The bed floor:
I've watch other people do this and have dreaded the job myself, but it loomed over my head. I started this project thinking the bed was fine and I just needed to replace the tailpan and trailing edge of the bed. Once I started to poke around I found there was no other way than to remove the entire bed floor to fix it. I found hidden rust in all the mounting flanges and surface rust under the bed that couldn't be ignored. This was the final big piece of metal work required and it took almost a full month of working on it everyday. I ran into several problems with replacement panels that I'll try to mention here as clear as I can.
Breaking it down...
As you know, the front half of the bed floor changed in '78 to have the step down so rear seat passengers would have a better sitting area. It would be awesome if the aftermarket sheetmetal companies like LMC and Auto Metal Direct didn't advertise the front floor section as being the same from 73-91. Anyway, I couldn't find the replacement, so I needed to figure out a way to save the front half of the floor which required drilling out a million spot welds that attach the cross sill supports. The Blair spot weld cutter makes it a bit easier.
AMD 717-4073 to replace existing cross sills.
close enough...I guess
In order to determine how much of the bed floor I needed to save I needed the replacement rear floor. I ordered AMD 791-4373L and R through JEGS. Free shipping on such a big piece was remarkable! The fit and everything on these pieces were really good compared to most Taiwanese replacement panels. I had to do minimal beating to make these fit. I also can't say enough about how good my experience was with AMD packaging the shipment to avoid damage in transit.
AMD 791-4373 left and right.
Comparing new rear floor gave me a place to cut front half of old floor out.
Saving the old front half.
Eastwood PRE and rust encapsulator.
Eastwood rubberized undercoating.
Bed rear pillar posts next...
My existing pillars were mostly ok except for the very bottom. I ordered Goodmark GMK-4144-828-73 left and right. These sucked pretty bad and I had to return them to Summit. I ended up building my own replacement pieces from scratch.
Left side
While the floor was out I decided it'd be a good time to replace the fuel tank, sending unit, tank straps, hard lines, soft lines, re-do the wiring harness, and POR15 the frame, and fuel tank skid plate.
Got sick of doing what I was doing so I threw this away
...and built this
Floor sort of in...
New rubber body mounts from LMC are looking like I'll get a bit of body lift.
I'd also like to LMC source a better mounting bolt for this kit. I'd be glad to pay the extra $2.
Kit also requires you to re-use these two pieces, which I thought was a bit lame. Luckily mine were ok, but if these are rusted out you'd be SOL.
Floor looking a little better now
...and a rad new order of made in USA hardware from Fastenal
I think that pretty much does it for rust repair and metal work. Body work and paint coming next.