Body work takes a while. By “takes a while” I mean “seems like forever with grinding dust, sanding dust, welding blowing through unseen rust, cutting out pieces, globbing too much weld where there are holes, spray paint fumes, etc. I’m 100% sure there are better body folks, but I do ok.
On the Bronco project, there were some issues with the body but they were primarily in the engine bay or other unseen places. The other advantage of the Bronco project was that nearly all of the body parts were available to order replacements. That is not the case with the Gladiator.
I’ve already spent some time with doors and rockers. now it’s on to quarter panels, bed, etc. My healing bench is where things go to get fixed. Let’s get it it because I’ve got…
No excuses — Alice in Chains
The panels were a bit..
Footloose — Kenny Loggins
… so gonna have to pin them down.
For instance, in this image, the bumper hid some surprises.
Once I pulled the bumper off here is what I found:
So yeah, it needed some quality time at the healing bench.
This was taken when priming you can also see that some of the joints were bent a bit.
Before fixing it I did a pre-fit. Here are a few of the things I’ll be fixing:
I found 2 other splits in the sheet. Here’s the easiest fix.
On the bench! In this pic I’m fixing the top which was rusted through on the left and had some pinhole rust spots which I’ve ground, patched, welded.
here it is after grinding down the welds, sanding, and priming. The “front” is on the right. You can see it’s actually a bit crumpled too.
Here it is bent out, and welded together, then the welds ground off. I think it turned out pretty well. The shiny bits make taking a picture tough to have it make sense. I also have one after priming.
The inside of the fender also needed some tending to firm it up.
Here it is after priming.
The passenger side is going to need more time on the healing bench. I’m not sure how much of that wreck-of-a-repair I can fix.
so I got a clamp to get bits to at least mate up. Oof, still has some old bondo on it.
and this just ain’t right
bend-o-matic got engaged here apparently. or a wreck.
The healing begins:
Here it’s getting almost into shape..
Here you can see where the spot welds are pulling through… oof.
What I do is look for edges like this. It indicates something was bent. It may also get stretched as a consequence when you unbend it. Be careful.
Here you can see the front is coming together
After unbending welded up some holes
The top edge had some pinholes as well.
Not terrible after some grinds and paint!
The back of the quarter near the bottom of the front door is a whole ‘nother bad.
I chose to cut it out and reform the area. Even that was sketchy
Seam splitter helped
Used dollies and a body hammer and straighted/coped/worked on the curves.
Trying to get this to match the other side… it was crinkled so is tough to get it all shaped.
Here it is from the worst possible angle. there is supposed to be a step on the top where the rip is in the metal.
Here I began forming a new bit.
In go the bends:
Without a really good brake, here’s what’s what.
After bends and edge bends.
Finally! Clamp, weld, grind, prime…
It’s close. Needs some up-close corner grinding but that’s about it.
Three are still some places that body filler is going to be the right answer. I can’t get the angles right on that front area with raw sheet.
Front quarters done!
wrenchingseason 