Been working on our 62... (1 Viewer)

[SonnyAK]

We recently bought a '90 62 from a buddy who was leaving the state and had decided not to take it with him. My girlfriend has always liked these rigs, so we struck a deal with him and brought it home! It needed a LOT of bodywork due to some serious rust in the fenders and a little bit more spattered here and there. Fortunately it didn't have any rust in the gutters and was a pretty decent looking rig overall. It also had a pretty bad vibration in the drivetrain when driving on the highway once you hit about 60+ mph. The engine runs pretty well and seems to make good power, so that was great (other than it likes to leak).

I had never welded sheet metal (did a little stick welding when I was a kid), so the last few months have definitely been a learning experience. My girlfriend bought me a Miller 141 for Christmas, so that got me started along the way...

Here's a few pictures of the bad areas on the car...

Overall it looked ok until you got a bit closer

















So, I got started in the wheel wells first since those areas would be covered in undercoating and the interior area would be under the carpet. This gave me a great chance to work on my welding skills and patch making abilities, hoping they would greatly improve before I got to the body area...

Started with the inner repair near the body mounts...Sorry, I forgot to take photos and didn't realize it until I got some undercoating on the repair - my photo skills got better too

 

[SonnyAK]

Then did the fender wells...






And the interior under the carpet...








Not perfect, but it was a good start and nice to be getting rid of some bad rusty areas!!

Now to more visible areas...The left rear fender had 2 exterior patches which it needed and one internal, so I started with the internal first so I'd get a bit more practice!



I was really pleased with how well the patch matched up after I made it.

The other 2 had a lot of subtle curves and took a lot of banging and bending to make them fit, but it eventually worked...

Getting the lip to roll into the fender well was a bit tougher - I used some heat to help bend it around and make it smooth. It also required a few metal cuts to make it smooth where it made a tight curve - after cutting I trimmed and re-welded part of the lip to make it curve smoothly.

 

[SonnyAK]

Got it pretty smooth, now onto the other side (behind right wheel)...








I'll come back and get the smoothing done later on that one...

Now to the front left fender and definitely the toughest to replicate since it has a visible seam and multiple bends...I eventually had to cut the panel into 4 separate pieces to get the bends and seam correct. Thank god for Dolphin Putty to help smooth the welds!!






I also quickly learned to make sure the metal patch match the curve on the fender VERY closely before cutting away the rusty metal! Once the go-by was gone, it was certainly more difficult to get the panel bent correctly!

Lots of other rust cleaning was done and metal prep using POR15 for areas which weren't as severe.

Then the Dolphin putty was used to smooth the welded seams and improve some of the lines.

Primed the repairs, a bit more sanding and taped off for final paint. I decided to only shoot the repaired areas, since they were really low on the car and the upper paint was pretty decent...

 

[SonnyAK]

Built my seriously red-neck paint booth in the driveway...




Luckily the bugs aren't bad up here just yet, so I didn't worry about sealing the plastic all the way, but it is still pretty cool (about 50 degrees) so I cranked the garage heater up and was able to keep it around 70 under the plastic, so that was nice for the paint!

Here's a few after shots! I was really happy with the final product since this was my first go at sheet metal repair/patch panel making/welding, and my second painting project, so I was super happy with the final outcome! I already see a few things I'd do differently, but at least the bad rust is gone and the rig looks pretty nice! The paint is a shade or two off since there's a lot of fading and probably some previous paint work. I plan to paint the whole truck someday when I have more time and a better shop for the work! I really enjoyed doing the project and look forward to the next one!! It's kind of addictive!!










We also had a shop look at the vibration issue - I thought it might be the balance of the drive shaft, but the shop found it needed new wheel bearing, locking hub replacement and front brake work. Now it looks much better and is super smooth running down the highway at any speed!!

Thanks for reading the ramble!

 

[cruisermatt]

Steller!

 

[SonnyAK]

Thanks. It was a lot of work, but definitely fun too. The rust was really eating this truck alive, so it made me feel good to deal with some of the bad stuff!!

 

[Kaasdief]

Liar, liar pants on fire!! You have done this work may times before. Just joking, seriously though if I understand correctly you are self taught? This is fantastic work, very well done.

 

[bentonrover]

Wow now come do mine. Room and board on me

 

[MANUCHAO]

You have a good woman with great taste on vehicles....
You did great surgery job on that rig...!!

 

[LAMBCRUSHER]

most excellent!!! good save on the rig, and good work on getting it whole again! that is alot of work, and very tricky work at that.

 

[Michael Hanson]

Hi, Very nice work. Your off to a good start . We have 3 62s that color , we think it's one of Toyotas best colors. I'd also take off those chrome strips on the rockers and check for dirt and rust under there . Mike

 

[klinetime574]

Really nice repair on the body. Thanks for keeping a classic on the road. Hold on to your woman tight!

 

[hj 60]

Very nice, all the obvious rust places and looks familiar , good it was not scrapped.

Also you might want to check the shock tube connection to the chassis and the rear frame chassis might look bad but the rivets are a pain to remove.
The shop sounds expensive, maybe ask a cruiser fan first before trusting a shop

 

[SonnyAK]

Thanks for all the nice comments about the work!! I love to work on older cars/trucks, but hadn't jumped into one before with rust like this - that always scared the crap out of me!! My girlfriend has a real good eye for cool cars (she's mostly an SUV junkie) so she decided she wanted this one and I told her I'd give it my best shot!! My buddy was selling it and he knew it needed buncehes of work, so the price was right - I didn't think I would hurt it's value more than it already was, so it was a good test vehicle !! I watched a LOT of youtube videos, read a lot of posts about sheet metal work and looked on other forums for welding and found some incredible information!! I like to work on tedious projects, and can usually pick skills up with a bit of practice, so this all came together pretty well (I was actually surprised it looked as good as it did)! I think she was pleasantly surprised too since she had some serious reservations once the cutting and grinding started!

Mike, the trim strips on the bottom were packed with mud, like most of the underside on the truck was! I don't think my buddy ever washed it, or turned a single nut on it... Fortunately there was minimal rust under them, so that was one of the few areas which I was lucky on! We like the color a lot too, but it's definitely a tough one to try and match, so a full repaint will definitely be planned for the future on this one! I painted the front end of my old Bronco a few years ago and the paint came out pretty rough (LOTS of wet sanding to make it look decent)...so I spent a lot of time setting up my paint gun on this one and really got it set nicely when shooting! I have a couple of little sags in the paint that show because of the metal flake, but we were both happy with the outcome!

The shop weasn't cheap, but they did great work, and a lot of it for a really fair price. They specialize in gear/drive shaft repair here in Anchorage and I had a buddy that highly recommended them (he's been using them regularly for 25 years) so I felt good that they wouldn't hurt me too badly - the bill was 2/3's parts and 1/3rd labor, so the cost ratio was better than a lot of repair shops these days! I really thought the vibration was drive shaft related so I wanted a good shop to get that right and once they told me it was the other, I just told them to run with it since their quote seemed good.

Luckily there wan't too much project creep in the work - I definitely got side-tracked with a few other small repairs that popped up along the way, but luckily it didn't get out of control! The frame and shock tube connections look solid (I read about those in a previous post and gave them a look) so fortunately that was good.

Thanks again for the nice comments and it was definitely a lot more fun than I ever though it would be!!

 

[TLC Norway]

Really good job!

 

[SteveH]

If the truck was parked outside for years, open the hood and remove the two thin oval metal cowl plugs on the firewall, and clean out the 50 pounds of pine needles and dirt stuck in there. I filled a 5 gal. pail with needles from my truck. What you're removing is all the junk that fell down the cowl slots in front of the windshield. If you ever remove a front fender, you'll see the cowl drains possibly clogged with crud, too. These 'drains' send the water from the cowl down inside the fender (sort-of) and onto the ground.

 

[CarcaineProblems]

Excellent!

 

[fj40z]

Very nice work!!

 

[SonnyAK]

If the truck was parked outside for years, open the hood and remove the two thin oval metal cowl plugs on the firewall, and clean out the 50 pounds of pine needles and dirt stuck in there. I filled a 5 gal. pail with needles from my truck. What you're removing is all the junk that fell down the cowl slots in front of the windshield. If you ever remove a front fender, you'll see the cowl drains possibly clogged with crud, too. These 'drains' send the water from the cowl down inside the fender (sort-of) and onto the ground.

Thanks...I'll give them a look and see what treasures they hold...

 

[HoJo 61]

Real nice work!