Barrman
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I forgot I have a video showing what I did:
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Gotta love when that happens!Thanks, Tim. Turns out that a lot of what I thought was flaky rust was actually just dirt and crud crusted over the top and rust coloured. Doh!
Cheers
Gee, thanks Tim!!That mad driller really does resemble you Rory.
.Again, for a variety of reasons, this project stalled for a while, but we've been back at it for a few weeks.
Remember the VFD Mad Driller? Well, his rapacious handiwork in the bed had to be addressed with the welder, particularly the holes in the wheel wells which would allow loads of dirty water in if the truck gets driven in the rain.
Courtney is way better with the welder than I am, her welds don't look like chewed bubblegum! Over a couple of days, a bunch of the 47 holes disappeared, replaced with nice smooth metal.
Once that was done, the entire bed interior was attended to with nylon brushes in the grinder, which work better than wire brushes, surprisingly enough, and don't shoot little wire missiles into your skin while you work.
As the good areas appeared, they were hosed with rust converter and primer, and eventually the whole bed was black inside. The metal looks pretty good now, and what pitting remains will be invisible once the 383-green coloured bed liner gets sprayed in there. But the liner has to wait until all the paint is well cured, so still a couple or so weeks away.
While we were at that, we went after the writing scratched into the paint on the cab roof. We never were able to determine what "Jay is a", referred to as the rest was unreadable! It shall likely forever remain a mystery.
I've been told before "Don't poke rust bubbles, because of what you might find underneath them". However that is precisely why I do poke them.
There was a rather large one on the back right upper bed rail, and when poked, it collapsed inward. Not a good sign.
Looking in through the stake pocket, it was easy to see that the back side was rather swollen too, looked bad. The only viable course of action, of course, was to take a cutting wheel to it.
This revealed some really ugly rust between two layers of metal. It looks like the two layers were not sealed at the top and allowed water to get in. We think this may have frozen in winter and pushed the metal further apart, which let in more water, which rusted and pushed things further apart, which......(on and on).
Examination of the back left showed the same problem there. Best solution - cut it all out and replace it with new metal, so we did. And made sure there were no open areas between the metals so that problem shouldn't arise again in the future.
Cheers
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