Ok, I'm looking at driving one of these two trucks but both need some body/paint work. This is the problem:

I'm looking at buying a 95 F-150 reg. cab, long bed and it has some cancer spots behind the rear wheel well. I know those have to be cut out and replaced. The part that sucks, it's on a two-tone colored truck (center:grey, top/botton:maroon) so the shop would have to purchase two different colors. Other then that, the rest of the truck is fine.

OR, I can drive another 95 F-150 reg. cab, long bed but it has a few small dents, scratches and on the bed rails, it has leftover buttons from a snap-on tonneau (this was installed before the new "clip on" tonneaus). I was just going to have the entire truck repainted the same color (red). Here the shop would have to pull/fill the dents and remove the buttons then fill the holes. I wasn't going to get into detail about the paint job. Just re-paint the important and noticeable parts.

Which would you thing be cheaper? It seems like a toss up to me but I really haven't been around this kind of stuff a lot. The colors mentioned are the original stock factory colors.

Thanks guys!

 

I know from painting trucks myself that the customers get charged alot more when I have to start cutting out rust and welding in new panels. Its probably the same any paint/body shop. Get the one with a few dings and dents in it over the rusted out one.

 

I agree with jesse. I painted a mustang (which is on my website and I did alot more spots then pictured), and you would be surprised at what you can find once you start grinding rusted areas and worst yet getting into someone elses shoddy repair work like I did. I would charge 15 times as much as I did if I had to do it again and I was begining to think the work would never end. Now on an older vehicle I would only give an estimate once it was stripped. Mig welding up some small holes and fixing little dents and sanding out scratches would be a lot less work then a decent amount of rust repair where you have to cut out a bunch of rust, weld in patches and do bodywork. And if it is rusting out in that spot, other areas might not be far behind. And rust likes to come back. If you just grind and fill holes with fiberglass it will probably be back in 6 months to a year. Even with cutting it out and replacing metal and apply some kind of corrosion protection behind the repair if you can get at the area good, it can still come back but last much longer. Replacing the panel would be the best option There usually are no guarentees on rust repairs if you can even find a shop who will take it.

 

as a vet collision tech,retired I would get a paint less dent guy to first fix all the dents they can, then see if bed caps will cover some more(just hold them up and see).then get the rest repaired and painted.maybe price other ways to cover dents,see if cheaper.rust is like an iceberg,you don't see 90%.If you don't know anyone,maaco can do a good job if you pay extra for good materials.if it's not going to be a show truck,that is.

 

yeah, I'm just going to go with the '96. After I looked over the '95, the cancer spots were worse then they appeared. Thanks for your input!