Frame rehab plans on my 99

weld through primer

it may come in handy

 

new project for me. son was rear ended at a stop light. heres some pics. after driving my old taco for the last 9 yrs, he came home with this!

 

That weld through primer is interesting. Might be a good idea for the underside of my new metal pieces. I was wondering how to coat that metal that won't be able to get any of the Eastwood. This just might be the ticket. Thanks for posting!

 

Oh yeah that makes sense. I'm from California where I see Tacomas EVERYWHERE (especially 1st gens in San Francisco because full sized trucks are hard to drive and park there). Almost every other pickup truck I see on the road is a 1st or 2nd Gen Tacoma.

I went to Maryland and Washington D.C. for the inauguration back in January, and wow. There are no Tacomas back East. I made it a game of counting how many I could find over the course of almost two weeks and I counted I think around 12. Don't get me wrong there's a lot of trucks there, but they're all modern full sized F250's, Silverados, Chevys, etc. I guess people need full sized trucks more in states where snow/ice is a fact of life.

 

Cutting off the leaf spring hangers took a while. Mostly because I then tried to save the bolts, but I'm going to have to get new hardware and bushings for the front at least since I ended up just cutting them off. I'd love to just go ahead and get new leaf springs now, but I can't afford it.

Anyway, I spent most of the afternoon and then evening removing the old undercoating before getting to the leaf spring hangers. Talk about a pain. What ended up "working" was paint remover and an inch and a half wide scraper. Slow going but if you've got patience it does the job. Once the majority of it was off I went over the frame with the wire wheel on the grinder. Messy business. I tried initially to remove the undercoating with the grinder but it smeared it and then strung it out in wispy strands like cotton candy. I wanted to remove the undercoating so I can hit all the rust with Ospho. I've decided to NOT cut out all of the suspect areas, but rather to just box it all in after converting the rust. The way I see it is with all the new metal and what I'll be doing to kill the rust and then prevent more from occurring I should be able to get at least the life of the truck it has lived now before calling it quits. Wishful thinking maybe.

Here's a pic of the first piece clamped in place to check fitting. Have to tweak it a bit here and there. It extends past the orange clamp about 10 inches. A long way to go yet...sigh.

 

You should put grease between the patch plates and the frame then weld them together. With the heat from welding, the grease will liquefy and seep in every little pore and crack of the metal, preventing any eventual moisture buildup in between the two plates that could cause the frame to rot again at the same spots

Good to see your progress!

 

if you wanna get something that isn't metal off of metal, use aircraft paint stripper. That shit will eat your skin..... No, really, it will. don't let it get on you.

 

Chassis saver is very good stuff. My advice is make sure it adheres to something rough. After removing the flakes of rust from the frame you may want to run 50grit sandpaper THEN degrease and apply CS

 

Just got the first piece tacked on! Ugly welds. I suspect they'll get prettier by the time I'm done this thing. Off to work and then out of town for a couple of days so unfortunately this is the most substantive work that'll be done for a bit.

 

looking good!

 

Update: Getting time to work on this has been more difficult than the actual work. By the end of day tomorrow the driver's side will be finished, so I'll post pictures of what I ended up doing. I feel pretty good about it, and will feel really good once the passenger side is done. I'm so ready to be done with this...haha...

 

Update:

Finished is a strong word. All pieces are in place on the driver's side. I just need to finish welding it all up. I boxed in the frame all the way from behind the leaf spring mount up to in front of the cab mount just behind the front tire. For the transmission crossmember I held it up with my floor jack, then cut the bracket off the frame, removing the rotted material behind it as well as enough to allow for the new frame piece to slide in behind it. It's just tacked on now, but I'll fully weld it in place. The drive shaft crossmember wasn't fully removed, I just cut an 1/8 inch gap on the lower half and again slid the new piece up behind it. For the leaf spring bracket, I removed the old frame pieces that came off with it when I cut it from the frame, and then bent out the "tabs" to accommodate the new width. Haven't secured it yet, but just have it clamped for fitting.

Thankfully, there was enough solid metal to secure it all to. The old frame lasted 18 years slowly rotting away, so if I can get that much out of it again...haha, wouldn't that be nice.

Here's some pics:


The new frame piece slides in behind the cab mount just like I did with the crossmembers.


You can see on the outside of the frame I was able to use several plug welds for added support.





At this part (right behind the leaf spring bracket) the frame transitions from being boxed to just being open C channel, and it actually gets about a quarter inch narrower. I cut out the rusted material so it's actually open which will give me a place to occasionally hose it out. I added a spacer piece, welded top and bottom, that the inner frame piece was able to be welded solidly to as you can see here.

You can see in this last pic, too, that the leaf spring bracket inner "tab" was removed. The tab was actually 1/8 thick so by having it fit flush along the outside the bracket was properly placed left to right. I'll use some scrap (got lots of it) to make a new tab to weld it in place.

I'll then drill evenly spaced holes along the bottom to allow for drainage.

So there you have it. Same thing will be done to the passenger side, and then I'll start the coating...

 

First coat of Chassis Saver just went on! There is a light at the end of the tunnel...I'm going to do three coats, and the can says I can do a second coat after 3 hours, so I'll have three coats on by the end of the evening, hopefully. I work nights right now so I can stay up till the wee hours. I'm coating everything up under the cab first, and then I'll put the cab back on, hook up the brakes, and then pull the truck into the driveway to pressure wash the area under the bed since there are lots of nooks and crannies that are hard to get clean. Then I'll back it into the garage and paint the rear.

The gloss black looks great. Brand spankin' new.

 

Well, would you look at that!

Long way to go, but accomplished a huge thing tonight by lowering the cab back down. Huzzah!

 

Good looking my man glad to see you came so far. You're about caught up with me

 

So my next steps are reconnecting everything, running brake lines, my new fuel line between the filter and the tank, new fuel filter, reconnecting the LSPV and associated assembly, etc. I'm going to get it running so I can pull it out into the driveway and pressure wash the C channel since I had a hard time getting rust chunks and stuff out from all the nooks and crannies. Then I'll back her back into the garage and coat everything with Chassis Saver.

There's a chance I'll have to do a bit more welding on some areas that might need some reinforcing. If that is the case, what all do I need to disconnect before welding on the frame? You'd think I know that, but really I didn't have to worry about this or that since I had the whole damned thing disconnected.

Thanks.

 

If you are talking about the battery, I did my rear part of frame with the battery still connected and I didn't have any problems. Though, it was less intensive welding work as yours.

Also if you have to do some welding, you should remove the gas tank. You don't want to take any chance of it going BOOM and it will also give you more room to work. Removing it will also allow you better access to wash the frame behind it and and the crossmember above it

It's good to see your progress

 

Gas tank is currently off in a corner, although by the time I get to where I might need to do some welding it'll be back up in the truck. And, the area I might need to reinforce wouldn't be impeded by it being there. I'll think about dropping though. If it were to blow up I'd hope it take me with it because I don't know if I could handle losing it at this point...ha!