2003 Tacoma frame rust repair

I’d hope so, it’s brand new!
I make bad financial decisions

 

Made a patch panel and spent the morning trial fitting it. Going to do a little practice welding on 22 gauge metal before trying to tack any of this.

 

So my first attempt at welding thin gauge metal is done. It’s not show worthy in the least, but at least it’s secure. I still have to grind down some of the welds but had some questions.

I read that when welding the thin stuff, you should just tack weld in a spot and then move to another, as opposed to trying to run a single bead. I think it is because the heat could warp the metal if you did one long bead. Anyway, that’s the method I used (and I still did blow through in two places). My question is, should I go back and tack every spot or if it’s nice and tight, can I just run some bead sealer all along the edge and call it a day? And if so, do I do that before I prime it or after? I still have to make two little caps to cover the open corrugated ‘hump’ on each end. Not sure if I am explaining that right.

 

I made my caps, sealed everything up with sram sealer and then used a rattle can to paint the patch. I also touched up some of the bare spots on the bed that were caused by the liner. It doesn’t look as good Onakat’s work, but she is probably much better at welding and painting than I am. . Starting to look like a truck again.

 

Finished everything today. Last thing to do is FluidFilm her. As per BDL’s advice, I bought a spray gun and a gallon of FluidFilm. What psi should I set the regular at?

Here she is. All done. I’m not going to put the plastic liner back in. Maybe I should go with one of those spray-on bedliners?

 

My Low-Range Off-road gas skid plate arrived yesterday, along with my e-locker corner. I am trying to decide if I should paint them or have them powdercoated.

 

@BossFan I ran 80 psi with gun only but cranked it up to 100 psi with the wand extension. I heated the gallon of Fluid Film in a pot of water on the stove to get it to pour into gun and flow when sprayed.
Good work Frank

 

Hey @BossFan
I hope you're going to spray Coroseal inside the frame box sections and allow plenty of cure time before Fluid Film.

 

Oh shoot. I completely forgot about this. I will do this first. How long would you let the Corroseal cure before spraying FF?

 

I gave it 2 weeks to cure before Fluid Film inside frame. But I really soaked it good.and it was running out of the drain holes.
You can still do the outside while inside cures fully.

 

Ok cool. That’s what I did. I’ll come back to it next weekend to FF inside.

I appreciate all the help I got from TW members on this project!

On an unrelated question, I am currently running 17” Steelers (I think they are from an FJ Cruiser). Since my original 16” spare had a lot of rust on wheel and the tire was still the original spare from 2003, I decided to get a matching spare. When I went to use the spare-tire lift, it was clear that the hole in the center of the wheel is much bigger and the metal brace that slips in just slipped out. Any recommendations? Should I bolt some flat stock to the spare to make the hole narrower? Could I get the piece used on the FJ (if they even use a similar system)?

 

Here’s a photo of the new spare compared to original. You can see how the FJ wheel is not a perfect circle.

 

let dry Coroseal for a day. Put metal brash on grinder and clean that rim before applying coroseal. All lose part of rust must be removed before applying coroseal.

 

I know this thread is a year old but I have a question regarding my spare tire cross member. I recently bought an ‘02 4wd. The frame is solid everywhere and passes the hammer test with flying colors. However, the one trouble area is the last foot or so of the frame and cross member that have some cancerous rust beginning. I removed the bumper, which was also rusted inside, and am working on replacing the cross member with the one on my prerunner. I have two bolts that are completely seized on one side and rounded when I tried using a 12 point wrench on them. I’m planning on cutting them out and may just cut the member in half to get it out.

My question is how structural is the cross member? Is it something that can be left off for awhile since the frame is laterally braced by the receiver hitch assembly?

 

I forgot I started this thread about 3 yr ago. Last winter I did the whole automatic to 5-speed conversion. This winter, I revisited the frame rust. Again. I was starting to see some weak areas above the rear wheels. So weak that I could poke holes in the side with a screwdriver. I broke out the de-scaler to clean everything up. The our cone was r pretty. I was going to go the Safe-T-Cap route, but then I saw a guy on YouTube (PostRT) who had basically tge same damage, and what he did was cut out the bad, sections, weld in reinforcements and the. Box in the whole rear part of the frame. That inspired me to do the same. I’ll post a bunch of photos later, but right now I have a shock extension question. Before I decided to go the boxed-frame route, I had already purchased the Safe-T-Cap replaces upper shock mounts. Both of mine were shot. In trial fitting the driver side today, I noticed that I would have to compress the rear about an inch to get the shock on the upper mount at full extension, which means as soon as I did that, wouldn’t the spring just always keep it at full extension? Granted? There is no bed, x-member, gas tank, rear-tire carrier pulling down on the springs now, but is it normal for the frame to be sitting so high above the shock? Should I have longer shocks? This photo was taken with me sitting on the frame and I weigh about 200.

 

What started this investigation was that I was that everything I drive the truck, I would hear this clunk behind me. I thought it might be a carrier bearing, but I had just replaced that when I did the 5MT swap. It turned out that the rear passenger body mount had rotted through. I put truck in lift and then found out that where the front of the gas tank mounts also was rotted away. That started the whole process.

 

I then removed the bed to uncover more problems.

 

Then the surgery began

 

Some shots of the reinforcement plates: