A horrid discovery

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tedwardd

tedwardd

Joined
Apr 27, 2026
Threads
6
Messages
41
Location
Georgia
If you’ve been following along (maybe I should start a build thread….) I’ve been working towards getting my 80 to pass inspection to have its rebuild title re-certified in my state. Seemed like I had finally nailed down the last item on my list, the parking brake. Now that that’s all taken care of I turned my attention to some body panels that were going to be questionable during the inspection, mainly the passenger rear bumper cover. There’s enough rot in that corner that the body mounts are gone near the wheel well and it’s being held on with a cable tie. I knew this area had some… problems going in to the project but what I uncovered was far beyond my expectations or what I’d found during any of my previous work.

I’m trying to figure out what to do at this point. The main concerns are the structural rot around the body mount. About 1/4 (give or take) of the mount is rotted away where the body connects to the frame. The frame itself, while crusty is solid. I had planned to cut away all the skirt rot for a bumper install but this rot further in was not visible until the bumper came off today.

Realistically, I think I need to get this repaired before the inspection is done. But I don’t even know what I’m walking in to with something like this. It’s such an outlier in the truck, and so far outside the scope of anything I’d anticipated. it’s bizarre to me how much worse this corner is compared to any other spot on the body, even the other rear well looks miles better.

What kind of shops should I be calling? Standard body shops or specialists like ACC? Is this a body-on job that might run me a few grand or am I looking at enough work that a donor body might be a better/cheaper/easier route at this point?

Any/all input is appreciated. I’m feeling way in over my head here.

IMG_3384.webp
 
What are the regs in Georgia for body rust/holes?

It might help you decide if you took it to ACC and asked their opinion if it's worth saving, if they know a good body shop, rough cost estimate, etc.

How are the frame and the axles, that degree of rust implies multiple other body and axle brackets may also be melting away.

IMHO might help to start looking for another vehicle, something with a good body but blown engine/headgasket for example if you wanted to transplant your engine, but then again you're getting back into big money if you have to pay someone to do that. Easier to find another 80 (rust free) that only needs routine maintenance.
 
tedwardd said:
If you’ve been following along (maybe I should start a build thread….) I’ve been working towards getting my 80 to pass inspection to have its rebuild title re-certified in my state. Seemed like I had finally nailed down the last item on my list, the parking brake. Now that that’s all taken care of I turned my attention to some body panels that were going to be questionable during the inspection, mainly the passenger rear bumper cover. There’s enough rot in that corner that the body mounts are gone near the wheel well and it’s being held on with a cable tie. I knew this area had some… problems going in to the project but what I uncovered was far beyond my expectations or what I’d found during any of my previous work.

I’m trying to figure out what to do at this point. The main concerns are the structural rot around the body mount. About 1/4 (give or take) of the mount is rotted away where the body connects to the frame. The frame itself, while crusty is solid. I had planned to cut away all the skirt rot for a bumper install but this rot further in was not visible until the bumper came off today.

Realistically, I think I need to get this repaired before the inspection is done. But I don’t even know what I’m walking in to with something like this. It’s such an outlier in the truck, and so far outside the scope of anything I’d anticipated. it’s bizarre to me how much worse this corner is compared to any other spot on the body, even the other rear well looks miles better.

What kind of shops should I be calling? Standard body shops or specialists like ACC? Is this a body-on job that might run me a few grand or am I looking at enough work that a donor body might be a better/cheaper/easier route at this point?

Any/all input is appreciated. I’m feeling way in over my head here.

View attachment 4147605
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And here I was thinking my rear was rusty turns out I was wrong. All I need to do is fab a couple of plugs for both rear bottoms.
 
White Stripe said:
Then I would buy a clean rust free 80 and Swap all your good parts over. Part out what's left of the carcass. That is not worth dealing with in my opinion. Especially when you live in an area where rust free '80s are plentiful
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Is that really cost effective for a project that aims to be a street legal wheeler? I don't know what the cost of the repair would be (I'm working on contacting a few places) but I've been looking around for donors and I'm having a hard time finding anything under $5k. I have a hard time believing the labor for a repair, even of this nature, would be more than $5k and that's before factoring in the cost of the labor to do the parts of the swap I'm not equipped to handle myself.

I'm not trying to argue with your claim, btw. I genuinely don't know the costs of this kind of work. I just find it hard to believe that I'd be looking at more than 16hrs of labor (using the $300/hr labor quotes I've seen from some specialty shops for other work in the area). Maybe I'm wildly off-base for what it takes to make a repair like this, idk.
 
tedwardd said:
If you’ve been following along (maybe I should start a build thread….) I’ve been working towards getting my 80 to pass inspection to have its rebuild title re-certified in my state. Seemed like I had finally nailed down the last item on my list, the parking brake. Now that that’s all taken care of I turned my attention to some body panels that were going to be questionable during the inspection, mainly the passenger rear bumper cover. There’s enough rot in that corner that the body mounts are gone near the wheel well and it’s being held on with a cable tie. I knew this area had some… problems going in to the project but what I uncovered was far beyond my expectations or what I’d found during any of my previous work.

I’m trying to figure out what to do at this point. The main concerns are the structural rot around the body mount. About 1/4 (give or take) of the mount is rotted away where the body connects to the frame. The frame itself, while crusty is solid. I had planned to cut away all the skirt rot for a bumper install but this rot further in was not visible until the bumper came off today.

Realistically, I think I need to get this repaired before the inspection is done. But I don’t even know what I’m walking in to with something like this. It’s such an outlier in the truck, and so far outside the scope of anything I’d anticipated. it’s bizarre to me how much worse this corner is compared to any other spot on the body, even the other rear well looks miles better.

What kind of shops should I be calling? Standard body shops or specialists like ACC? Is this a body-on job that might run me a few grand or am I looking at enough work that a donor body might be a better/cheaper/easier route at this point?

Any/all input is appreciated. I’m feeling way in over my head here.

View attachment 4147605
Click to expand...

Seems odd that that 1/4 panel is this severely rotted. Did a PO carry a bag of salt back there? Does the 80 have any other major rust issues? If this is the only spot you may be able to find someone parting an 80 that would cut out this section to be patched in.
 
This is a shame, you have only owned the truck for about a month IIRC. I had to do rust repair on another vehicle and most of the "shops" in my area would only do panel replacement but nor fabrication/welding. I would say that I have more collision repair shops and not so many actual body shops. On the car I am referencing I need new quarter panels installed, finally found an old dude that had a home shop and got them on.

With the other rust in the truck (previous posts) and then this, I would say this 80 might cost more to get up to speed than getting another in better condition. From the picture it looks as though a shop would need to replace a portion of the inner floor (around the body mount), the inner fender (located on the lower edge of the picture), outer fender and then some of the trim that goes around the tailgate and sits under the bumper. The integrity of the wheel well might also be in question.

Keep us posted on what you find out and what you end up deciding.
 
Not much help, but i find it so odd that the frame looks so clean everywhere else, surrounding the body mount.

Whats the rest of the frame look like around other body mounts?
 
It seems likely the rear window was leaking into that quarter panel for a long time.

Is that the only area that looks this bad? May be worth pulling the carpet and looking at the whole floor. The middle row seat belt anchor on the other side of that wheel well may hanging by a thread.
 
Mag71k5 said:
Not much help, but i find it so odd that the frame looks so clean everywhere else, surrounding the body mount.

Whats the rest of the frame look like around other body mounts?
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You and me both! The frame has some light surface rust but nothing major. The differentials/axles show the worst rust but it's stable and not rotted through and at this point I've either broken, drilled out and replaced or removed and re-installed with anti-seize any of the bolts holding the drive/suspension system together. This corner is easy 3-4x worse than any other portion of the truck which is why it's such a surprise to me. The other rear mount has some scaling but has not yet been compromised. The rest of the mounts are perfect with only light surface rust. The front of the driver side rear, down by the rocker panel has some around the lower edge and there is some starting to melt away on the lower edge of the driver's side skirt, under the rear bumper; what I would assume is a much earlier stage of the passenger side so it needs to be dealt with. There is a small hole forming in the front passenger well that I've cleaned up and plan to patch soon but it was a "clean" hole and easy to fix. The worst of the mess outside of this area I posted elsewhere about the rockers where there are a handful of holes in the outer but the inner are still solid from what I've been able to see so far though I'm afraid of what might be under there once I cut them away.

12bit said:
It seems likely the rear window was leaking into that quarter panel for a long time.

Is that the only area that looks this bad? May be worth pulling the carpet and looking at the whole floor. The middle row seat belt anchor on the other side of that wheel well may hanging by a thread.
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There was one small pinhole that I punched out to about the size of my pinky finger, that's rotted through near the same area in the wheel well that is exposing the interior carpet. I've not pulled the carpet up completely but I peeled it back in that area and aside from that hole, the floor looks relatively unscathed except maybe a little bit of margin around the hole itself and the carpet doesn't show any signs of serious water intrusion. The seat belt anchors are sturdy, It actually looks like one, or both, may already have been replaced or re-enforced at some point in the past.
 
I got curious and looked it up.

Essentially, if it has structural rust damage, holes in the rear (allow exhaust into the cab) or degradation around mounting or safety system it can be failed. Apparently, the inspection is only required due to his truck being a salvaged title.
 
bhsdriller said:
so what happens, they don't let you drive a car out there if it has rust?
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The key detail here is the title status. A rebuilt title, when being transferred between states, requires that an inspector re-inspect the vehicle to sign off on the T-22B form needed when registering the vehicle. The inspection is a safety inspection. The intention is to certify the rebuild was done correctly. The situation here is the rebuild was done 30 years ago and the truck now has 30 years of wear and tear and there's no clear guidance on how they treat such a situation. I'm erring on the side of "they will treat it like they would any other rebuild". I'm hoping they use some common sense and realize that the rebuild was done 30 years ago and they evaluate it as such. It will cost me $300 ($125 inspection fee + $150 for towing) to find out so I'm trying to maximize the odds of passing the first time around.
 
@12bit asked : "Is that the only area that looks this bad?"

Some photos from another thread:

tedwardd

Thread 'Rocker Panel Replacement'

Hey all, I'm starting to poke around and locate all the really bad rust on the body that needs to be addressed and making a mental priority list of what needs to be tackled and before what. There were a couple of rust spots on the body that I knew about going in to the project:
  • Rear, under bumper cover is mostly gone from rot on the passenger side.
  • Wheel well on passenger side has severe rot on the back, lower third.
  • Both rocker panels have holes rotted in them. The driver's side is far worse off but both have at least one hole large enough to fit my hand in
As I've been...
 
Kernal said:
@12bit asked : "Is that the only area that looks this bad?"

Some photos from another thread:

tedwardd

Thread 'Rocker Panel Replacement'

Hey all, I'm starting to poke around and locate all the really bad rust on the body that needs to be addressed and making a mental priority list of what needs to be tackled and before what. There were a couple of rust spots on the body that I knew about going in to the project:
  • Rear, under bumper cover is mostly gone from rot on the passenger side.
  • Wheel well on passenger side has severe rot on the back, lower third.
  • Both rocker panels have holes rotted in them. The driver's side is far worse off but both have at least one hole large enough to fit my hand in
As I've been...
Click to expand...
Man, I'm sorry that you're having to deal with this. As @Godwin suggested above, I would search the classified's here to see if anyone is parting an 80 out.

I was able to do just that; and a fellow Mud member cut out all of the panels that I needed (his were rust-free) and shipped them to me via Fastenal's "Blue Line" shipping. It costs a fraction of UPS/FedEx. If you don't weld, you could take all of those cut-out panels to a shop and they could repair your truck. If you know how to weld, all you need is a grinder with a cut-off wheel and access to a welding machine.
 
tedwardd said:
Is that really cost effective for a project that aims to be a street legal wheeler? I don't know what the cost of the repair would be (I'm working on contacting a few places) but I've been looking around for donors and I'm having a hard time finding anything under $5k. I have a hard time believing the labor for a repair, even of this nature, would be more than $5k and that's before factoring in the cost of the labor to do the parts of the swap I'm not equipped to handle myself.

I'm not trying to argue with your claim, btw. I genuinely don't know the costs of this kind of work. I just find it hard to believe that I'd be looking at more than 16hrs of labor (using the $300/hr labor quotes I've seen from some specialty shops for other work in the area). Maybe I'm wildly off-base for what it takes to make a repair like this, idk.
Click to expand...
That's what I would do. I haven't seen the rest of the truck, nor do I know your circumstances. For alternative maybe boatsiding that area on both sides if I didn't care how it looks. I would then boatside the rockers to match or weld in rectangular tube. You could probably weld in rectangular tube on the rear of the quarters as well. Might even turn out pretty cool. I would think a panel repair would be pretty expensive but I could be wrong.
 
tedwardd said:
rot
Click to expand...

tedwardd said:
rotted away
Click to expand...

tedwardd said:
structural rot
Click to expand...

You lost me at rot!

IH8RUST


I wouldn't be surprised if you find most shops unwilling to even quote rust work.

I didn't read every post, but, hard as it is, seriously weigh up dumping this and finding one in better condition.

In the past, I've persevered with repairing rusty sh¡tboxes, and it is a fruitless, thankless chore.
No matter how well you deal with it, the rust continues it's evil plans, and you'll forever wonder where it's going to pop up next, or just how compromised is the body really?
 
I have a body carcass on a rolling chassis from a 1997. No doors, tail gate, hatch, front clip. Straight and no rust. Locked axles. $4500. Can help load on a trailer. Axles alone are worth $4k. Since it’s a shell you can easily swap over things from your truck to this rolling chassis. Let me know if you are interested. Dallas TX. Have a clean title matching the frame.
 
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