Is Floor panel seam cut stock?
 

All,


I've been working on repairing rust in my doors (1979 Crew cab) and noticed that the coating applied to my cab floor by the previous owner (yeah thanks...) was peeling over a rusting seam. I scrapped back the coating and am a bit worried by what I found.


Can anyone tell me if this floor seam cut is stock. It looks like someone cut the cab and welded the panels really poorly.


Is this in any way a safety issue? Whats the right way to fix this mess? Should I grind and re weld the seam. Or is safe to just remove surface rust, clean the joint, seal it and reapply the coating?

Thanks for the advice! Im a bit worried by this...

Pictures are attached...




http://imageshack.us/a/img441/9742/r...floorseam4.jpg



http://imageshack.us/a/img254/2839/r...floorseam3.jpg


http://imageshack.us/a/img707/7963/r...floorseam2.jpg



http://imageshack.us/a/img5/5646/rearcabfloorseam1.jpg

Looks like a back section was grafted on. It wouldn't hurt to do some welding. Check underneath also.

Agreed.

Grind down all those sorry attempts at welding and re-do..... everywhere you can find where the "grafted section" was done.

Yeah it looks like the cab rear has been replaced , could have been in a wreck with roll over or rust problem in the past. Are there any weld seams in the roof area ?

No that’s whats funny.. The roof and frame are clean without seams. The Two rear doors show impact repairs but its pretty minor.

After I posted I started digging a bit deeper. The coating is very thick on the panels both inside the cab and underneath. It looks like there may be another cut at the rear of the front seat mounts. I'll explore that tonight. It looks most like someone cut and replaced the floor.

The welds on the exposed seam are really bad with no penetration and a lot of piled slag. Its really bad. There is enough gap that Im going to have put patch panels just to bridge to good metal.

Its sucks but I agree the right thing to do is to grind it, patch and cleanly re weld.

Good thing I can do that. ;-)

The seams are pretty spread in some areas and have that black tar sealer in between the panels.

How do I clean out that tar prior to welding? So far the wire wheel doesn’t remove it cleanly?

Its sucks that I didn’t find this prior to painting the outside. I’m going to end up respraying ... I can feel it.

Thanks for the advice so far. If you have more suggestions how to do this cleanly please post up!

Agree it needs some weld improvements but still better than dealing with rust. :-drink

From the pictures, those "seams" look to be lapped...not butt welded. Is that the case?
If so, you can screw some self tappers down and generously "wash" the weld. Or weld (heat) & beat it down.

That tar junk will try to ooze out so keep your wire wheel handy...smells, too.

Whatever you do, DON'T use brake cleaning fluid/spray to clean it up and then weld! Some residuals might be left (not dried completely) and WILL cause you to get seriously killed...if not badly messed up - lungs, dain bramage, etc.

Too bad about the new paint..........