Andrew, spot on..
Thanks 1/2 Cup.
Unfortunately I spent most of Friday and yesterday in bed with a nasty bout of the flu... So I didn't get to run the khanacross yesterday, much to my disappointment. I finally ventured out of the house a little before lunch today, not sure what I was feeling up to doing, but thinking I'd probably look at the welding on the F, or maybe do some bodywork on the Midget. Instead, I got to looking at the f250.
The f250 has had a crack in the filler on the passenger door for years, and more recently developed a couple of additional cracks on the passenger side of the tray. I know what caused the one in the door - when I did the bodywork and paint on the truck (in 2011) there was some cracking in the existing filler on the door, which I ground out, and then re-filled. However, not having done a lot of bodywork before, it made sense to me to leave the filler around the area intact and fill up to it to get the panel level again, rather than feathering out the existing filler to join the new filler to... So the new filler cracked away from the old, not long after I painted the truck, and I've never gotten around to doing anything about it (honestly, I think I was just annoyed at myself).
But the f250 has been out in the weather for the last couple of months, as the 'paint booth' in the garage has pushed the Corvette out of the garage, and so the Corvette stole the F250's normal spot in the shed. It's rained nearly every day during that time too, and these areas with a bit of cracking have rapidly gotten worse, bulging out, with rust stains on the paint around them... Time to do something about it. I picked at the piece of filler on the door and it fell off in my hand, and unfortunately the metal was pretty ugly underneath (my own fault!). Didn't think to take a picture until I'd already wire wheeled it back.:
It was pretty badly pitted, there was a couple of pinholes (actually worse than it looks in the picture), and the metal was very weak and flexible. Best to just cut it out.
New patch (there's another 2 magnets behind it):
Welded in and ground back:
All heat effected paint/filler etc removed and the area around the repair feathered back (not making the same mistake again!):
Some fibreglass filler to start bringing the panel back to flat (probably overdid it!) - I like this stuff because it's waterproof and seems to bond a bit stronger to the panel, but you need to use regular filler over it as it doesn't finish smooth very well.:
Fortunately the other areas only had very minor surface rust, so I just wire wheeled and rust converted them. These areas of filler were actually from prior to my ownership - you can see that they are between the green paint (factory) and the red paint (that was on the truck when I bought it) layers. They were filling minor dents. I would have liked to straighten the area better, but this whole area is double skinned with no access to the rear, and I don't have a stud welder/puller.:
So now I finished the day with the truck looking much worse than when I started! Gotta love when that happens...:
I have tomorrow off on leave, and Tuesday's a public holiday, so it'll get cleaned up and painted tomorrow. The paint's looking a bit patchy all over anyway, and Jenna's keen to clean it up sometime soon. After the Midget is painted, the f250 might get a quicky weekend spray job to get it looking a bit tidier again. Might consider going with gloss black this time instead of satin (it was satin, it's lost its sheen somewhat!), I know Jenna would prefer gloss. It will still just be a cheap enamel job though, I don't intend to strip it down, just scuff and spray. It's a work truck after all.
It will also need a small rust repair in the roof done before we think about painting it though, top of the drivers A pillar has broken out a little. And probably a new tailgate... I think the current one is beyond reasonable repair, it's been patched a lot of times, and has rust breaking through all over it. The rest of the truck is still solid from when we repaired it back in 2011 though, which I'm pretty happy about - it's lived out in the weather most of that time, is driven over ~10km of dirt in each direction almost every time it leaves the property, and gets washed probably on average once a year. And we did have to repair quite a lot of rust the first time around! Particularly in the bed/tray, and none of that has reappeared.
But yes, I might be a bit of a 'tallica fan, I was wearing a Metallica t shirt underneath too. 
