Fenders trimmed to clear 37 inch swampers. need to do something to create a lip on the inner part of the fender so I can do a better job reattaching the fender liner. I got some air shears so I'll be able to cut and fold a lip in.

Fenders trimmed to clear the 37 inch swampers

Another shot of trimmed drivers side rear fender.

crumpled drivers side fender.

close up of the crunched drivers side fender.

shiny new (to me) fender from a Bronco and matching color..this was before it got trimmed.

Old fender about to come off.

accidentally cut into the tub while removing the old fender so I welded it up..

not the greatest job but it's not something anyone is going to see so it will do..I hit it with some primer before I put the new fender on.

you can see the alignment pins for the fender behind the headlamp bezel.

Drivers side fender completely removed. In the lower right hand corner you can see the rubber duck bill for the cowl drain.

post trim, the new fender is just sitting there..looks much better.

getting everything bolted up.

here it is with the lower mounting bolt in .you can tell something got tweaked when I bottomed out because the lower mounting hole on the new fender wouldn't line up...was able to coax it with my hi-lift hack..the result is the fender is a little bowed out near the door..

side shot of how much it's bowed.

lower mounting bolt that was giving me trouble..had to come back a grind off part of the tab so it wouldn't rub on the sliders.

used a pop rivet to connect the inner plastic fender to the outer. the result is much better than the ugly bolts...

Tailgate lip started to rust. I had this repaired once by a shop that replaced the outer skin. They obviously did a crap job so I'm going to take a shot at fixing it myself..

another shot of the rust on the tailgate lip.

this is my attempt at a weld repair on the tailgate reinforcement this piece had completely cracked..not the cleanest work but it should be fine.

more rust

here are some of the products I used to fix the tailgate. Was able to get the oxford white duplicolor paint from a couple of different parts places.

this was outer skin with the fascia removed..that entire strip where the added the new skin was rusting, luckily it didn't go all the way through..

the lip was the worst..I had to do a ton of grinding to clean it up with a wire cup brush, then hit it with rust inhibitor.

outer tailgate skin sanded and hit with rust inhibitor

shot of the lip of the tailgate. this took a lot of sanding to get it even.

Tailgate sanded and primed. not the greatest job, but at least there isn't any rust.

b-pillar passenger side right by the door jamb. You can see where the water coming in from the cracked rain gutter has caused it to rust from the inside out..

b-pillar seam..you can see rust forming in the crack

PS - underneath the rain gutter. this is obviously rusted through.

back of passenger side rain gutter, rust is the worst here.

passenger side rain gutter and cracks. you can clearly see the rust bubbling up underneath the paint.

passenger side access panel. this was from a previous attempt at repairing the cracks.

Inside the access panel, looking at the back side of the rain gutter, passenger side.. You can see where all the rust has come through in the upper right corner.

another shot inside the passenger side sail panel..once I get it cleaned up, I'll douse the inside with rust inhibitor.

inside of the passenger sail panel..look at all the rust..going to hit it with rust treatment.

In hindsight it would have been a good idea to use a soda blaster to clean up all the rust. If I ever have to open it up again that's what I'll be doing.

another shot of the sail panel inside towards the back

passenger side drip rail..this side had about a 1/4 inch gap where it had rusted through at the top.

a shot from the back of the passenger side drip rail before I started cleaning it up..

the grey stuff is JB weld that I had used to cover up the screw holes from my old soft top..

passenger side drip rail cleaned up..the rust was a lot worse than I thought. you can see the huge gap.I'm going to weld up the back and then use a patch from the inside with panel adhesive.

back of the drip rail..

shot from the inside of the sail panel, I was able to easily knock out the old reinforcement panels..you can already see the day light coming through.

another shot from the inside of the sail panel with the reinforcement panel removed...the will need to be cut out.

this is on of the factory TSB kit reinforcement panels..the rust is mostly surface so I may actually be able to salvage it. at the very least I can use it as a template for my new reinforcement panel..this is 18 gauge.

both reinforcement panels

the view with both panels removed..this was a lot worse than I thought.

back of the sail panel, I ground out as much of the old seam sealer as I could..this was in pretty good shape.

drip rail cleaned up with rust treatment applied..ready to repair..

test fitting my reinforcement panel.

started welding up the corner where the cracks were.

good thing I had this spare fender was able to use it to cut my new reinforcement panels and other patches.

welded and ground down. not the best job, but with the panels in place from the inside, it should be fine.

passenger hole below the drip rail. It had rusted all the way through so I had to cut to clean metal to repair. this was after it had been primed.

This is permatex product called cold weld. it has a sheer strength of 3000 psi once it is fully cured. I'll be using it to attach my reinforcement panels.

my homemade reinforcement panel. I'll be using this one on the passenger side. made from a piece of the old fender.

huge hole from rust in the ps b-pillar

here is where the sail panel meets the body, still need to do some cutting to clean it up.

this area around the seam in the pillar was bad. going to need to do some cutting to get to clean metal so I can repair it.

cut out all the bad material and ready to start patching the sail panel from the inside.

all of the rusted metal cut out from the b-pillar. In hind sight I probably should have cut a bigger section out and used a larger patch, but I didn't.

b-pillar primed over

first patch in place.

Ignore this.

shot from the rear of the passenger side sail panel.

one patch in the b-pillar. patch was cut out from the old fender 18 gauge and attached with the cold weld.

second b-pillar patch in...

the permatex cold weld sets up much more quickly that JB weld, so you have to work fast..

test fitting my patch for the roof..Initially I was going to, but I decided to weld this in place. the was a lot more rust here that I originally thought.

here are y booger welds...no it's not pretty..but the the hole is closed up..

grinding down the welds..this took a while since I had to keep going back to re-welding spots I missed.

getting closer.

shot from the inside with both patches in place. at this point it is just the patch. I am going to add the reinforcement panel to both.

this is about at good as it's going to get..need to put some primer on it so it doesn't start rusting again..

used seam sealer in the gutter, but didn't let it cure long enough. wound up having to remove most of it.

getting the b-pillar ready for filler.

had to touch up the seam again.

top reinforcement panel in place I put as much cold weld in there as possible.

prepping the b-pillar..didn't work too well with my angle grinder, so I picked up a D/A sander from harbor freight..all I was hoping to do here was to get it primed to the time being.

rain gutter, almost done..need some cold weld to fill in the drip rail a bit.

another gift from the rust Gods. This was the front of the drip rail, luckily nothing had gone through, so a little primer and some body filler and I should be good to go.

harbor freight specials. I think I spent about $60 for both..the D/A sander has been great..haven't tried the sprayer yet, but it got decent reviews on the web site.

Interior shot of the b-pillar...it doesn't look pretty but hopefully the rust won't come back any time soon.

roughed up the b-pillar with the D/A sander and some 80 grit..seemed to work pretty well.

had to move the Bronco into the garage to paint. it was still a tight squeeze, even after losing 20lbs of air pressure in each tire .

getting the body filler in the seam..not sure if this is going to crack again or what but it should be good for a while.

rain gutter almost done.

patched the lower hole, used pop rivets and cold weld..hopefully I didn't lose too much rigidity here.

all primed up inside...hesitant to put the cover on, would still like to get some more rust inhibitor sprayed in there, but you can see from the picture that there is a pretty good coating already..

sail panel primed, ready to paint.

one final prime before painting. I used the self ething primer.

This was after a couple of coats of base. I used automotive touchup paint in an aerosol can. At $20 a can, it wasn't cheap, but tit was factory matched to my color code and went on very smoothly.

The rain gutter came out much better than I thought it would.

I'll get another shot with the tape and everything removed. all in all it turned out pretty good..At least for a first timer. In hind site, I should have painted the whole, panel, it's not a big deal though, at least the rust is gone. Now that I have my paint sprayer I'll go back later on and shoot the whole panel so everything is blended..

you can see the difference between the two paints where it was taped off. Plan is to feather the new paint in then I will re-shoot the whole panel and do a better job blending it.

rain gutter came out pretty good, you can see some waves, but it looks fine from 10 ft away...

not happy with the uneven way the paint looked, I sanded to whole pillar again and re-primed to get everything blended in. I have a few swirls but it came out ok.

primer dried, ready for 1st coat of paint.

paint down, time for clear coat.

looks much better with the pain blended.

Rain gutter finished.

passenger side done with the top back on..looks good.

This is the front of the driver's side rain gutter. Willing to bet that hole is all the way through..yay more rust.

drivers side sail. I don't think it's as bad as the other side, but the paint is going to have to come off to find out..,

gap in the seam on the drivers side rain gutter. you can see how the seam has separated, and I'm pretty sure rain is dripping through the hole and down my firewall..this spot is not welded from the factory, so I will clean out the rust and fill the gap up with seam sealer.

about to open the drivers side..this one had rivets in it and one screw...can't wait to how the inside looks.

not great, but not as bad as I thought..your can see the reinforcements panels are starting to rust..

another view of the rust on the drivers side.

at least the rust doesn't seem to be as wide spread as it was on the passenger side.

picture down inside the b-pillar you can see the rust stain running towards the floor.

fortunately, both of the reinforcement panels pulled right off..there goes the top..and I think I'll be able to reuse the bottom one..

this is what was behind the reinforcements. the rust was all on the surface. would have been nice if I had a media blaster to clean this off..things would have been much easier that way...

again, whoever did the repair before, did a piss poor prep job..

cleaning up the inside..not sure if I'm going to have to weld up the corner yet or not. there are a number of holes in there from where the screws for the old soft top were installed.

these gray blobs are the remnants of the holes from my old soft top bracket. will smooth them down then cover over with filler and seam sealer from the inside.

rear shot of the drivers side rain gutter, the previous shot that did this repair did a real crap job, the old sealer was still in the gutter and was rusted underneath. Had to go about 8 inches up the gutter before I got to clean metal..

cleaning up the old filler.

bought the napa seam sealer product. came in beige, not a big deal since I'll be painting it. Applied it to the corner of the cab, this stuff is not the easiest to work with. It starts setting up pretty quickly.

underneath the rain gutter.

front gap filled.

front of the rain gutter. this came out ok.

seam sealer in the drivers side rain gutter.

shot of the drivers side b-pillar after it was primed.