Learn from my mistakes, fixing up my old Tacoma, and hopefully avoiding a car payment

Decided to start contemplating how I would repair my rusted rocker panels. This is the most daunting task on my restoration checklist.

Today I practiced some welding with my harbor freight easy flux 125 on 22 ga metal. I plan on using 20ga for the repair so if I can manage to weld 22ga I should be ok. Basically I’ve got the power down really low and I’m doing a ton of spot welds and then taking a flap wheel to them. I managed to get both a butt and lap weld done. I’ll need more practice though before I weld my truck.


After practicing some welding I decided to take a good long look under the truck and really figure out what needs to get cut out and how to go about that. Staring up at the underside of the truck for half an hour had me pretty discouraged. The rust looked worse than I originally thought. I didn’t think I’d be able to save enough good metal to weld to. I also couldn’t figure out how I’d get an angle grinder way up into the place I’d need to cut out and weld.

A bit discouraged I almost gave up. Then I remembered I had a dremel and cut off disks and a flap wheel. 30 minutes later I had the rot cut out and bare metal exposed. I’m feeling more confident I’ll be able to tackle this and I honestly can’t make it worse than it started.

Before photos:



After:






Time for a beer and to order some patch panels

 

Haven’t really done much in the past couple weeks as my weekends have been booked solid, but I finally got all the bolts installed that connect the bumper/hitch/frame. I ordered new bolts to replace all the rusted ones since most of the heads were rounded somewhat. I also took the time to put anti-seize on them. I don’t plan on taking the bumper off again, but you never know.

I also took the truck on a 400 mile round trip from Central New York to Vermont to visit friends. Usually when we go on trips we take my wife’s Subaru (better mileage and it newer and has less mechanical issues). I actually haven’t really taken my truck on any long trips since it left me stranded a year ago when it needed some pulleys replaced. But it’s been running great so this was a proof of concept/mental reinforcement that this old truck could drive across the country and back if I really wanted to. It drives so well and has zero mechanical issues, other than the A/C needing recharging (or maybe a leak needs to be fixed).

I definitely lost confidence in the truck when it had some mechanical gremlins over the past couple years, but I’ve regained my trust in the truck and it’s such a good feeling knowing it can pull 80 on the interstate with out hesitation.

If you hang out on any car enthusiast forum for long enough you will think the sky is falling because everyone is always asking how to fix this or that, but in reality these trucks, especially the 4.0L, are a tough engine. Looking back I drove it for a year with a small transmission leak (low pressure side), another year it had a steering line leak, it’s had both front shocks break, the serpentine belt rear up twice (and one time I drove it all the way to the mechanic with the temp gauge going up), it’s had a new frame, torn cv boots, and an alternator go bad…but it hasn’t stopped or even skipped a beat. Mechanically it hasn’t even show a sign that any of these problems set it back at all. With only 152xxx miles on it I feel like it will keep going and going without any hesitation!

Moral of my long rant is don’t be afraid of these trucks, they are true work horses.

 

Today I took on an unplanned mission to patch my rusted rocker panel on the drivers side. My back has been strained so I spent the past two days in bed, but decided I needed to move and be productive today. After patching some drywall in the house that my wife has been bugging me about for two years I went out to only cut and fit my patch panel. My original intention for the day was to just make the piece that would fit for a patch. I thought I would be able to make a sweet one piece origami thing, but quickly realized I would need at least two pieces (i ended up with four total pieces). Once the first piece was cut I decided to tack it into place and one thing led to another and bam, the hole was patched in. I did burn one hole that I couldn’t fill so I had to add a small patch, but other than that it was just time consuming. I’m using a flux core welder from HF and on the real low setting it still is difficult to not burn through the 22 ga (I’m assuming) body metal. Luckily my patcher were 20 ga and a lot easier to weld. I mainly did lap joints so I would have more metal to work with. The entire inside of the rocker will get a thick coating of fluid film and the exterior will get some primer/paint/and then cosmoline on the underside of the truck.

photos aren’t very good but you can get the idea:

 

Got a coat of auto primer on the patch today. Still haven’t decided on whether I’m going to raptor line the pinch weld and rocker under the door or just keep it silver.

Whenever I get under the truck I get a bit of anxiety because there’s a ton of work to be done, but really it’s just one day or cleaning, one day of priming with corroseal, and one day of coating…but for some reason with a toddler and full time work getting three days in a row to do that seems next to impossible. I’ll most likely being doing a section at a time. I think I need to make a diagram to keep track of my progress on the underside.

Additionally I’m going back and forth between where to cosmoline and where to fluid film. There are some areas where there is a bit more rust (where the frame extends to the body mounts) where fluid film will probably be better as I don’t think I’ll get as much penetration with the cosmoline. Basically I’m concerned I won’t be able to tackle the rust well enough with the corroseal, and I can’t reach enough to do por-15, so fluid film might be better in those areas.

If anyone has any suggestions let me know.

Lastly I’ve got to get some serious degreaser under the truck as the fluid film from five years ago is still stuck on some spots!

 

Finally got a break from summer traveling to put some good work in on the truck and I’m closing in on the finish line.

Between yesterday and today I got the passenger side rear rocker panel hole welded up. This side had a smaller hole, but welding thin metal and making a patch is still challenging.

I also wire wheeled, scrubbed, and washed the frame in preparation for corroseal. The fluid film from five years ago is still leaving a residue so it takes some elbo grease to get off. That’s probably a good thing.


Before

after

The patch


Tomorrow I’ll corroseal everything that’s rusty, and then next weekend topcoat that with rattle can paint.

Found three things I would like to take care of while I’m doing stuff to the old truck:
1&2: new skid plates and splash guards. The old ones are beyond restoring and new ones are pretty cheap.
3:a foil heat shield above the tail pipe is lose and is probably the rattling I hear occasionally. I just need to figure out a simple way to reattach it.


All in all the truck is in decent shape for being 17 years old and having lived its life in the north east. Should be able to keep it going for a lot longer just replacing rusted lines and parts that age.

 

Corroseal day! Got the frame, and lots of other stufff under the truck coated, include my arms !!!

The hard truth that I think anyone with an old rusty truck will come to realize is that you can’t get everything coated! There’s lots of stuff around the engine bay that is either too hard to reach, too covered in old grease, or too rusted to coat with some sort of rust treatment. But the big, expensive, truck isn’t worth anything anymore items are coated. I’ll let it dry over the week and next weekend topcoat as much as I can with spray paint. Following that I’ll corroseal all exterior frame and body parts and fluid film the interior.

photos aren’t really good, but everyone likes to see something:

 

In just about two hours I got the entire frame and undercarriage painted with flat black. It looks really good and it’s a shame I’m gonna have to cover it with Cosmoline. But such is life in the rust belt.

 

Got the pinch welds painted back to factory and got the frame coated with cosmoline RP342.

I’ve never used cosmoline before but decided to go with it since the fluid film just washes off and my frame is in great condition (especially after all the touch up work I’ve done on it). I bought a case of 9 spray cans of the Cosmoline RP342 Black from cosmoline direct. It says it’s back ordered but it arrived within a week. I used 8.5 cans in total. I did one heavy coat over the whole frame minus the inside of the boxes area (that will get fluid film yearly since I can’t see inside it and can’t clean it 100% and don’t want to trap anything under the cosmoline). Here’s my tips for cosmoline:
-Bring the cans inside the house the day prior so they are room temp
-Use the straw! I didn’t for the first can and it made a huge difference in application rate and accuracy
-wear a tyvek suit with a hood, gloves, googles, and a dust mask. Basically cover all skin and clothes and hair
-put vasaline on exposed skin, this will make getting any cosmoline that gets on your skin off easy
-if you care about the surface underneath your vehicle lay down some single use plastic


Overall I’m pretty happy with the application. It dries really quickly and looks like a good coating without the “wet” look.


Painting the pinchwelds…I used paint from Touchuodirect.com. It was a really close match and worked well. I got their color and clear coat combo.

 

This concludes my journey to restore this wonderful truck to its former glory!
Today I put the new skid plates on and fluid filmed a bunch of stuff. There is still some rust on the bedsides but I’ve decided that rather than fight it I’ll look for bedsides next year.
Here’s the final product:





From here on out it will hopefully just be regular maintenance and repairs as needed. I hope this was informative for someone if not entertaining.

All in all I’m pretty happy with the results, hopefully all my rust repairs hold up.