So not a ton to report, that's kind of the downside to this stage of the project unless you outsource it and pay the $$$$. I'm still waiting on the 3M NHT to arrive so I can shore up the hood skin to the hood frame. Like seriously, NOTHING annoys me more these days than estimated shipping that is totally and completely F'ing wrong. Now the ETA is Monday. Guess who they shipped with? USPS, of course. Honestly, this is why I will always check the Prime Only box on Amazon. That's sometimes wrong too, but very infrequently and you get ACTUAL tracking instead of "It Left. It's somewhere. It might be there tomorrow or next week, or never." Fck USPS. <rant over>
Since I can't do much on the hood I am moving around the rest of the body and fixing dings here and there. And since 7 months had passed I'd forgotten about one little area that needed some attention. If you will recall the rear lid had been whacked and someone did a decent job of straightening it out, skim coating it, and then spraying primer all over it. I removed that since I had no idea what they actually used for filler and they didn't use a moisture barrier topcoat, so it could have had high moisture content if they used something like Bondo instead of a good one like Evercoat. Anyway, when it got whacked the stress pushed in the rear corner just above the driver-side rear tail light. The crease was about 1/2" deep and ran up almost 2 inches. The main problem was getting in behind it to push it back out. I could get my hand back in there through the interior opening, but it was curved so no way to get something like a wooden dowel behind it and bang it out. I could rig something up like a J hook and pull on it but then I remembered something I was given about 10 years prior. It's called an Autoshot stud welder. I tried it once on another project but that was a very long time ago and I really didn't know what I was doing at the time. Anyway, I dug the box out blew off the dust of dead bugs, and opened it up. I had 3 1/2 boxes of studs in there the gun and the slide hammer.
First I used the regular-sized studs with moderate success. The basic process is to get a flap disc or something to remove all the paint from the area, load a stud into the end of the gun and then press the stud against the body where you want to attach it for pulling. It's spring-loaded so the stud will touch first and then you keep pressing until the grounding ring around the tip is also touching. Then you pull the trigger for about 1 second. You will see it glowing in there and a little smoke will come out. Be careful and don't hold the trigger for too long, a second is all you need, much longer and you could melt a hole through the body at that point. Let off the trigger wait another second for it to cool and then pull the gun away. You are left with a stud sticking out from that point. Get the slide hammer and put it over the stud, roll the little locking wheel onto the stud, and then pull tension on the stud. Now while keeping tension slide the hammer forward and then start whacking away. Don't slide the hammer too far forward and bump the back of the stud lock as that will cause it to release the stud. Just keep pulling until either the stud breaks in half, which they do frequently, or you've pulled it as far as you want. Also, don't go bananas here, you don't want to tear the sheet metal. Like most all bodywork it's a lot of watching what the metal is willing to do and coaxing it along. In the end, I got the dent 95% out and close enough that a little skim coat is all it needs to look 100%.
In that picture you can see where the paint is still shiny above all the pulls, that's because the crease ran up that far and the sander couldn't touch the paint there. As I pulled it out all the surrounding areas came back in alignment. This is the kind of stuff I enjoy doing, y'all can have the block sanding.
BTW, to remove the stud from the body, the best way I found was to get a small pair of Vise-Grips. Now come at the stud from a 90-degree angle, parallel with the body, grab the head of the stud with the Vise-Grips. Then slowly rock the head up and down, move the Vise Grips an inch or two up and down. You will feel the stud start to fatigue and eventually it will break away from the sheet metal. Don't fight this part! You don't want to try and just rip it away you can tear the sheet metal or seriously distort it. If you do it this way with the pliers you are left with just a little rough spot where the head was attached and the sheet metal isn't damaged.
Another part that needed to be addressed was the rain gutters. As we know these are what get the roof rot going and are deadly to these trucks. The factory filler has long since turned rock hard and cracked, letting water into the panel welds below. Then it traps the water in there and cancer starts. Once it's in there good it runs the whole length of the seam and eventually, you have what I faced on the FJ62 project. A total F'ing nightmare to fix. Luckily this truck had no real rust up there. I popped off all the old sealer many months ago and hit it with a rust converter back then, just to be sure. Then today I used the 3M self-leveling seam sealer to fill the channels all the way around. If you are going to do this you will need two of them, the special gun and a fair bit of patience. Here are my lessons learned; when you are filling the channels fill the outside of the gutter first. I just ran it along the gutter expecting it to flow completely into the channel. It will flow, some, but it's not like honey, it's more like warm peanut butter. So get the nozzle back up under that lip and run it there first. I had to go back and run the nozzle along the underside of the rain gutter lip to ensure coverage. This is time-sensitive, you've got about 10 minutes after it comes out of the nozzle before it starts to set up. So ensure cover WHILE you are in the area. Next, as you are pumping along and need to move to another area you will need to relieve pressure on the gun so the epoxy stops flowing out. Otherwise, you will have the stuff dribbling out while you are trying to move about, or it will just keep filling an area and you'll have too much in a particular spot. For the front channels next to the A-pillar, you are going to have to help it a little. The gap is too narrow to get the tip all the way down in there. I filled it a bit heavy at the top and let it flow down and then slowly went down the front with the gun perpendicular to the A-pillar. I was putting more in there than was actually needed, but I needed it to flow to the bottom of the channel, and I used a razor knife to run along the channel to hopefully allow any air pockets to escape. I used the knife because it was there, anything very slim should do the job. Then let it run down, it's going to dribble down into the door hinge area, but you can clean it off later. Once you get all this done let it just sit, and it will flow out nicely and will be set up in about 30 mins. It never gets really hard and is very much attached to the truck now. It's very good stuff and I would recommend it highly. Another one of those things where you just pay the money.
You can see the bare metal through the sealer. This is about 5 mins after application and it's flowed out nicely. This stuff should be good for the life of the truck.
So plan going forward, keep smoothing out the dings. I need to spend a fair bit of time over the rear wheel arches that were patched. I will have to get in there with a sander to find all my high spots and use the hammer to bring them down. It's not a factory patch so it's going to need a bit of massaging (since I'm a total amateur) to get it close enough to skim. I don't want to do what so many do, use an a$$ load of filler. I want to literally just skim it like 1mm or so of filler to make it pretty. More than that and I think you compromise the integrity of the finish that goes on top since the filler will still be curing and off-gassing for a long time. As it does it will shrink and you can end up cracking in the finish. At least that's what the old body guy told me who taught me a bunch of stuff, and I've seen it. That could be from the old Bondo they used, but I still think it's good practice to get it as close as possible. No skim is the goal, but I'm not sure I'll ever be that good.