurements to the lower A pillar, since I'm expecting it to move when the floor is cut out and its dangling in space. I took a lateral measurement from a point on the pass side across the cab, a height measurement to the door bolts, and lengthwise from the b pillar to a pillar. This roughly covers x,y and z axis.

[Onry69CST]

I've got a few more days of work into it. After chopping the floor out, I found a section that needed a panel made before I could start fitting the floor. I made the little profile gage in the last picture to make sure it was correct before welding.

[Onry69CST]

Next I tackled the A pillar bottom. I made a jig that bolted to the lower door bolts, with wood blocks that matched the mounting faces for the fender and cab support holes. I marked the hole centers on this as well. After trimming my new panel, I bolted it to my jig, lining up the hole centers, and welded it in.

Notice, it looked like I marked it to sneak up on a good fit as usual, but since the new panel is so far off it was a very poor fit for welding. Not a big deal here. Thankfully my jig positioned it perfectly, otherwise one would assume to just position it with a 1/16th gap and weld it up. I forgot to take a picture of it finished, but it turned out just fine.

[Onry69CST]

Then I decided I would fit the floorpan. This repop panel leaves much to the imagination, it has the dozen or so features that make it look similar, but theyre all off. And not consistently off, some features are too far left, others are too far right...etc. Using the closest features to fit the panel in the floor, I trimmed it 400 times, worked in the front flange in, and re-arranged the transmission hump section to fit. When I am ready to weld it I will have to cut out the body bolt recess and move it about an inch, as well as dimple the panel better. I will also have to make it meet the inner rocker, more on that later.

[Husker]

Nice work.
Ron

[Onry69CST]

Along with fitting the floor, the floor brace had to be modified as well. There is no right or left front cab brace difference when I ordered parts, but they are different side to side. The main cab support that the brace mounts to runs at a slight angle, not perpindicular to the brace. Mine was made to mount perpindicular to the brace, so I annealed the brace flanges, unbent them, then rebent them to match the intersecting angle.

The brace was also a 1/2 inch too short to make the span from the cab support to A pillar. A full half inch. So I cut it in half, and welded a 1/2 inch filler. When doing so I placed a peice of sheetmetal between the brace and A pillar mount, which will give me the clearance needed to tuck the inner rocker between the two. I clamped it into position on both sides, and made it one peice again. I'll have to get pictures of that finished also.

So this leaves the brace and floor ready to match up to the inner rocker and all go in at one time. But before the inner rocker, the lower B pillar, cab corner, and rear brace must be done.

[72 tigger]

Very impressive

[toolboxchev]

Had I started a cab repair years ago I would have been cussing and swearing non stop.

Seeing your work makes a believer in myself, nothing is perfect in this world.

[tristan]

You have great skills. Most people would have walked on by that cab.

[Onry69CST]

Thanks for the kind words everyone. I'm hoping that this will help others thinking about tackling a similar project. I started messing around with this stuff about 16 years ago with my first car, a 72 Pontiac, and have allways enjoyed the challenge and outcome.

[KMC3420]

Great job, as everyone has stated. Keep the pictures coming as we can all use the motivation. You did an awesome job on that sun visor patch area.

[Onry69CST]

I figured it would be best to fit the inner rocker first, and then use that as a reference to place the rear cab brace. Before I cut the lower B pillar and cab corner out to start this, I took some more measurements from the frame to the inner rocker. I also propped a framing square up to make sure I had the correct plane of the inner rocker at the B pillar. This worked quite well. The rocker fit up pretty good eventually, but still required moving the front and rear flanges, and knocking the a piller area around a bit.

[Onry69CST]

I moved on to cutting out the rear cab support. After I could see inside of it, I realized it was much worse than expected. I didn't want to open a bag of worms replacing the entire thing, so I cut out all the bad stuff, then trimmed the patch panel to match. This took a painstakingly amount of time, two or three nights worth, it was somewhat frustrating taking that much time on it but I still think it was the best path. I welded it in and am leaving the welds partially finished for a few reasons; time, difficulty, grinding the welds down will reduce some strength on an already thinned area, no one cares about the bottom of the cab but me, and it's going to be a daily driver anyway.

[davischevy]

Subscribed

[Onry69CST]

Almost forgot about the front kick panel. Nothing too exciting, just trimmed it to fit and beat it up some to fallow the A piller contour with the inner rocker.

It's all mocked up now. I've marked where I want to drill for my plug welds on everything when I break it down for the last time. I'll put the kick panel, inner rocker, and front cab support in at the same time. Then I'll re-trim the floor pan for the inner rocker and work on the front cab support parts along with that. I'm also going to cut out the marked up floor toward the rear, but I want to keep the edge for reference now since I have to make that patch.

[71CHEVYSHORTBED402]

Nice you're able to do that kind of work. It really does look small to the K20. "Little" sport truck.

[Boog]

Onry, I admire your work. You have WAY more patience than me.

[03BlkZ]

Where are you buying your metal repair parts? I am read a lot of bad reviews out there

[Onry69CST]

Thanks Boog, I appreciate it!

03BlkZ - I ordered these from Summit Racing. I ordered all Goodmark brand, but many look to be re-branded, and from Taiwan. I get them from Summit because I am a few miles from the headquarters and get shipping for free.

Doing my k20, I bought inner and outer rockers from a truck magazine that were bad. I sent them back and bought Goodmark and I was much happier with them.

The quality of any of these stamped panels is 100% dependent on the die set that make them, provided the engineering design is good to start with - and dies are expensive. With profit margins these days everything is cost sensitive, and cheap dies are just that. If the dies aren't cheap, they still require a decent level of maintenance, mostly when an operator does something wrong and wrecks the die. Then it's repaired, and maybe they paid to have it inspected afterwords, or maybe not.

I guess the companies have come to accept negative feedback, with the expectation that there is some assembly required.

[HO455]

Originally Posted by Onry69CST

I trimmed it 400 times, worked in the front flange in, and re-arranged the transmission hump section to fit. When I am ready to weld it I will have to cut out the body bolt recess and move it about an inch,.

I thought I was the only one who did it that way. Lets see 400 trim and fit ups at 12 minutes each and people wonder why my projects take so long.
Thanks,

Great work sir!

[RedRider]

Excellent work done here. Quality cabs are only getting harder to find, which means people will be going greater lengths to fix them. Looking forward to seeing this project through.

[BigBlockBurris]

Completely amazing work.
Thank you very much for taking the time to share your talent with the rest of us.

Would you please explain what your welding and grinding process is on this thin sheetmetal? When you are done, it looks like very little filler will be needed.

Thank you again for your time and for documenting this process for the rest of us!

BBB