This writeup is for your information so that this may help you if you need to perform this repair.

Im writing this after a snow plow sideswiped my dakota this past winter and am using the insurance money from them totaling the truck, letting me keep it and I convinced them not to put the salvage title on it. Money wise I took no loss.

This is a writeup of how I am going about repairing the extended cab portion of my 96 dakota sport. The damage went into the bed as well, and was even worse there. I found a mint bed for a fair price and will just put that on. You will need to remove the bed, a bit of the interior, rear window, and vent window to do this repair.

Now I sourced the new part from a salve yard I found on car-part.com. They cut the pannel off a wrecked truck and mailed it to me, for $300 including shipping. They sawzalled all around the panel and I instruced them to leave a bit of the rocker pannel. When the truck was put together on the assembly line, this whole rear quarter section extends all the way around the door up the the fender and includes the rocker pannel all as on humungous peice. Now I am not replacing that whole peice. That would be crazy. I cut at the rocker pannel and halfway up the rear window opening. Why not use the pannel all the way to teh roof? Well, I was going to but then realized when that the way the pannels are put together, the roof overlaps the quarter pannel and I really dont want to mess up the roof at all. So the place that will require the least amount of body work is the window pillar. So cut there.

Now there is an inner structure and outer shell that you need to separate. They are held together with spot welds. You need to drill these al out. There are probably like 40, it took about 2 hours drilling them all out on the donor panel and on the truckas well, = 4 hours. You need a sport weld drill bit which is sold at harbor freight for $3. Buy 3, I used all three that I bought.

Drawing a straight line with tape on your truck is important to make sure the new panel will join with a tight gap. the donor piece will be cut to match the cut I made on the truck. Use the spot welds as places to measure from. They are in the exact same spot on both your truck and a donor piece, the welding robots on the assembly line do it the same to like a mm or something crazy, so they are good measurement points for making marks as to where you are going to cut.


The cut parts on the rocker pannel and the window pillar, what ever its called, will be but welded using a welding spoon in the back, and the rest will be plug welded using the holes that you drilled out. (Hopefully you only drilled through the first panel) ,then ground flush. The welded area should pull in when welded and filler can be applied directly over the seam and then block sanded flush. You'll never know anything happened.

I still have to post pics of the finished product.

I will repaint the truck from being red to that light blue color that the new bed I got is. Pics will be posted when that gets completed.
I attached some pics of what the damage before looked like, what the drilled spot welds look like, where I made the cuts, what the donor panel looks like (green), what the new bed looks like.

You can see them here: http://sdrv.ms/108GsY0

 

Very good little post write up, I have not seen any one else do a write up about repairing the ext cab of our trucks. Can't wait to see the end of the write up and repair, keep up the good work.

 

Cool write up! The only thing I can add is that this pic has singlehandedly convinced me to do a Chassis Cab with MY truck. Call me crazy, but that looks tough! (and I can fix my fuel float...lol)

 

If you do use it as a chassis cab, id suggest painting the frame so it looks better. I painted mine when I had the cab and bed off and totally stripped the frame engine and all when i restoed it this past summer. Thats why im really pissed that this guy with the snow plow destroyed the body like that. The insurance company wanted to total it for that body damage and I said no way, after a frame off resto, I don't think so. I was just about to paint it when that indecent occurred.

Only Other thing I can add is that the truck will be at a loss for traction with the bed off, I rode it for a while like this with temporary magnetic trailer lights on the back and I spun the tires unintentionally a lot, almost a nuisance. If you're going along at about 10mph and just floor it in 1st gear, they will spin, and to make it worse only one spins because I have an open diff. Even with 4wd I've gotten it stuck in the snow due to the open diff.

 

Bumped to see if theres any progress. Kinda interested in how the grafted piece goes on.

 

I'll be working on it again next weekend so I will post pics then. Time is a bit tight now.

 

I posted more pics on the skydrive link. The peice is now welded in and the body work on it is done. Sorry, I forgot to take a pic before I did the body filler work so you could see the welds, I was very involved.

I welded back through the holes that I drilled when removing the skin from the structure and then ground then flush and filled the ones along the rear and the rocker panel. I did not fill the ones that do down the inside of the door because they are covered with the weather stripping. Also I used seal sealer in the locations that there was factory seam sealer that I had to remove. Its coming out very nicely.

http://sdrv.ms/108GsY0

 

Looks good! Good job.

 

Everything is done, I painted it and pretty much full restored it. And tinted the windows, 20% fronts, 5% limo on back side and back. Finished pics are posted. It is the same truck, i promise.

 

O.O Wow! Wish a snowplow would hit mine... That thang looks brand new!!