I worked on the right bedside today while Rodney blocked out the tailgate and fixed any high/low areas that showed up.
This is the bedside after working with it for awhile using a porta-power, various hammers/dollies, and a shrinking disc. It's still popping in and out, but it stays out and has the overall shape back. With some more time we'll have it ready to shoot epoxy and skim coat it. Using a straight edge during the metal shaping helps find the major high/low areas. One the overall shape is there, I'll switch to using a long sanding block to find the high/low spots.
The seam at the bed corner and bed side was really badly repaired... they didn't even fix the inner spot welds that had broken loose! The only thing holding the bedside to the corner was the brazing in the seam. Once that was cut through the two panels came apart easily.
This pic doesn't show it well but the two panels weren't flush with each other.
Flange removed, this shows the busted spot welds.
These two show how much the bedside could move.
Straightened and blasted the corner flange. This is test fitting it to check the shape against the bed side.
After reshaping the flange with a shrinker/stretcher.
