Hi all,
I have a '75 w200 that me and a friend have been trying to fix up. We knew the floor boards needed replacing but tonight when we started cutting away some of the rust we found it is much worse than we thought. The only usable metal on the floor is the upper half of the tranny tunnel and the pieces directly under the seats. The rocker panels are rusted to the point where they won't even support my weight (150lbs).

We aren't fixing this truck up to be a show truck. All it needs to do is plow snow this winter and do a little off-roading every now and then. But we still want the floors to be solid and look good from a distance.

So my question is, what is the best way to proceed from here? I know its a long shot but I'm looking for something quick, easy, and solid. Any suggestions? What would you do?

 

find a new cab. it might be easier and cheaper than replacing the floors and rocker panels.

 

Other than going with Crazywolfie on this...
which you can buy another full truck for like $800 I've found, with no motor... From my understanding, the regular cab d/w 150/250 cabs will fit on the older 200 truck. Might need the front clip with that too though... ofcourse, might be easier to pull the motor out of the truck you have and pop it in a motorless inexpensive truck...

OR the least expensive AND most safe way I can think of,
remove the seat
get you a sheet of 1/16 or 1/8 inch steel about 2 foot longer than the cab is wide, have it bent to go over the tunnel, and have the driver side bent down to go over the rocker panel, then have the same done on the passenger side, but have it cut off so it can be welded back on when the sheet is in place... and have the sides wrap down under and back in... (thus the need to have it cut and welded back on)

cut off all the flaking rusted areas, remove the rest of the rust, and paint with rustoleum (or car paint if you want to spend the money)... but make sure there is no rust, and no bare metal when you're done prepping the rockers and floor board...

If you can't find a single solid sheet long enough, weld several together... then you can have two seperate floor pans attached with a tunnel cover piece (can be smaller), with the rocker covers welded on seperate too... but I'd weld only the new stuff together, then just tack it in place, or use nuts and bolts...

that's the only two solutions I can think of... buying the bottom of a cab is impractical, and way more work than it's worth considering all the welding you'd have to do, and having to remove the cab... the ways I said, the only think you'll have to remove is the seat. Probably won't last no 10 years or anything, ESPECIALLY as a plow truck, but it'd get ya through a few seasons I'm sure. If you can find aluminum sheet, that would be better since it won't rust out, and can be moved to a new cab later when you replace the cab.



oh, my step father just chimed in too....
much less expensive, much less safe, but can probably be done in an afternoon...
2x3's and 3/4 inch plywood with some rubber bushings to bolt the 2x3 to the frame ... and keep everything seperate from the cab it's self, and use thick rubber foam to seal between the wood and cab...
Like I said... NOT safest, but probably cheapest (and I do mean CHEAPEST) way to do it... I'd give it a season before it either rotted through from getting soaked and freezing... or catching fire LOL...

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do you plan on driving it on the road or are you going to trailer it to where your going to go 4x4ing? if you plan on driving it on the road you will have to find a cab that is in better shape. from the pictures you can see that there is nothing left of the front cab mount. i think you might be able to use any regular dodge truck cab made between 1975 and 1993. i don't think the changed the cab much they did change the body line on the fenders and the doors.

 

Thanks for the replies. Getting a new cab is out of the question at the moment. I don't feel like putting the money into it, and swapping cabs looks like it would be a huge pain the in a**.

I plan on driving it to wherever we're 4x4ing. Are the front cab mounts really that important? The cab seems fine when we're going down the road at 60mph.

I think the current plan is to weld a few 1/8" metal sheets in there. We will weld them to the original floor under the seat, and also to the tranny tunnel. Then we will bolt the sheets to the frame using the existing tranny mount bolts. How does that sound? The only problem is how to support the new floor at the rocker panels. Any suggestions? AeSix, wouldn't running a 1/8" sheet of metal over the rocker panels like you suggested prevent the doors from closing?

We actually thought about using plywood for the floor, but the exhaust manifolds are REALLY close to it, and it would probably just rot away in a few months anyway unless we buy really expensive treated wood (not gonna happen). We had a few good laughs thinking of ways to use wooden floorboards though.

 

you might be able to get away with welding the floors. i'm not sure what the cops would think if you ever got pulled over. they tend to really put their foot down when it come to safety. the front cab mounts are not as important as the back cab mounts but then again you have to think what the cops would think.

 

Well, I don't plan on getting pulled over, but you know how that goes. The whole floor will be coated in frame paint, rhino liner, or rustoleum, and then on top of that we have a large roll of 3/8" rubber that will be cut to size and laid over everything. This way the cops won't know what's going on underneath the floor, so I should be okay there.

 

I thought about the doors not being able to close, but... they're so rusted out, if nothing else, a sledge hammer to pound the new sheet metal down would let ya do it.

I don't know bout where ya live, but down here, the cops don't really care what a car looks like, as long as it's solid. I have a friend who drives an old CJ 6... well, the frame is from a CJ anyways, the body is all welded sheet metal. not a stitch of original body metal below and behind the front dash. BUT it don't look like it was a shadetree / beer:30 body job either.

 

I looked under the doors today and there should be more than enough room for a chunk of sheet metal. There's at least 1/4" of space b/t the rockers and the bottom of the door. The cops up here don't really care much, as long as you have lights and something that resembles doors, they usually don't complain.

The sheet metal we have available is all galvanized. I've been told this stuff is a bitch to weld, so we're probably gonna pop rivet the whole thing.

 

galvanized stuff is prety much the same as any other metal except you burn to choating off as you weld. i use to weld galvanized stuff all the time. the only thing is the toxic fume. you can get galvanized poisoning. where i live cars have to pass a safety inspection before the can be plated for the road.