just bought a 2000 dodge dakota regular cab 3.9V6 4x4 3.92 gears auto. love the truck and plan on keeping it a while. the only thing is both rocker panels, both front fenders and rear passenger side bed corner are rusted pretty good. luckily most of it is surface rust except for the fenders. i plan on fixing it myself with a grinder and Dupli-Color primer, paint and clear, but i have never done anything like this before and am just curious on the best way to attack it and not screw it up even worse. any advice would be great.

 

I never did it myself till I started watching youtube vids and reading up on it. I went out and went to work on my dakota. Grinded it down to bare metal. Filled it in with bondo used 80 grit to work out the big chunks and to get it semi close to the body then used 180 grit to smooth it out and then too 300 to fine it down to get it smooth with the body edge. Did the surrounding area paint so I could blend it in. Sprayed a few coats of primer wet sanded that with 300 to make sure the edges were ok with that. Then got my mixed paint and sprayed it on there. Pretty much it was all trial and error. Finished it off with a few coats of clear and left it at that. You can wet sand the clear with 400grit or something fine then buff it up and get a good shine to it. Since I did a small area I skiped that. I prob did it totally wrong but it worked for me and looked 100 times better than before so I was happy. Total I had about 60.00 in mixed spray paint, primer,clear,bondo and sand paper.

This is what I started with. Mind you this is very far from professional and was just a temp fix till winter was over. It could of been neater and taken more time to do it.


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This is a few coats in and I realized that there was some deep scratches in the bondo still so I had to redo it but for going in totally blind and coming out looking alright I was happy. My truck was far from perfect to begin with.

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After all the rust issues with my dakota I knew my next truck was going to have zero rust on it and im very happy that my ram was taken very well care of.

 

thanks ramguy. as far as i can see from the pictures its looked good on your dakota.

Also do you have to use bondo because i wasnt even planning on using it. i figured when i grinded the metal down you wouldn't be able to see where i grinded and the paint would fill up the space taken away. and also my rear passenger side bed corner rust looks just like the picture of yours on the side of your bed. that wasn't too far gone to grind it down and still have some panel left to paint was it? my biggest concern would be grinding that corner of my truck and then figuring out i wouldn't have any metal left after the rust was gone because i don't have the tools or the skill to weld.

 

also the pictures where very much appreciated and sorry for no pictures with my rust. right now my truck is in the shop getting the condenser and bumper fixed from some idiot hitting me in the school parking lot.

 

Alright, I don't have pictures from when I did mine... Anyways, about a year ago, I was starting to get some real nice size holes in my rockers. So, I went ahead and used a wire wheel to get all the loose stuff off, then I used fiberglass (use the mesh stuff too) to cover the holes, I then sanded and bondo'ed over that, and then put bedliner on the bottom 6 or so inches all the way around the truck. The bedliner is doing a pretty good job so far.

 

i hadn't thought about the bed liner idea. was that harder to apply than just normal paint?

 

Nope, you just gotta be even with your coats and it'll come out fine. Until it dries, it will look blochy I guess is the word, but it dries nice and uniform. Just be sure to get behind the cab pinch as well (I forgot to do this, and now I have some rust starting back up again)

 

thanks for the advise. does the bed liner spray on or roll on?

 

Definitely use spray on. I didn't prime it either. Just sand it good and tape a good line and you're good to go.

 

You can get either bedliner to roll on or spray. As far as using no bondo you dont have to but from where you grind off the rust you will have flat spots. Paint wont fill in that much. To get it to kinda match existing body panels you will have to put some bondo on it. I didnt have to weld in anything but it was very close to being almost through the panel.