[69gmcc10]

I found the cause of the rust on the floor boards inside the cab!!!!

Driving down the road in a rain storm and I start seeing a river of water running down the a-pillars on each side onto the dash and from there redistributed throughout the entire fire wall! Under closer inspection, after the rain storm, the seam sealer has cracked and was letting the water run into the seam at the pillar. Man there is a huge seam at the top corner of the window. What a design flaw, but after 40 years I understand it having a leak or two. I need to fix this now so it doesn’t keep destroying what is left of my truck! This is the perfect opportunity to make my first major cosmetic modification, Shaving the drip rails!

I know allot of people don’t like to shave the drip rails because they say they leak, but ya know what? I already have that problem and it can’t get any worse! Besides with new door seals it shouldn’t leak much or at all, it is one of those things people like but can’t put there finger on and it looks really cool! So here is my process of going about it.

Step 1- do allot of research you can on this forum and others! Some of the info about this is difficult to find, but it is there and it is good!

Step 2-Ask you future brother-in-law, who happens to be a welding instructor and owes you a few favors, to come over and give you a hand with something in the morning. Make sure his schedule is clear for the entire day because this takes a while, 1 very full day or 2 days if pacing your self.

Step 3- Collect welder, cutting wheel, pliers, sanding disk, and wire wheel. We started with the sides of the cab and then the center section. This was logically the easiest way to start and if we ran out of time, which we did, it makes for good stopping points. We began by wire wheeling the seam sealer out, cutting 2” of the rail at a time with the cutting wheel and added a bunch of spot welds to keep it together and strong. Watch out for blowing through the metal around the doors because it is very thin due to all of the compound curves the 18 gauge metal had been put through. We repeated this process slowly so not to warp the metal and if I were to do it again, and I would, cutting 4 inches at a time would save some of the repetition and make it go a little faster, any more than that I would be afraid of misaligning the metal.