BED SIDE WHEEL ARCH REPAIR

hey guys today in the shop we're going to be doing bedsides on the shop truck and uh this happens to be a ford super duty but this will work on ford chevy dodge full size half ton whatever you got it's just sheet metal work and um for this we're gonna be using the dorman patch panels so dorman has a few patch panels for a number of different makes and models i'll put a link below to their website so you can kind of check out see if they have something for yours but really any patch panels will work i just like the dormant ones because they're a little thicker and a little heavier and they fit pretty good but full disclosure on this i am not a body guy this is just in my experience what i found is the best way for me to do it and i think a lot of you diy guys are gonna find that this is probably the easiest way and uh it's gonna lend to the best success for you um if you are a body guy and you see that i'm doing something wrong feel free to leave a comment below and i'd i'd love to learn i'm always up learning i'm more of an engine guy myself but project truck lends itself to needing other stuff besides just the engine and stuff so um here we are and hopefully you guys learned something from it so i'm just gonna jump right into it and uh hope you guys enjoy let me know and we'll go from there [Music] [Music] all right so like i said i like to use these uh dom and patch panels i think that they're um they're pretty good quality they're a lot thicker than even the factory metal which kind of gives you a lot of forgiveness but um i don't like to use the whole piece so what i kind of learned from some friends and just kind of being around a little bit is you want to do the least amount of bodywork possible and cut out the least amount of the factory metal as you possibly can so basically finding where the rot stops and cutting just a little bit past that obviously you want to make sure you get into completely fresh metal but if you do this whole patch panel it's going to end up way up here at the top and it's going to end up all the way over here on the side over near the gas door and same thing in the back and to me that's just way too much area to cover way too many chances for you know failure and it also starts to get closer to this body line where it can be a little bit tough to make the bodywork match where this body line starts and you can start to really see the waves so i like to kind of plan out take your time mark the body where you want to cut it get a good idea and then cut the patch panel down to size don't do any cutting on the body until you get the patch panel down to size and i'll show you in a few minutes why we're going to do it that way start by marking out a rough area on the bed make sure you check the inside lip for rust sometimes it can go farther than what shows on the outside transfer your lines onto the patch panel don't be afraid to go a little bigger you can always cut the excess off after but once you cut it off you can't put it back all right so now that you get your patch piece cut out what you do is i usually take a different color sharpie or different color paint pen or whatever and rest that piece of metal right on and make sure it fits up good make sure it's exactly where you want it to be and because this is this is gonna be a final mark this is gonna be where the cut is made so if you have to move it around a little bit make sure everything fits nice don't be afraid of that just kind of take your time this is where you really really want to make sure that you're taking your time and you're marking things checking it because once you cut this body that is it there's no going back from there so fit it on nice mark it up with the sharpie all the way around down to the bottom of the lip that's going to be very important that you cut that lip properly all right and there you go and that's going to be your cut line so once again take your time nice straight lines follow this as best as you can this is where there's going to be a little bit of controversy some people will say they like to go in a little bit from the line and then overlap the panels but to me unless you have a step tool which even sometimes the step tools don't work too great what will happen is it makes a lot more body work for yourself because it's going to bump out the panel and you're going to have to do more welding more grinding more finish work where if you butt them in my opinion it's a little bit less finished work and i think you're going to have a little better result aside from that if you do the step unless you go in and seal that from the back side really good it's going to be a little spot that you're going to be able to get moisture in and once that moisture gets in behind the step in this panel once again it's not going to be very long until this thing rots out so in my opinion i think butt welding it going nice and slow making sure you have a really good fit up is going to be your best chance of success [Music] so once you get that opened up on these fords you'll see that they have this inner fender and this is actually one of the leading causes of these things rotting out the bedsides at least one of them is the fender filets that people put on that hold salt and all that kind of stuff and they wear away at the paint and you can actually see this one does have some marks from the fender flares but this inner fender has a piece of foam that goes between the outside of the bed and the inner fender itself and that foam just holds salt and moisture and everything and it just once it starts corroding that's it it just keeps going from there so some people will replace these they'll put the phone back in they'll do the whole thing i mean to me if i had a newer truck that was in great shape and i just had one spot that i was fixing i would definitely try to fix this this project truck you guys know what i'm doing with it i'm gonna be racing it and be drifting it i'm not even gonna do anything with this inner fender except cut out the rust that's in there and i'm just gonna leave it um it does kind of support the bedside a little bit but the biggest thing that supports the bedside is these bottom little struts here so as long as you get these these bottom struts in place that go from the bed rail to the the bedside you should be good but i'm just going to go ahead and cut this rod right out of this inner fender and i'm just going to leave it from there and then i'll show you guys what my next step is all right so after that piece is out of your way the next step is going to be final fit up of the patch panel so this is another step we want to really make sure you're taking your time make sure it fits good because the smaller the gaps the better the weld is going to be the better the fit and you're going to have less chance of burn through when you're welding and it's also going to be much much less body work so this is like i said you can leave a little extra material and then inch away up to it or i should say millimeter your way up to it you really don't want to take a lot off at a time and eventually you'll get this thing to fit absolutely perfect so the goal is to get it so you almost can't see a gap whatsoever can be a little tricky to do but once you get it right it's just so much easier to work with once you get it fit up good now backtrack a little to fit it up i use just a little right angle grinder this happens to be a snap-on but the milwaukee ones work great with an abrasive disc and you can just kind of take a little off at a time make sure you have no high spots from when you were grinding it and uh just kind of take off all the little corners fit it check it fit it check it and uh then once you get that all fit up you can start to remove the paint now i like to go about a half inch from the seam on the panel and on the patch so just get that nice and cleaned up don't use a real aggressive wheel when you clean this paint up the more aggressive you use the more likely there is you're going to have deep gouges and grooves and you really don't want any of that so nice sandpaper like a roll lock disc i'll uh i'll put a couple of them in the description below so you can see what i'm using and get the paint cleaned right off of this and then we'll get it all prepped and ready to weld [Music] [Music] all right so now that you got that all prepped and ready to weld uh let's get this panel put back up there so make sure going back to the prep that you're down to bare metal you don't have any paint in the areas in the wild because any paint or anything like that is going to be just contamination in the wild it's going to make for a bad weld it's going to give you a really hard time and you don't need any of that so prep it really good also make sure you have a really good ground once that's all prepped you can get this panel fit up and you can use whatever you want to hold it there a combination of magnets vice grips and uh just kind of play with it work what's best but you want to get the majority of it fit up really good but really focus on the spot that you're going to be starting with so unfortunately these panels move around you're not going to get it perfectly lined up but let's uh let's get one side started right where you're going to be welding and just get one tack weld on there and then we'll kind of massage it don't go welding this whole thing this is all about tack welds so let's get this fit up i'll get a spot weld on here and then we'll show you how we massage it from there all right once you get one tack on now you can kind of either take the magnet or vice grips off on that side and just kind of make sure you still have a good fit up on the other side you don't want to go too crazy just going along but find like a midway point put attack weld go to the other side make sure it's still lined up put a tack weld you don't want to weld right on top of the other tack weld and there's multiple reasons to that one you could get ahead of yourself where now you're welding welding welding and then you need maybe a little tweak down on this side and it's too late you already pushed it to where it shouldn't be and now you're in trouble the other reason is if you put too much heat into this panel it'll start to warp it so this whole panel as we go along is just going to be spot spot spot spot you never want to run a bead on a piece of sheet metal as soon as you run a bead that's it this whole thing is going to warp pop out both create an absolute nightmare for you and you're gonna have a real difficult time ever getting it straight again so like i said get it lined up spread the tacks out nice the biggest thing is the first few tacks that you're going to do or you're going to make sure that it's still lined up and then once you're positive that everything is lined up and all the seams are good then just go along and fill in between all attacks and then just spread out fill in between those tacks spread out some more fill in and eventually it is a tedious process but it'll all be filled in and then you can start to grind the welts [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right after you get that all welded once again remembering go slow a little at a time next thing to do is grind the weld down so you have to be careful with this just like with the welding with the grinder you can put a ton of heat into the metal so i like to use a flap disc and aside from that i like to use a used flap disc on any time i'm grinding on anything that's sheet metal because a brand new flap disc is super aggressive even if you get the finer uh grit still super aggressive no need for that so i like to use a used one if you do have a brand new one a little trick is you can take it and you can just run it on the concrete or run it on something a little bit and get that first little bit worn off because if you just run a brand new flap disc you're gonna you're gonna make some marks so take your time do a little bit move around so you're not putting too much heat into the panel and try to only get the weld the idea here is to not grind down any of the sheet metal you're just trying to grind down only on the weld you don't even have to get it all the way down because we're going to use a smaller wheel like a roll lock with sanding disc and get it a little bit more of a fine adjustment but this is to take down that first initial hump on the weld that you did all right once you get that ground down a pretty good amount with the the big grinder then you can go down to the small grinder so you can use these little cookie wheels you can use uh the little green discs like this you just got to be real careful with these green discs just like the flap wheel if you uh if you get a little too crazy with it you can make some real marks on the sheet metal and we're trying to avoid using too much filler i mean you're gonna need to use filler no matter what but we're trying to avoid using a whole big thick layer of it so i like to start easy if that's not doing the trick you can kind of go up to the next level of a little bit more aggressive but uh let's just hit this a little more trying to grind down this weld we're not looking for perfection on this just get it so it's nice and flush and uh then we'll move on to the next step so just like with the welding you really want to make sure you just take your time doing any of this grinding um because even the grinder can put enough heat into the surface where you can start to warp it so all this stuff will body work is take your time have some patience it can be difficult sometimes uh you see the material you just want to work with it i for one don't have a ton of patience which is why i typically don't do bodywork so it is difficult for me but take your time go nice and easy um i'm not gonna get into all the bondo work and painting and everything like that because i'm actually having someone paint the truck and they asked to do the filler of work themselves they really don't want me to get into that but there's plenty of great videos out there on how to properly use bondo don't just go slathering it on you want to go the thinnest you possibly can and make sure it's completely dry before you start working with it aside from that you want to make sure that you get some paint and primer on the inside of this because if you don't it's just going to continue to rot out from there now obviously i still got another little section to patch here but uh if i was all done what i would do is i would d a sand all this get a nice little edge on and i'd get some primer on it just before it goes out to the body guy just because this thing can rust up pretty quick especially if for any reason it's going to sit outside before they get to it and uh the rust once it starts rusting it's it's difficult to stop that you have to sand it right back down to bare metal again so use a good self-etching primer i found this one up all is pretty good i don't even know if i'm pronouncing that right but it's a nice acid etching primer this stuff is nasty try not to breathe it in using a very well ventilated area but get a good coating of this stuff on the inside and then when everything is done use a nice undercoating similar to like a fluid film or new hampshire under oil undercoating and just get that protected again because it's going to be very vulnerable on the inside you want to try to get this patch to last as long as you possibly can so i hope this video was helpful to you guys um i'm going to put a few links in the description that might help you out some of the you know materials i use and everything and uh if i do find a good video on some of the bondo work maybe i'll i'll throw a link i'm not sure who i'll find yet probably be to a totally different channel but i will uh do my best to link something there to help you guys out but as always thanks for watching i really appreciate every single one of you if you haven't already hit that like button and uh maybe give me a subscribe and we're gonna have more coming soon on the shop truck so hope to see you soon [Music] [Music] you

Channel: In The Shop

Views: 32,314

Keywords: ford, rust, bed, wheel arch, wheel, arch, in the shop, nathans garage, truck, patch, fix, diy, weld, body work, rot, project, project truck

Id: yGhJl2WIqgE

Length: 20min 17sec (1217 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 20 2022