Question I'm sure I don't really want answered...

[rgunlock]

Had some bubbles under the paint in the front roof corners of my cab. Sanded back the paint and body filler to find some rust through and signs of a bunch of prior welding. I cut out the obvious bad sections of roof skin and see that there is pretty heavy rust on the inner roof, although I don't see signs of it from inside the cab.

I'm not building this truck to flip, so I don't want to have more rust through within a few years. Not crazy about the idea of replacing the roof either. I've gotten decent results in previous body panel patching, but I'm no pro. The rest of the cab appears to be in good shape. I can see what appear to be good repairs in the floor and cab corners, rockers, etc. all look good although I haven't stripped the paint from them. I don't see any more obvious problems with the roof skin, although there is no telling what else is hiding under the body filler and paint.

Looking for suggestions on saving this roof. Or here's that question, should I be planning to replace the roof?

[Roostre]

When I was replacing my weather sealer on the drip rail, I ran into a bunch of bondo on my roof. I ended up replacing the entire skin because I didn't feel like making patch panels, and it will be tough to make the roof skin smooth in the patch areas. You will probably end up with body filler on it again.

If you are keeping the truck, you may want to take the outer skin off and take care of that surface rust on the inner panel before it starts to rust through, it's a very common thing for these trucks to rust there.

Check out my thread in my signature for what I did.

[rgunlock]

Thanks, I actually read your build thread earlier this afternoon. Dealing with the 89 spot welds sounds like no fun at all, but I'm thinking that is where mine is headed.

Did you just cut all around the skin and forward of the rear seam to remove the roof, and then deal with removing the spotwelds and remaining strips of the roof skin?

I just read landarts 71 K20 Idaho Edition build thread also, where he cut about 3/4" in front of the rear seam and butt welded the new roof skin to that. If you were to do it again, are you happy with how gluing that rear seam went, or would you consider welding in front of the seam like landarts, or perhaps even just welding the new skin to the rear at the seam and eliminating the seam?

[Roostre]

I cut the spot welds out of the drip rails and then cut the roof about 3/4" away from the rear seam. I then cut the spot welds away from the rear seam and removed the 3/4" of roof left. The rear seam is why I decided to glue it on. I would go that way again, with welding the seam shut completely being my second choice. I'm not a good enough body man to weld the sheet metal together in front of the seam and have it turn out smooth. Because I couldn't get to the back side of the panel, I wouldn't be able to straighten it out and would be left with more body filler on the panel.

That being said, because of the aftermarket roof panel, I will have to fill the rear seam with some body filler, but that's easier than filling the middle of the relatively flat panel. And my rear seam had body filler in it, probably from the factory.

The other concern I have with welding patches or seams in the roof panel is that you can't get to the inner side of it to paint the weld. That leaves the weld and burned paint exposed to the air allowing it to rust eventually.

[ItWillBeSlow]

rgunlock - I also recently did a roof skin similar to the method mentioned by roostre. There are some photos in a thread I created on this issue. I considered it time/money well spent - I had 40-50 hours in the whole thing including wirewheeling/sandblasting and epoxy priming the interior panels of the roof.

[rgunlock]

Thank you ItWillBeSlow for pointing out that you have a thread on this. I found it and went through the whole thing, although I still haven't finished with all the linked videos and threads. Your thread is very informative and you got some very good advice in it from folks that have also been very helpful to me.

You mentioned that you were very happy with the fit of the roof skin that you got, but if you ever mentioned where you got it from I missed it. That would be very useful information to add.

Thanks, Rick

[ItWillBeSlow]

Rick,

My panel was manufactured by tri plus. I was lucky to buy it local from a supplier, so I didn’t have to ship. I paid $250 for the panel.