Pictures are worth 1000 words. What is the best and easiest (lol ya right ) for me to fix this. Also have some rust at the bottom corners aswell. I also have quite the dent that was hidden from bondo above my back right tail light what should I do about this just fill it back up? it is pretty wonky. Also my tail gate is starting to rust on the bottom pretty bad I was thinking I would just go to a junkyard and try and find a rust free one.



Forgot to say this is literally the first paint job/body work of any kind that I am doing. The fender flares cover this up so thought it would be a good chance to learn If I mess it up

 

The best way to fix that would be to get a patch panel and weld it in. Here is one site that sells them...

http://www.rustrepair.com/index-mf.html

What you would do is get the new panel (in this case #51 from that link), and decide how much of it you want to use and trace it onto the truck, then cut out what you traced, then weld in the new panel. Once welded, use body filler to take care of smoothing out the seam.

As far as the tailgate goes, you can either get a shell, and paint and assemble it, or get get some sheet metal and replace what metal needs replacing.

As for the dent, you can either cut it out and replace the sheet metal, get a stud welder and pull the dent out and smooth it out with body filler, or just fill it in with body filler and hope it never cracks.

My suggestion is to get a good quality body filler like Evercoat. Dont get the cheap stuff you can buy at autoparts stores. For welding, make sure all metal is clean, and don't stay in one place too long or you'll warp the sheet metal. For laying down body filler, rough up the metal with a 36 grit grinding wheel so it will adhere better and make sure the metal is clean like you were going to paint it.

 

For your bigger hole in your wheel well lip i would fid a piece of shee metal and just scab a small portion of that in place. But depending on the amount of rust on the back you might need a bigger patch pannel as 318slt said. The way that you weld sheet metal in an auto body application is to just use tack welds spaced as far apart from each other as possible and slowly work around the entire seam untill the pannels has tack welds all the way around the edges instead of a solid bead. I would also buy some self etching primer to use on the bare metal as this will stop it from rusting and keep it rust free damn near forever. I just got ahold of a 99 Dakota that a friend needs some body work done to and I'll make a bit of a how to with that as i get rolling on it. You could always take it to a body shop on some friday about closing time with a case of beer and ask for some insight on to what needs to be done and how to do it, a smaller mom and pop type shop is best, you'd be suprised what some one will do for ya for a case of beer.

 

I got a 2002 Dodge Ram 1500 4x4 and I'm getting rust bubbles on both driver and passenger side quarter pannels. So, my bed is basicall rusting from inside out. I'm told that it's worth the extra money to replace the whole bed (6'3'') of my truck because if I did patch pannels the rust would only come back. I also have my whole bed lined with the spray on Rino Liner so I would also lose that. My question is; do I replace the bed or do quarter pannels?