Got a good day in today on the lv, even got the wife involved again. She's good at running the brake
Started the day off by welding in those brackets and plates that the tailgate hinge mount to. I won't go into a lot of detail, because I think the pics explain everything. Not complicated, but took a few hours to get that done.
What took most of the day was fabbing up a new rear tailgate skin. I welded the pieces that I had cut out of the old one back in that POS so I could make some accurate measurements. I think you can see all the #'s written on the back side?
After I got some solid #'s I started cutting out the new piece. I bent the sides at 90 degrees first, so that when the tailgate shell sits down in there, all that would need to be done is fold those down. Should be rather easy since they are started now. After I bent those I cut reliefs in those bends so I could make the other bends across the entire length of the tailgate. None of them were 90's so it was fairly easy. I did however have to change some dies around in the brake so that I could fit the dies inside those previous bends I had made on each side. Once I got the brake set up, went good.
After the tailgate was bent up, did some test fitting, actually fit pretty good the first time without any major mods. Started transfering the measurements over from the old skin for the license plate holder. I used a piece of tag board to trace the holes onto and then I transfered those onto the new skin, that worked pretty good. After I had everything cut out real nice and neat, I primed the back side with DP. Once that was done I started welding the plate holder back in. Also made this metal piece that goes right above it, not sure what it does, but it was on the old one.
After all that was done I fit it back on and then snugged up those 2 braces in the tailgate I had not weld yet up against the plate on the inside, they get welded there to. Made some marks and the pulled the skin back off and finished spot welding those tailgate braces into position.
All in all, very, very happy with the way it went. Took an entire day to do, but at least it's done and done right. No more bent up metal full of 3/4" of bondo.
Took a pic of the tailgate skin just sitting in the opening. It isn't attached yet to the tailgate, just want to see how it looked like and make sure everything fit.
My body man buddy is going to be in town on Tuesday and said he could bring some panel skinning tools he uses, I think I'm going to take him up on that
Probably move back to the roof on Sunday night or Monday, since I have the day off of work. Going to the lake tomorrow to go jet sking so probably no LV work.
Matt