Cab Restoration
Several parts were so far gone, as was the metal underneath them (and part of the inner rocker panel) that once the cab supports were out I just kept going and took the rocker panels as well as part of the inner rockers. The key to doing this is to drill out the spot welds. The only real way to do this is smack the middle of them with a punch to put a pilot dent. Then, I used a 7/16 drill bit and drilled 7/8 of the way through the metal and used an air hammer to chisel it apart. Taking the rocker panel off and all this took about 12 hours of work because I am a slow simpleton that always manages to hurt himself int he process (also please remember I have never done this before). Once the rocker was removed, the cab support removed, and the floor cut out where it was rotten, and the rotten piece of the inner rocker cut out, the following image presented itself to me:
After first going home and imbibing in several straight single-malt scotch drinks and asking myself, "what the fuck have I gotten myself info?" I started doing some reading on www.ck5.com (the best chevy truck site in the world - bar none). I found that my situation is not only typical, but actually not THAT bad as many of you will note that the floor is otherwise in good shape. Here are a couple more images of the patch that I have cut out. This first one is looking from the outside into the bottom of the cab:
Ug! This next one is another look at the same area:
Lots of work to go, right? Sure is. This shot was taken from the inside of the cab looking through the hole out up at the ceiling (note the rotten part of the floor over the bracket - this is ugly and took a ton of careful grinding using a cut-off tool to correct - sorry I don't have shots of this mid-job as I was too busy raging, sweating, and swearing profusely):
So that was the first part of the job. Next I turned my tear-filled eyes to the passenger side and the following scene presented itself once the rocker was removed, and the rotten parts taken out. If you are wondering why the rust looks white some of the time in these shots it is because I used Rust Mort to halt the process while I worked on it.
I was unhappy. So I started to make some straight cuts with my air-powered cut-off saw. This next shot was taken mid-job in a rare moment when I took a breather. Notice the rot that hasn't yet been cut out just below where the bottom cut endsr:
Once it was cut out, I cut some metal from 18 guage plate stock that I had purchased for this job. In order to get the size right, I cut a piece of cardboard as close as possible and then proceeded to trim and slice the cardboard until it was a perfect fit with approx 0.0040 " of space around it. Then I took the cardboard template, placed it on the 18 guage steel sheet, and cut it out meticulously using my air-powered cut-off saw.