Well I just finished installing new cab corners on my 77 F150. I did it with 3M Panel Adhesive and I couldn't be more pleased with how they turned out. I decided to use the adhesive method over welding for multiple reasons.
1. no access behind cab corners for hammer-n-dolly work to strighten metal after welding.
2. was able to carefully paint and seam-seal all metal surfaces without fear of catching the paint/seam sealer on fire.
3. No welds to grind
4. panel is as straight at the end of the repair as when I started.

Here is a link to some pictures of the finished cab corners. I still need to skim coat with fiberglass and then epoxy prime the repair before I continue with more body work. The last few pictures show how I am starting to repairing the rusty back lower edge of my cab with some angle iron.

 

wow looks liike you do really nice work.. keep it up!


Ray

 

Hey man that looks really good... I have some questions.

1. How did you clean the engine up so nice?

2. Did you use the high heat engine enamel from Eastwoods for all of the motor parts?

3. How long did all of this take?

4. Did you fab all of the metal or did you buy the panel? If you bought them where.

5. what kind of prep work did you do on the frame before painting? Wire wheel? Sand blast? None?

I'm really impressed, it looks like you do really good work.

 

1. I rebuilt engine, so it was hot tanked, scrubbed with hot soapy water, then wiped down w/ acetone.

2. Cylinder heads, Intake, & Exhaust manifolds were painted with Eastwoods High Temp Silver paint. The block was painted with High Temp Ford Blue paint from local auto parts store.

3. So far 1.5 years working on when I can, but mostly on the weekends.

4. I bought the cab corners off of eBay, but they needed to be modified to fit (see WebShots photos for modifications).

5. The frame was degreased, scraped by hand, and then sandblasted in my driveway. I then primed the entire frame with Eastwood's Rust Encapsulator paint and then top coated with Eastwood's Chassis Black Paint.

Thanks for the compliment. I am hoping to have the truck on the road sometime next summer if all goes well, but you never know.........

 

Nice work Cujo. I enjoyed looking at your gallery. Will be a great truck when you are done.

 

Looking good there. Adhesives sure have come a long way over the years. To do a repair like that using adhesives would have been unheard of, even just a few short years ago.


for having the kuhunas to try something different!

 

Sorry to keep harping but can you explain how you hot tank something? The other question i have is i didn't know you could sandblast in your driveway, where did you get the equipment for that?

Thanks...

 

Great work on your cab corners!!! I enjoyed looking through all of the photos.

Can you use the panel adhesive on weight bearing pieces like cab mounts and floor pans?

Can you use it for overlaps instead of butt welds (hee hee, that term always makes me chuckle)?

Can I use it on body panels close to the engine like inner fender apron?

I don't have a welding outfit and would rather do as much as possible this way.

All answers are appreciated.

 

Most engine machine shops have a large heated tank of engine degreaser that they use to clean the engine blocks etc before they do the required machine work. Some shops also bake the blocks to clean the engines as well.

There are many ways to do sand-blasting outside. All sand-blasting requires an air compressor and the bigger (More CFM) the better. The cheapest type of sand blaster is a siphon blaster and you can blast right out of a bucket with this style, but this is the least effective type of sand blasting equipment.
www.eastwoodco.com/shopping/product/detailmain.jsp?itemID=1303&itemType=PRODUCT

I used a small pressure blaster similar to this one:
www.eastwoodco.com/shopping/product/detailmain.jsp?itemID=5885&itemType=PRODUCT&iMainC at=1310&iSubCat=1311&iProductID=5885

I also wore a disposable Tyvek suit, gloves, respirator, and blast hood and used ~ 12 eighty lb bags of play sand to do my frame and it took a long time to complete. The amount time required is directly proportional to the size of your air compressor. When I did my frame I was using an 60-gallon compressor that delivered 9.7cfm at 90psi and it could not keep up with the blaster and the progress really slows when the air pressure drops. This was one of the major reasons I upgraded my air compressor to an 80-gallon unit that delivers 20cfm @ 90psi.

 

According to the 3M website they say that their panel adhesive is 11 times stronger than welding, so it should work for most repairs, but the directions do give examples where they recommend welding some areas even when you are gluing other areas of the patch. I still had to use my welder for this cab-corner replacement. The after-market cab corners had to be modified and re-welded before I glued them in and I also recreated the spot-welds, where the cab-corner met the door opening. I'm sure you could use this adhesive to repair most panels as long as you took the time to get a good patch panel fit and prepared the surfaces as directed before gluing them in.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>

I glued in a "glue strip" onto the existing metal to simulate a butt-weld on my cab corners and this technique worked great. I would not do serious structural repairs with this adhesive like frames, but it works well for patch panels. Good luck.<o></o>

 

this is just like a corvette they are bonded with glue togeather and very strong


Ray

 

Hey cujo,

How slow was it with a compressor that small? Could you do the frame in 1 day??

 

That was a grueling job sand-blasting my frame in my driveway, but I think it took me approximately a weeks worthy of time with the setup I had. While I was doing it I started to think it would have been good to have someone else do the job, but I already had so much time invested I decided to stick it out. I did not do the frame in seven straight days, but spread it over three weekends. Some of those weekends were 3-day weekends that I took because I new the weather was going to be good. Each time I would work on it, I would move the frame out of the garage using a floor creeper under the front cross member and a floor jack under the rear cross member. When I got it out to the drive way I would lift it up onto four jack stands and start blasting away. At the end of the day I would spend an hour cleaning up the driveway. I swept and picked up all the sand into two large garbage cans and then wheel the frame back into the garage. I would then vacuum the entire driveway to pick up the last bit of sand. Even though I have a much bigger compressor than I had when I did this job, I would think very hard before I would sand-blast another frame in my driveway. Someone who does this sort of thing for a living would be able to do the whole frame in less that two hours for ~ 200-300 dollars. I'm thinking that would be money well spent IMO.