To start with, my Cruiser (or Big Blue) is a 2000 that has spent its entire life in south east/central Michigan. So needless to say she’s rusty, particularly the rockers are - were - ish. That said, southerners and west coasters, mind your eyes. It’s flaky.
Since my rig is crusted but super reliable, I have devised some ways to mitigate rust to at least prolong the life. I only gave $4500 for her about 4.5 years ago and she came with great service history. I feel like I have more than gotten my money out of her and can get a longer life span by getting creative with rust mitigation.
That’s where the rusted rocker redo project came about. I had purchased new fenders and a take off rear upper lift gate to replace the rusted ones. I had them color matched with factory paint codes, but the rockers were roached. Which made the fenders look strange in comparison. So I bought 24ft of 2”x6”x1/8” from a surplus store for $84 and started marking up lines. I’ve seen it done on a few other models of Cruisers (55,62,80) and endless XJ’s. So I figured, why not.
I cut about 5/8” below the door lines all the way down off of the outer rocker skin and left about 2” more on inner skin. This also involved cutting about 4” off of my new fenders. I coated everything in Correseal and let cure. I then went back in the PBE Weld Through Primer.
I had two sets 3ft lengths of 1/8” steel bent into brackets at about 100° and notched them for the body mounts. The L was made of one side at 3” the other at 2”. They were drilled out in accordance with the corresponding holes that were drilled on the inner rocker skin. I also applied extremely liberal amounts of Loctite Construction Adhesive to be sandwiched when the brackets were bolted to the inner skin. These brackets would serve as the inner support for the tube rockers.
Once everything was in place on the brackets and all the bolts tightened down, I jacked the tube into place on the support bracket and the outer body skin. Got it level and adjusted it into position. The point of the brackets being slightly larger and in 2 pieces was to be able to adjust the tube once in place before welding.
I welded along the seem of the L brackets where it held the tubing, I also welded the body directly to the tube. This took quite a while as I was worried about heat transfer cracking the body, or just melting it badly. Welding thin sheet steel to the tube was tricky, but doable.
Let me say this as well, I in no way intend for these to be sliders of any kind. These will not have the capability of a full weight slider. This is simply a quick and cheap way to fix my rusted rockers. Will this deflect a small tree from doing some body damage? Maybe, probably. Light duty deflection is a better take on it.
I took a winter hiatus and got back after it today. I will be making some updates as I complete the work, as it seems to evolve a bit as I tinker with it more.
Today I took care of the rattling fenders. Since the fenders tie into the 2 nuts in the pinch weld and I hacked mine out, I had to make a few small brackets with nuts welded on and weld them to the tube.
Since my rig is crusted but super reliable, I have devised some ways to mitigate rust to at least prolong the life. I only gave $4500 for her about 4.5 years ago and she came with great service history. I feel like I have more than gotten my money out of her and can get a longer life span by getting creative with rust mitigation.
That’s where the rusted rocker redo project came about. I had purchased new fenders and a take off rear upper lift gate to replace the rusted ones. I had them color matched with factory paint codes, but the rockers were roached. Which made the fenders look strange in comparison. So I bought 24ft of 2”x6”x1/8” from a surplus store for $84 and started marking up lines. I’ve seen it done on a few other models of Cruisers (55,62,80) and endless XJ’s. So I figured, why not.
I cut about 5/8” below the door lines all the way down off of the outer rocker skin and left about 2” more on inner skin. This also involved cutting about 4” off of my new fenders. I coated everything in Correseal and let cure. I then went back in the PBE Weld Through Primer.
I had two sets 3ft lengths of 1/8” steel bent into brackets at about 100° and notched them for the body mounts. The L was made of one side at 3” the other at 2”. They were drilled out in accordance with the corresponding holes that were drilled on the inner rocker skin. I also applied extremely liberal amounts of Loctite Construction Adhesive to be sandwiched when the brackets were bolted to the inner skin. These brackets would serve as the inner support for the tube rockers.
Once everything was in place on the brackets and all the bolts tightened down, I jacked the tube into place on the support bracket and the outer body skin. Got it level and adjusted it into position. The point of the brackets being slightly larger and in 2 pieces was to be able to adjust the tube once in place before welding.
I welded along the seem of the L brackets where it held the tubing, I also welded the body directly to the tube. This took quite a while as I was worried about heat transfer cracking the body, or just melting it badly. Welding thin sheet steel to the tube was tricky, but doable.
Let me say this as well, I in no way intend for these to be sliders of any kind. These will not have the capability of a full weight slider. This is simply a quick and cheap way to fix my rusted rockers. Will this deflect a small tree from doing some body damage? Maybe, probably. Light duty deflection is a better take on it.
I took a winter hiatus and got back after it today. I will be making some updates as I complete the work, as it seems to evolve a bit as I tinker with it more.
Today I took care of the rattling fenders. Since the fenders tie into the 2 nuts in the pinch weld and I hacked mine out, I had to make a few small brackets with nuts welded on and weld them to the tube.
. My intention now is to ride her to the grave. Great service history and nearing 300k. My goal is to reach at least 350k with her before I move on to another, better example.
