Ive had my SD for about 6 1/2-7 years. Its been a great truck, but showing some wear. I only have 115k on it, but heres the list to fix.
Rear cab corners-rusted through
Lower inside of doors-shot
Bed just starting around a fender, but the supports are gone. Never had a bedliner and the bedfloor is bordering dangerous to stand on. I can see through in spots.
Got rearended and bent the back bumper a bit, but not really a huge deal.
Could use some ball joints.
Needs brakes
Sparkplugs, exhaust gaskets and studs
Pretty much need to rebuild the exhaust.

Ive been meaning to get to work on it when the weather breaks, but just haven't. Recently my wife said how much is a new f150, lets just figure it out and go buy one, the van is almost paid off. Well as nice as a new truck sounds, I cant stand the idea of a payment again, as Ive owned mine for a few years.

On the plus side, only 115k miles!
Rebuilt trans 3 years ago (a bearing shelled out and took out the rest of the forward gears, oh well)
New tires last year, nice 10 ply a/t's
Beast truck, plenty of room, does more than I want it to do, and did I mention I own it, not a bank?

I always work on my own stuff, including body work, engine swaps, whatever. Seems to me with some work and 6 months worth of new truck payments, my truck would be good as new. Plus I like my truck.

Besides the mechanical stuff, Ivebeen looking at beds. This time I want to spray in a liner, and do a roll on bedliner all over the underside to prevent rusting from underneath.

What would you consider a good price for a 99-09,10 short bed?

I found a guy selling an 09, even the right color. Very little surface rust underneath in the tubs, spray in liner, bed cover, the 09 tailgate with step, bumper, taillights for $1500.

Seems like it should be a decent deal, but I wanted to check here.

Where have you found are the best places to buy your sheetmetal? Cab corners, rear rockers, lower inside door skins?

Looks like I can grab them for 50-60ish per piece. Price seem about right?

I know I need to grind/drill out the spot welds, remove the parts, cleanup any extra remaining surface rust, paint the areas to be enclosed, fit new parts, weld new parts, smile at nice new truck. Sound about right?

I just wanted to get some thoughts out, check a couple things, and get some opinions.
Think I'm going the right direction? See any major flaws to the truck fix plan? It might be a little delayed, but I can update this as I complete projects.

Thanks for reading, and any comments welcome!

Brian

 

I see people have read this but surprised I haven't at least gotten an criticism!

Anyway, I stopped at a junk yard today, excuse me- auto recycler, to price beds. 2900! You've got to be kidding me! It was nice but thats a joke!

I mentioned the $1600 one, but the I found one made into a trailer for 1k. Went to look at it and its exactly the same as my truck down to the stickers! Got it for 600 bucks! Not as perfect-some minor small dents and the bed supports are rusty, but the rest is good to go. Very pleased with it, and easy to transport!

Ill get some pics to put up, if anyone is interested.

I plan to put a bedliner inside, fix the rails underneath with some real gauge metal (not that factory tinfoil) and coat EVERYTHING thats not painted body color.

Swap the beds and resell the trailer. Itsmade from a F150 frame.

After that on to the cab corners...

 

I've got a 99 sc v10 4x4, manual - it's a great truck! About 150k miles, still going strong! Drove it new for a company until 04 when they replaced it with the same in an 04, so I bought the 99 from them. Drove the 04 for them until it was replaced by a 2012, so I bought the 04 from them. The 04 had about 185k on it last year when some Bozo totaled it while it was parked. That was last fall, and the insurance company gave me over $10000 for it!
In construction, they get beat up, but the mechanicals, and that v10 hold up really well. If I was you, I'd fix your rig, and stick with it.
One weakness I've read about, is blowing out spark plugs, a weakness on certain years. But I tend to not high rev the engine, so I'm hoping to avoid that issue.
The bottoms of the doors do rust, but they still do the job! The rear pumpkin cover rusted thru, but a replacement was cheap. The input shaft bearings on the trans on the 04 fell apart, similar to yours, that cost a few too many bucks to rebuild, but otherwise these trucks have been pretty cheap to keep working.
I've found the SDs hold their value much better than the 150s, especially the 4x4s.
Good luck with yours!

 

[QUOTE=Oldchap;15085925
One weakness I've read about, is blowing out spark plugs, a weakness on certain years. But I tend to not high rev the engine, so I'm hoping to avoid that issue.


It won't help not high reving......I babied my '99 and it still spit a plug.....most likely it's when not if you'll eject a plug......but OP is mechanical so it shouldn't be a issue......however it sounds like a lot of work might be better off buying a rust free AZ truck

 

No advice to give but I'm very interested in following this build. Good luck to you! I will be pulling the bed off my truck and doing the rail supports this year as well, I can't believe how easily the rot off.

 

We have super duty beds around here , from 350-700 .
Look for parts from the west, and have them shipped.
It is not as expensive as you may think to ship a clean bed .

 

[QUOTE=CuNmUdF250;15086013][QUOTE=Oldchap;15085925
One weakness I've read about, is blowing out spark plugs, a weakness on certain years. But I tend to not high rev the engine, so I'm hoping to avoid that issue.


It won't help not high reving......I babied my '99 and it still spit a plug.....most likely it's when not if you'll eject a plug......but OP is mechanical so it shouldn't be a issue......however it sounds like a lot of work might be better off buying a rust free AZ truck [/QUOTE]

Sorry to hear about your '99, I guess it can happen to any of us. But, well, I grew up working a farm as a kid, and those tractors have governors to keep the engine in the manufacture's spec'd range. Then I put a couple hundred thousand on a Kenworth semi, and it was governed to max out at 2100 rpm, so I got used to shifting before the engine got above that. One thing I've always felt was that engine wear occurs exponentially greater at higher RPMs, so I tend to keep 'em down.The V-10 has plenty enough low end power to pretty much keep it below that same number, and I do.

You may be right, I may blow a plug or two anyway, but so far I've been lucky! I suppose the right kind of engineer could calculate the pressure in a cylinder at different RPMs and under different working load conditions, but that's not me!

Regarding the original poster's situation - just last week, here at work, where we used to always replace our trucks (construction company) about every 5-6 years, one of our pickups (an '08 F-150) get sent in for brakes. Repair guy found a bunch of other things in the front end needing work, plus a couple of tires, totaling about $2500. It has about 100,000 miles on it, and in the past we would have replaced it with a new similar truck, but with the price of trucks having gone up so much in the last 10 years, we were looking at about $25k for a stripped F-150 2014 work truck! Sure, there's a few rebates, but in the city, taxes pretty much equal out rebates. So we made the decision to spend 2,500 instead of 25,000! We're thinking we can get another 50 to 100k miles out of it.