Pauls splitscreen van project: Cab Door Bottom Repair

This is a more a picture than word post on how I repaired my cab door bottom. The rust has been hidden under a layer of filler and rattle can primer, and has kept well since I first covered it up 20 years ago.

Here's the repair patch lined up on the outer skin of the door. And the rust hole that I didn't notice until the door was off.

Before I could patch the outer skin I needed to do something about the big hole. I carefully ground the folded lip off the bottom of the door skin.

With a cardboard template I cut a bending block out off hard wood lamite block.

Then cut a 15mm lip to bend over the block for the patch.

Then hit it a lot

I cut and chain drilled the rusted skin out tidying the edges with a die grinder.

Then stuck it in my sand blaster, there was a little leak of blasting dust as I couldn't quite get the door fully closed.

I treated the rest of the pitting with the rust blast treatment and a wire wheel.

Before I cut the patch to size I stretched the end to fit the profile of the corner curve,

I didn't leave enough material to fill the whole of the lip but figured it is going to be well tucked away and forgotten about.

Satisfied with the curve I treated the metal, punched the drain hole back in place then trimmed the patch to fit the hole.

Welded it in and cleaned it up just like that, (actually 3 day work and two patch attempts)

Once the inner skin was repaired I could cut away the outer, to reveal more rust.

Back into the sand blaster and another treatment of rust blast.

Any holes were plugged and cleaned up.

Applied a decent coat of rose blush lip stick.

Then tried out my new over priced panel clamps that get stuck in the gaps if the metal warps from the heat of a tack weld. Another tool I should have brought at the start of the restoration.