Los Gatos?

How did you do it, how much did it cost, and how does it look now??

oldsub86

How bad is it? I have rust that needs to be dealt with too but most of the rust on my truck is down low and will be hidden by the bumper pieces on the sides. I plan to take a stab at it myself in the spring once the weather warms up a bit.

Plays_with_Toys

Is this for your truck or your or your 4runner? If its your truck I can answer you....

I don't know how much rust you have or how bad you have it, but my dad and I tackled it all in a week. My case was pretty bad, had a good 2.5" hole behind one fender, with about a 5.5inch diameter rusting area around the hole. On the opposite side was a hole 12" long by 1" tall.

Here's a before pic:



Here's some after pics:

Behind the rear fender was the hole (below the seam)


Though I don't have a before pic of this side, the rust was a huge gaping hole infront of the wheel well, above the seam, you can see that I didn't continue the body lin, but otherwise, when you look at it, its hard to notice, unless you're picky about it.




All we did was remove the inner panels of the truck bed, then with a grinder took out the rusted metal, and then stripped about 2" of paint all the way around the area we were going to work on. For the 12" hole we welded in a new piece of metal, keeping a cold, damp cloth rubbing over the body so the metal wouldn't warp. The smaller hole we used a bondo patch kit that had a woven metal like the gutter guard mod uses, that allows the bondo to seep into it. Then for both we applied a rough bondo patch over it and into some of the paint stripped area. Let it dry, applied more where it was needed to build up the size. Then sanded it. Started at something like 40grit, and by the end we were useing 2000grit for wetsanding. Best way to describe how it should feel to the hand is... no different than the rest of the truck. It should be as smooth as dry skin (not cracked dry skin).

There was a little bit of rust infront of the driver side rear fender, you can see in the before pic. This wasn't a hard piece to do, just tedious. Because most of the body line was still there, I shaped the bondo to match, which took quite a while to get it built up and sanded right. Lastly, I used about 4-5 coats of undercoating, which hopefully will prevent the rust for a while.

Total cost was about.... $60-80. But we already had the welder, grinder. Hope I helped, if you have some more questions, I can try and help.

metalhed

Greetings I had and still have that damn rust problem. I had a friend, professional bodyman, fix it for me and it looked great for 2-3 years and now it is back. The wheel well area is bubbly and rusty. Just a poor design by Toyota. I am through fixing it. the bed will just rot, I have plans for a flat bed once it gets too bad. I had the inner fender area coated and treated and blessed and chanted over, it just rusts, no matter what. Good luck with yours

Plays_with_Toys

Talking with my mechanic, who has a toyota as well. He says if you use grounding straps on the bed to the frame it helps, because toyota used an electro-something or other paint, so that it would seal and protect against rust as long as the bed was grounded.... But the bed isn't grounded. Thats what the straps are for.

StingRay

If you are talking about a second gen Runner then Toyota sells a rear quarter patch panel pretty cheap that sounds like it works pretty well. A buddy of mine had them put on his and I can't tell. I do bodywork as a hobby, am quite picky about it all and they look good to me.

Los Gatos?

Oh sorry this would be the quarter rust on the 4Runner. The pickup has bed rust where it was scraped along what appears to have been a low wall of some sort, but I am probably just going to replace the bed if it rusts out to bad (there is creasing in the metal, the 4Runner is just plain rusty )

I will look into the patch panel from toyota, I really want to repair it with metal, not bondo, if I can help it. Although for the cost bondo sounds more reasonable...especially if it will come back!


Thanks for the help!

StingRay

Properly repair it with a Toyota patch panel and it will last as long as the original did. Note I said properly. If a sloppy job is done and proper attention is not paid to rust removal, repair and surface preparation and protection to all affected and adjacent parts then it is not a PROPER job.

apc

I did both sides about 2 years ago. The new panels are from Toyota. Total costs was about $2,000 CDN.

Here is the rust I had:



Here is the new panel:



Here is the finished work:

Los Gatos?

Nice, that appears to be exactly where I have rust!! $2000CDN is what... $67.40? J/K ... Like $1600, right?