Hi all,

Firstly, didn't know about this section of the forum until tonight or I would've posted in here a lot earlier haha. Feel like a big dummy, but I'm hardly on here anyway anymore.

More importantly though, I'm going to start the hunt for some body shops around my neck of the woods which is DC/N. Virginia. I don't mind traveling too far for quality, but I'm not exactly rolling in it right now either. My truck needs a fair bit of body work, it's got some stage 2-3 cancer on the rear end, and the drivers floor pan at minimum could use some work as well. Eventually, I'd like to get it painted so it looks as good as it is mechanically, but for now I'd settle for water tight.

If anyone knows a good shop to take it to, I'd love to know. Nobody around me (maaco/caliber) wants to touch it.

Pic will highlight some trouble areas.

Thanks all, love the builds on here, y'all do some great work!

 

Maaco and Caliber just want to fix modern cars, involved in accidents, and paid for by insurance. It's easy work and the customers don't generally know what's going on or care as long as it looks decent when it's done. Restoration work is much more involved. Even if they charge you double or triple what some accident repair job might cost, they could probably work four or more accident repairs in the time and make more money.

There are regular body shops that do restoration and collision repair. My ex girlfriend's father used to work at one in southern Maryland but I tried looking them up and they must have closed down.

What's your budget? Quality work will be expensive.

Do you just want to fix the rust in the rear fenders and floor, or fix every ding and dent on the car and re-paint it. If you're going to respray the whole thing, there will never be a better time to fix dings and dents. Also, if you don't fix them, the fresh paint will make the dents stand out more.

Do you have another car to drive? The process is long. Definitely weeks, maybe months depending on where you go.

Toyota Fiberglass is probably the best in the business, but they are pricey, booked for years, and in Canada.

Have you considered doing it yourself? You need a garage to park in. Realistically, once you start it needs to stay dry and clean until it's painted. I've done some amateur bodywork. It's a slow process, but efforts pay off. The key is be patient, and fix anything you can feel. If you can feel it with your hand, it'll show in the paint.

Rust is pretty hard to eradicate. It's quite likely to return, and this is accelerated by the conditions the car is stored and driven in. Indoor parking is preferred of course. Winter driving really, really takes a toll. If you want to keep the truck nice, having a winter vehicle is a necessity.

Here's my 1987 right after getting painted. It was my first time doing bodywork, and I did it all myself. I then took it somewhere to be painted. I've since done a few more cars/trucks for myself, friends, and family. I've also started painting cars.



And here's the same truck this past summer.



And how it started.

 

Wow man, that looks great! I appreciate what you say about the process. I don't have a garage for myself to work on it, but I work at a dealership with limited space, so I've done quite a lot mechanically to get the old girl back into fighting shape. If money was no object, I'd want to do a frame off because I'd feel a lot better about it afterwards, but that's just not in the cards.

I think I'd spend maybe $5-8k depending on the reputation of the shop. It wouldn't hurt me to do that, and I'd get some serious joy out of seeing it in as good of shape as yours. For me, that seems like enough to sort out the major problems and walk away with a decent paint job. I'm not going for a showroom/BaT auction here. It will have flaws, but for that price I should be able to get to where I want to be.

I think in order to get that price I'd have to put in some labor myself and I'm not adverse to that at all. I just don't know anything about body work really. I did buy some Alfa steel patch panels so my plan was to find someone to help me learn to weld and then get those in place so I can sand and primer the car myself. Then let a professional tackle the floor pan and paint. Maybe before all that I'd por-15 the undercarriage though, I meant to do it this summer but time got away from me. In order to do all that though I'd probably have to rent a storage unit to work on it, as we're just so busy at work in the shop.

Really appreciate your input, and love your truck. It's exactly how I want mine to look when I'm done!

 

Dude are you theAlexMan?! I watch your vids on YouTube brotha!! Your videos have really helped me a lot man, thank you!!!

 

Yeah, that's me. Been making videos since freshman year in high school. Back then it was all Honda minibikes. Once I got into Toyotas, the videos turned into that. Glad to hear I've been able to help.

A budget of $5k - $8k sounds reasonable to me. Where you fall in there depends on a mix of quality and how much you decide to do yourself. For reference, five years ago I paid $1200 for the paintjob on my truck. That's with a middle grade base coat clear coat from Maaco. The paint itself is holding up fine, but they didn't apply it perfectly. I don't think they sanded the truck before paint, some sanding scratches from me doing the bodywork show through in the paint. There's also a couple little flaws like something got in the paint while it was wet, and they didn't get 100% coverage on the rockers under the door.

If you want to dip your toes into bodywork, I'd suggest the follow order.

1. Do the floorpan yourself and first. Your work here won't show, so all you have to do is get it in and sealed. This is a good place to get used to welding the thin metal, forming sheet, and using seam sealer.

2. Next, try filling a couple dings or dents, Find an easy one in the middle of a nice large area, not on a body line, and not with a hole or rust. The basic concept is similar to filling holes in drywall. Fill the low spot with filler, and sand it flush with the surrounding area. I find it much, much easier to put on more filler later than put on too much and sand it off. How much filler is acceptable is kind of up to discussion. Nobody would say the thickness of a dime is too much. An eighth of an inch is probably fine. Too much more than that and you should probably consider forming the metal to reduce the amount of filler needed. There are also some pros who can get by with just a hammer and dolly and next to no filler. That's not me, and in my opinion that's not necessary. Body filler is amazing stuff and when done correctly will last as long as there is paint on top of it. Just keep in mind as you're putting filler on and sanding it off, anything you can feel with your hand will show in the paint. There is no such thing as "eh, that's good enough," flaws will show once it's painted. Patience is important.

3. Lastly, I'd say tackle the patch panel work. Patch panels rarely fit perfect, so you're going to have to do a bit of forming to get them right. Work at that step has a direct effect on how much filler work is required to blend it all in, so I'd save that for last once you've gained skills in other areas. One tip I've seen but not tried is to use new aftermarket front fenders to cut patch panels out of for the rear fenders. Use a front left fender to repair a right rear fender and vise-versa. Looked to work really well and is what I'd do if I had to do it again.

Are you planning a color change? If so, think about whether you want the engine bay, and door and tailgate jambs painted. Doors and tailgate aren't too bad, but under the hood would be very difficult. You're truck appears to be the same color as mine, paint code 138. Darker colors show dents more easily.

 

Thanks for all the tips and advice! I had not heard about using the front aftermarket fenders in that way, I'm going to have to look that up. Secondly, I'm really thankful you shared your experience and how you'd recommend I go about it. I will definitely consider doing the floorpan now first, thankfully I don't really have many dents, just rusty holes haha. But I agree the little imperfections will show through.
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But no, I'm planning on getting as close to factory color as possible, definitely don't want to go through all that work to change the color. Your maaco job looks to be very close, looks like they can probably color match or create via code? Not too familiar with their process.

But again, thanks for all the tips and tricks! Just watched your clutch slave replacement video last week bc that's on my to do list lol. Lmk if you're ever up near ALX/DC I'll get ya a beer or something

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No problem at all. The front fender/rear patch panel idea is not mine, but looked like a great idea. I can't remember who did it, but they made it look great.

No dents is great, but there are probably plenty of small ones from 35 years of use. Block sanding during your prep work will help locate some really shallow ones. The sand paper won't scuff the low spots and they'll show up then.

I don't think the body shops make the paint, they buy it from a paint supplier. Sherwin Williams and PPG are the two big ones I know of. For OEM colors, they just type in the paint code and a machine drips some ingredients into the bucket to make the color. Custom colors are different but I imagine it's just adding some of this and some of that until the color seems like what you want. Sherwin Williams sells to the general public too, they're who I'm using to paint my Mustang. As far as matching goes, I don't think it's really a close match, but it doesn't really matter since the whole truck is painted. Jambs and under the hood have a different sheen which sort of masks the difference. If it was a collision repair where they just resprayed the fenders and hood or something I'm sure the color mismatch would be much more obvious.

My parents still live in Northern Virginia and I'm up there a few times a year. I'll try to reach out to you next time I'm up. Always like checking out another 4Runner. Same goes for you if you're ever down in Hampton Roads/Virginia Beach area and want to buy some parts, or just want to check out another rig.

 

Just sent you a pm. Thanks again!

 

I just happened across you pictures on the pics page. My son just moved to Arlington with a 2008 4Runner. I can't imagine negotiating the traffic in an old 4Runner. Your list on your pics page says you bought Wolf panels already. Good luck with that. He sent me parts that were not for a 4Runner and I still don't know what they fit. If the parts somehow fit you might consider using auto panel cement rather than welding. I ended up using fiberglass mat and West System epoxy. How is that any worse than gluing on parts from ToyotaFiberglass? Look on my page. My rust was the rears similar to yours and the rockers. I live in the outskirts of Richmond and went to a couple of car shows and asked who did their body work. There's lots of old guys out there that do work in their backyards but they tend to be bigoted against non American collector cars. I learned the Maaco in the west end of Richmond (Old Staples Mill Rd) has a decent reputation and I actually used them a long time ago to replace a door on my mother's Honda. I did all the body work, sanded it to 400 grit and stripped off the lights, grill, bumpers, all trim, B pilars, mirrors, in their parking lot. I had them paint the valence, cowl and gas door seperately. Since I have white I changed it to 040 Super White which doesn't have a clear coat. For their mid range paint job, I paid $750 during one of their "sales" in 2016. If you have a place to work on it I'd say DIY, it's easier to me than mechanical work, and get a cheapo job. It's 2022 and the paint still looks good but youngest son has crashed it a bit. LOL. I'll find a picture where you can see all the spots repaired. I used bright white primer on the fixed areas. The first and second pictures you can get an idea of all I fixed. The after is right after I brought it home from paint and haven't put all the parts back on. Good luck with it.

 

Nice! Yeah that looks good. I'm pretty sure I got the right panels I ordered from wolf steel. Is it a perfect OEM match? No, but it's close enough. Yeah getting around out here is a challenge. The cloverleaf's definitely don't help lol, hard to get the truck up to speed, but I'm rarely on the highway with this thing haha.

I think both of you have convinced me to try to do this myself, so we'll see how successful I can be. Thankfully there's not a lot of trim to remove for paintwork, just a lot of sanding. Hopefully I'll be able to maybe do this this summer, assuming something else doesn't break on the thing first haha