Ole Yeller is back from the stripper

After waiting months and months, my precious bed is back in my hands, and looking better then ever! I was very nervous sending my bed out to be stripped for several reasons. One was that beat up old truck that hauled if off. Two you'll never know how damaged or full of rust a old panel like this can be until you remove all the paint and body filler. All in all I'm very happy.

Here's the bed and tailgate.

I knew there were these two rust spots in the floor. I discovered them a while back when I was removing the old bed liner.

Not to bad for a 39 yr old. I've seen people the same age that don't look nearly this good.

The front bed panel is a little damaged, but nothing that a hammer won't fix :)

This is the left bedside. See all the little holes. Way back in the day when a panel was dented the body man would drill holes around the dent then pull then out with a huge wood screw. This is not the way to fix a panel. The worse part about this repair style is usually the holes aren't welded up, so that allows water to enter the paint from the backside of that panel.

The tailgate. I want to get the body work done on the tailgate first so I can paint it, and display it in my office. I found my color last weekend on a Dodge Challenger and I'm super excited to see what the truck looks like painted baby blue metallic!!

Even the underside of the bed got stripped. I thought about painting under here, but it will never be seen, so I'll apply new black undercoating to the underside.

Well I have alot of work to do on this bed. Before the rust coating can be applied I have to sand the bed down to smooth everything out and wipe it down with wax and grease remover. Once the bare metal is covered. It will be off to get the body work started.