Well, I finally got the DaddyJeep Hauler back into the shop so I could make a little progress. It is officially no longer a dually. Those dually fenders were quite the pain to remove. I had to cut away some sheet metal so I had a little more room to get my hands between the inner and outer bed sides. All of the bolts were good and rusty and a few on each side required cutting. After about 3 hours per side I was left with this. Pretty nice huh?
Once here I did a bunch of measuring and got the new panels centered up over the axle and screwed them in place with a couple sheet metal screws for the time being.
I am really happy with how the new wheels fit with the Dana 70. They stick out just a bit. The wheels are 18 x 9 with about 6" of backspacing.
Now that everything was mocked up it was time to start dealing with the rust above the new panels. Remember those 14" pieces I cut out of the bed earlier?It is time to put some of that steel back on the truck. Since I am only dealing with the area above the body line and below the bed rail I started by cutting it into 3 pieces.
I took a piece and cut it to make a patch for the biggest spot. I aligned it to the body line and tacked it in place.
Then I cut along the edge with a .040" cut off wheel through the rusty bed side, removed the rusty steel, and held the new steel in place with Harbor Freight panel clamps.
Then the tack welds start. A couple hundred tacks and we have one piece of steel again.
A little time with a flap disk and the welds are mostly gone. I spent some time with the hammer and dolly. That is certainly a skill I am building, but I did move some metal the way I wanted.
While I had that piece cut out I wire brushed as much of the inner panel as I could and hit it with some paint. I will continue to do that for the rest of the rust spots as I cut them out. There is a long ways to go, but at least I am moving forward again.