Rocker Panel Replacement

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tedwardd

tedwardd

Joined
Apr 27, 2026
Threads
4
Messages
18
Location
Georgia
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 poking around I found some additional rot that initially looked like surface rust
  • Two spots in the leading edge of the hood, each about 1" to 1-1/2" across.
  • A spot about 2-3" x 1" in the passenger side wheel well, next to the front most air box mount
  • The "small hole" in the front portion of the driver's side rocker panel turned out to be much larger than originally thought. It was covered up by something that looks like bondo but was VERY well done because I didn't notice it when I inspected it originally. But was uncovered when I started grinding away at the flaky rust around the hole and now it's nearly the entirety of the front 1/4 of the driver's side rocker panel that looks to be rotted away.
I come to ask two things:
  1. What items should I prioritize? My gut says the rocker panels and rear should take priority because they're the worst spots and I want to fix it before it starts to mingle with inner panels or parts of the body structure.
  2. How would you go about tackling these? I am perfectly fine cutting them away but want to make sure I'm doing it intelligently so I don't cut to far (or at least know when I'm about to cut in to parts that are more structural. Are there any good videos or well documented threads I've overlooked of someone tackling these areas that would help me understand the process a bit better before I just start diving in?
When I bought the car, the PO told me that they had planned to cut away all the rocker and bumper rust and weld in a custom slider and rear bumper in their place. But as I look around, I'm seeing people have done this for the rear (bumper replacements are easy enough to find) but I can't find any examples of people completely removing and replacing rocker panels with metal tubes/sliders as I was planning on doing.

I've attached some pictures to help visualize what I'm dealing with.

First is the front side of the driver's rear wheel well. Looks like it's rotted out mostly in the wheel well.
image0.webp


Next is the rear half of the passenger's side rear wheel well. Very rotted out, extends in to the bumper itself shown below
image1.webp


This is the body panel under the passenger side bumper cover. This is the extension of the picture above
image5.webp


This is the hole I discovered this morning in the passenger front wheel well. This looked like surface rust inside the engine bay at first glance but taking a flat head to it this morning revealed it was rotted through. The hole is right in front of the front-most attachment point for the air box on the wheel well. It does not extend to the edge of the metal panel. It's about 2-3" by 1" and I've chipped it out, treated the engine bay side of it with reformer and a couple layers of foil tape to keep spray from the wheel out.
image2.webp


This is the hole on the front portion of the passenger rocker panel, next to the cats. This seems fairly contained. There was a lot of surface rust that extended up and on to the actual door panel itself. I took a grinder to it down to bare metal and sprayed with reformer to keep it covered. This hole is the smaller of the two in the front and I think it's probably a pretty straight forward patch job if I was to do so.
image3.webp
 
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Couple more spots. This is mostly surface rust, I think. I have treated some of it after chipping off the flaky bits and there still seems to be a fair bit of good metal underneath. The last couple pictures are the two holes on the hood. I have cleaned them up, treated them and covered them with foil tap to protect them for now.

image4.webp


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One more. This is bondo'd spot on the driver's side rocker. The bondo appears to cover the entire leading 1/4. I stopped grinding away and sprayed it with rust reformer to keep it covered while I figure out what to do.

image8.webp
 
Search Youtube for the rocker slider replacement, I know I have seen video in the past and like I said in your other post most have been from Australia. Fab Rats, US based, has a video apparently about doing it but haven't looked it up.

Here are a couple posting here on Mud abotu doing the rocker cuts and both have good points brought up about doing it.

G

Thread 'Rockers and Corners'

I have a LOT of rot right in front and behind the wheel wells in the back (left and right). Not sure what you call those areas. Dog legs?

It stretches up into the rockers. Both inside and outside were rusted out. I kept cutting and kept finding more rust. I had to remove the spot welds and removed what was left of the inner structure from the body mount so that I can have a point of reference.

My question is: Can I just cut it all way and replace the whole section with a donor piece? That will mean tracing the floor inside the vehicle and going into the wheel well.

Is it...

I

Thread 'Rocker chop sliders'

I was wondering if anyone had anything to add on this subject? I plan to keep my lift a bit lower and am considering cutting out my perfectly straight and good rockers (gasp!) and welding in some 2X4 or some such as body-mounted sliders. I know @jcardona1 cut his rockers (but went with frame mounted sliders) and @Broski chopped/replaced his rockers. Has anyone else done this? Any caveats, gotcha's, or tips for someone wanting to go down this path? Anything you would do differently if you were to do it again? Thanks for any input!
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I feel your pain. Mine was as bad, or worse.
I would concentrate on the rear quarters first since water intrusion there corrodes the connectors within, and lets dust in if you travel dirt roads.

I cut out all the rust and had a local guy fab/weld new pieces back in. He did a great job. I live in the rust belt where it's easier to find those guys!
I had a 5 gallon bucket filled with rust chips after using a needle scaler....which works great btw. That thing will take those bubbles you see and tell you what is under and all around them!!
I didnt think to get pieces cut from a rust-free Cruiser. I would research and consider that, for sure.

Woolwax or Fluidfilm when you finally arrive!
 
None of that is surface rust but how did that happen in Georgia (vehicle from the Rustbelt originally?)?sd

Outer rocker panel replacements may still be available from Toyota but AFAIK they do not go the full length of the rocker ie where the seam is near the rear of the rocker panel (the dogleg area that often rots) is a different body panel so you'll need sections cut from a donor vehicle as shown in the first thread/link above. Run it by a good (small) body shop that will take work like that to get some more ideas.

IME it's difficult to find a shop that knows how to or wants to do rust work like that in the Southern US, in the Rustbelt it's just Tuesday.
 
The replacement of the rocker panels is covered in detail in the collision repair manual. There's a copy in the Resources Forum, 80 series section.

The LHS outer rocker panel will have to be sourced from a salvage truck (I'd try @slow95z; or you may be able to source one from Japan), but the RHS (61411-60021) is still available, new.
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Kernal said:
None of that is surface rust but how did that happen in Georgia (vehicle from the Rustbelt originally?)?sd
Click to expand...
The truck is originally from Indiana and then, most recently, Tennessee. Thankfully the frame itself is just surface rust. The non surface rust is all confined to the body. I was prepared to work with some of it but some of what I’ve found since is beyond what I had planned on repairing, intially.

Thankfully, I know a couple of local shops that will do this kind of fabrication work without issue if it’s more than I care to try myself.
 
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Rocker replacement including parts numbers starts here,

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Much more extensive rust repairs on a Troopy,

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Cheers
 
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