Driver Side Rocker Panel and Cab Corner Replacement
Pickup trucks just seem to have a problem with cab corners and rocker panles rusting out, my '37 also having a slight problem here. While the rust was not severe they are in bad shape and have taken a beating over there lifetime. I was lucky enough to have access to this junk '36 cab that, believe it or not, had good solid cab corners. Someone started to build this cab as a chopped top channeled street rod. The floor and rocker panels had been removed along with a poor chop pretty much making this cab unusable.
I salvaged the cab corners and the rear lower section of the cab since it was in nice shape. The section for my firewall also came from this truck to fill in the factory battery box. Two bad doors also came with the cab that had the window frames cut off for the top chop. Small sections of these doors will be used later in my project.
Here is my trucks left rocker panel and since I like to save money I'll make my own patch for this area. The cab corner will be replaced with one of the salvaged pieces from the junk cab.
Before I started I put the door back in place to help keep things in the positiion they belong. Part of the rocker had been rolled up on itself so pulled that back down into position and straightened the ipper edge. The rusted area was then trimmed out with my cut off wheel. The back portion of the rocker panel was in solid shape along with the "L" bent flat section that the outer rocker panel was spotwelded too. The original spot welds were drilled out and then everything cleaned up patch panel to be welded too.
A template was made out of thin cardboard to match the opening in the rocker panel. The new patch panel was then trimmed slightly larger than the pattern with final trimming coming during the fitting stage. The new panel needs to bend in several directions so first the ~90 degree bend was made for the bottom outer bend. Then several releif cuts were made on the short vertical section to help get the front to rear bend. Then a cut was made in the bottom to get a slight bend as the front cowl area is narrower than the rear of the cab. Several holes are then drilled along the lower rear edge to spot weld to the back bottom of the stock rocker panel area.
In case anyone is wondering, replacement rocker panels are available but like I said, I wanted to save some money.
The left cab corner was pretty simple to replace. First I trimmed my replacement to size. It was then placed over the stock cab corner and marked all the way around. It was then trimmed a little bit inside this line and slowly trimmed to get a good fit of the new cab corner. Once I had a good fit I could set the new cab corner in place and it would stay on its own.
It was then clamped in place and welded in. Let's hope the passenger side goes this well!
Finally it can be clamped in place and welded in. The outer edge of the rocker has a slight curve to, it is not flat. With the releif cuts I was able to work a small section to get this area pretty close and finish this rocker panel.
