Back at it again. Heading in a couple directions right now. From my parts pickup, I have an original SWB fleetside bed that is in decent condition. There seemed to be only minor dents in it that the previous owner attempted to remove before using some body filler.
I used a grinder and chisel to remove the rusted bolts from the rear fender.... What a PIA! I finished the passenger side. After analyzing the inside of the fender, I was a tad nervous with all the rust up in there. After debating on what to do, I decided to split the fender skins to take care of it. I figure it's the best time to do it while I can.
I could only find a few threads on here about it, so I'm guessing it's going to take a bit of time to do it right.
What I did read was it is a TON of spot welds to drill out. I purchased a couple decent spot weld bits and a seam buster tool and got after it! Here is the first night doing the top rail mainly. It definitely takes some time and touch to find all the spot welds.
Here is a picture of the skins split. I did a quick count of about 65 spot welds (plus a couple extra that I thought were spot welds
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Also... Just when you think you have all the spot welds drilled out, there are definitely more lol. I spent an hour trying to find the last couple. They ended up being ones on top of the bed rail. This was the one area I didn't see any of the other threads had mentioned.
You can see they were pretty rusted. I'm going to start cleaning up the rust and either POR 15 it or epoxy prime them (depending on if I can clean all that rust up. Then continue on the other side and hammer/dolly the minor dents.
Getting going on the frame is on the agenda too. Hopefully get it to the sand blaster in the coming weeks so I can start working on it this winter.