Hey guys,

Still facing the "dies when warm in 4th gear" problem. Tried many things but kept bumping into electrical unknowns. I decided to replace the wiring. I got a decent dash harness from Jy and pulled original rat's nest out. Had to remove the floor batting to get at harness grommets, and that's when I saw significant daylight through the floorboards. Oh well, get busy.



Got door channels from Rock Auto, and floor pans and cab corners from Mill Supply. Cut out the floors. Drilled out spot welds and air chiseled the door channels out. Cut-off wheel took care of the cab corner.







The inner support gets eaten up a lot, I guess.


First, I fixed holes in and around the door corner. Added a small angle to support the floor on outboard side. Added a patch below and around the factory Z bead roll. Painted it up with weld-through primer.





It was hard to get the current and wire feed speeds correct. Rusty metal, inexperienced operator..



Then, I modified the new door channel to fit my rust. I decided to overlap the new metal on top of the old, rather than to cut perfectly to fit the holes. Less risk of burn through, more support by retaining some of the stamped bends, and less time on trim & fit.

I treated the host metal that would be under the new door channel with Eastwood Fast Etch. Cleaned it up with PRE, and used Rust Encapsulator as primer. I drilled spot weld holes in new metal, and a ground clean spot on the host metal. Then just spot n' seam weld it all in. You can see the penetration from underneath.. Only blew through 1 spot weld hole, & was able to puddle it closed.






Next, the floor pan. Trimmed it, pounded it, bent it, and got it to fit nice. Overlap seams here, too. Screwed up a couple places, trimmed too much from new metal. So, more fun with small scraps to plug the holes. Seam-welded it everywhere I could reach from the cab side.





Next will be a piece of angle to secure to the inner body frame and the bottom edge of the new floor pan. When done, the new pan and channel will be all welded tight at the repair seams from the cab side, but I'll primer and stuff seam sealer in all the overlap seams, and factory gaps. Might also get the passenger cab corner done today.

Oh, and I had a visitor one morning. Wandered through the cab wiring, and on out the door..

 

Nice! You've more dedication than me. I just cut it out and riveted sheet metal in place in the floor with sealer around it...

 

I've got a cab corner to do as well, but I'm going to let some one else do it. I am going to do my own floorboards though. Those will come after I finish the rest of the body work, and get it into primer.

 

The inner rear part of the rear cab corner is hard to fix. But could this be a new patch panel to fix that in the link below? I can't tell.

1980-86 Ford Pickup/Bronco Rear Pillar, LH

 

Hey guys, been a while. Fresh pics. I checked out the link from Dave for rear pillar support. I can't tell if it would fit, either. The upper portion looks like a match to existing curve. But I can't see how the lower part would fit.. In any case, I made my own out of scrap from floor pans.



Overlapped it with existing support pillar, welded it in.


Carefully cut new cab corner to fit what I had removed. Definitely a task where you want to leave the new part larger and gradually trim it down to fit.



My cut was not precise enough for the seam facing the bed. Thus I burnt a couple big holes through when trying to weld it up.


Seam & pinholes clearly visible, and also where I dented the corner clamping to weld with a vice grip. Duh. Not too bad, I could grind weld down a little bit more, and light body filler to cover seam. Overall, I'm happy with it.


I left the welds showing inside door frame, will clean that up during prep for paint.


View of driver's side. I did a better job at fitting the pan and door channel than passenger's side. Used two different pieces of door channel, getting both of them and the floor pan to fit nice took time. Floor pan required significant bending to fit, but having only vice grips, I'm ok with how it turned out. More rust on this side, and so more difficult to control the welds in places. Seam sealer smooshed in everywhere.



Did not have to do the driver's side cab corner, satisfied to wait on that one for now.

For someone considering to do this job themselves, I say go for it. You need a variety of grinding, cutting, finishing and snipping tools. You need basic Mig or other type of welder, and something between novice and intermediate welding skill.

It probably took me 120 hours. Lots of that time was smoking, studying, resting, drinking, etc.. I could probably do it in half that time now, after learning from this effort.

Tools;
Sawzall, used it probably too much. A little goes a long way, fast. Bullet point drill bits came in handy drilling out spot welds, but I'd get a set of spot weld drill bits for next time. I got set of Wiss metal snips, good snips are needed for this work. Plasma cutter desired.

Air chisel was great for separating rusty spot welds and seams. Cheap air shears were useful when trimming new parts to fit, but for more of this work, I'd get better ones. Shears that cut better through the minor angles, bends and rolled beads.

Wide variety of rotary cutting and grinding tools are needed. Everything from Dremel size, to die grinder, up to a 4" angle grinder with cut-off wheel. Small and large flap disks, 36 to 80 grit for cleaning up edges. Stone grinding wheels for taking welds down, sharp edges, etc. Different sizes are needed to fit in corners, angles and places you can't reach with bigger stuff.

Ordinary Mig welder did just fine, the cab and new metal are 18 gage or thinner, not that much juice is needed to melt. Power level around F, wire speed around 4. Had to play with settings as I went along.

Learned one trick;
When using an auto-darkening helmet and crawling under to weld. Tight quarters, helmet doesn't fit nicely in the welding space, or helmet rubbing on something when you move during welding, I urge you to do this: Set your helmet brightness **** to recommended value for whatever amps you're welding. Remove **** from helmet. Place **** on welding cart. Crawl under and weld. We hopefully learn from other's experiences..

Stuff Learned for this job, next time;
Cut rust out in smaller pieces, if able. Make new parts fit as tightly and precisely as possible, with minimal seam gaps. Spend extra time trimming, bending, hammering and fitting the new parts, don't spend it trying to fill in gaps with weld or patches. Realize in advance that you will burn holes, no matter how much you screw around with current and wire speed settings. Don't thrash. Fill BB-sized holes with a couple zorches, then puddle it a little. Bigger than BB-sized, cut a small patch from scrap, drive it in the hole with a punch, and puddle it. Smaller than BB-sized, fill with seam sealer.

My next task would be install the Jy wiring harness and try to fire her up. But the fate of this truck is undecided at this moment. She may go for scrap, or parts, or storage, or free to a good home. I don't know yet. Family stuff is dictating some life changes. I'd like to hang on to her if I could. Lots of hours put in to make a decent truck, lot of things learned in this forum.. But, the future is not decided yet..

Hope this helps someone tackle a floor pan or cab corner job. No extra-ordinary skills are needed, just patience, time and increasing the attention to detail. I'll do even better next time.

 

I need to get working on mine... I'm not looking forward to it.

 

What you have done so far looks very durable. The cab supports looked surprisingly decent in the first set of pics. I just patched up the floor and supports in my '86 a couple of weeks ago. I didn't have all the steel I needed untill I thought about cutting a piece out of a steel drum. Pretty close to the same stuff. When I was welding things back together, there was a lot of adjusting of the controls as the material thickness flucuates as you have said. All in all though, very gratifying work.

Looks like you will end up with a very decent truck! Keep up the good work.

 

Kudos for doing it yourself and good job with the write-up, it should really help others who might be afraid to do the work themselves.


As a professional metal fabricator, I'll add a few pointers for those of you who wish to try this yourself.

First, you don't need a fancy, expensive welder to do the job. You don't want to use a cheap Flux-Core welder either. A quality MIG welder will do the job fine. A TIG welder will produce cleaner welds with less buildup=less grinding. A gas welder is also very good if you know how to use it.

Second, clean the factory metal as good as possible. Dirty/painted/coated metals don't agree with welders and will result in poor penetration. Clean the new metal as good as possible. Welding two clean metals together will make your life easier, both in welding, and in metal finishing before primer.

Third, try not to overlap a patch panel over the existing sheetmetal. This may seem easier to do, but it will trap moisture between the two panels which will cause rust. You're putting in new metal to replace rust, so don't skimp out and do it the easy way or the rust will be back quicker than you know it. Butt weld the seams and you can smooth down the welds and have a seamless surface after metal finishing. Keep the gap between the two panels no larger than 1.5 times the thickness of the welding wire, the tighter gap the better, but no gap at all will result in warped panels since the metal expands with the heat caused by welding. I know some repair panels are made with a stepped edge so that you can overlap the existing metal, but do yourself a favor and cut off that stepped edge and butt weld it. Only overlap panels in the places that are overlapped from the factory. Do your best to clean, clean, clean everything. After welding, treat the surfaces with rust converter, primer, sealer, or paint...anything you can do to prevent moisture from touching the metal.

Fourth, grinding wheels are no-no's. If all you have is an angle grinder, use a flap disc to knock down the weld proud to near smooth. Do not spend too much time in one area or the heat will warp the panels or make the welded seam brittle and prone to crack. Once the weld proud is 'almost there', then be more careful and spend even less time in each area trying to get it smooth with the two panels. Once it's all smooth, you can use a hammer & dolly to smooth out any ripples in the weld seam or HAZ (Heat Affected Zone).

Lastly, Body Filler is not intended to fill holes/major dents, or cover up rust. It is intended to cover minor surface blemishes. I know many of you aren't body men, so your tools wil be limited, but don't let the bad idea that body filler will cover up your shoddy work. Spend a little more time getting the metal looking good and you won't need as much filler to smooth out the imperfections. I know I'd rather see some filler on a car that's covering up a good attempt at a patch repair than see it cover up a big wavy panel or an overlapped seam or worse, holes drilled through the panel to slide-hammer out a dent.

This thread proves you don't have to pay someone fix your vehicle. Some simple tools, and a little time making everything clean and fitting nice can leave you with a rust free vehicle, money in your pocket, and the pride of doing it yourself.

Go watch videos on youtube about metal shaping, rust repair, restorations, etc. There's alot of good information out there. Also check out other forums like MetalMeet and AllMetalShaping where some of the best metal mashers in the world are there to help answer your questions and lend you a hand. Also, if anyone need any tips or has a question, feel free to PM me.