First to tackle is this bit of rust hidden in the door jamb. Dodge 50s have a tendency to leak at the gutter over the door. The water then runs down and rots out the A pillar. This is often terminal because it is very difficult to repair. You basically have to fabricate a new A pillar and top corner of the roof. As you can imagine my heart sank a bit when I noticed this rust. Luckily in this case the gutter is still sealed and the rust is from the outside in, where the paint has failed. The A pillar is in good condition.

The easiest way to fix this was to cut out the whole jamb panel and replace it.

This is the replacement panel. It was a bit tricky to make as it needs to be quite a complicated shape. It is made with galvanised steel to reduce the chance of rust in the future.

That's better. Once cleaned and sprayed you will have a job telling it was ever repaired.

The left hand side just needed a bit of a patch on the A pillar

As is very common there was a bit of rust around the windscreen. The top left corner needed some repair work. The right was pitted but not too bad so I got away with just welding up the worst pits and grinding them back.

The rear of the cab had an awkward bit of rust that I could not get at to repair properly. In the end I just welded a patch in, joining the floor to the back panel. It's not ideal but there was not much else I could do. There were originally two big cable glands in the back panel, presumably for military radio wiring. I took the opportunity to remove them and weld up the holes.

Carrying on around to the front the damage doesn't look too bad at first glance. A bit of rust around the front of the right hand wheel arch and that's about it. The left hand side is in much better condition because that's where the slightly leaky power steering reservoir mounts. The oil made a mess but did a great job of preventing rust.

Under the wheel arch however tells a different story. Time to get out the needle gun of doom and see just how much damage there is.

After cutting out the rust there isn't a huge amount left in this area.

This panel took a couple of tries due to the odd shape. The folded corners should be curves but that would be a lot more difficult to do. It's all hidden when the grille is on anyway.

More tricky shapes. I like the curvy shape of the cab but it's a pain to repair. The rail that goes down for the front body mount is badly rusted but that will be much easier to work on once the cab is off. I wanted to get this area and the front cross member sorted before lifting the cab so the body will maintain it's shape when I lift it.

Now to rebuild the mount for the lower cross member and radiator support.

The cross member needed some repairs as well.

Now the front is stabilised I can lift the cab off the chassis, making access much easier for the repairs underneath. The white dots are from 3D scanning the front axle and chassis. The dots help the 3D scanner remain oriented while scanning. They are just paint made from talcum powder and isopropyl alcohol, which will easily wash off.
If I turn this into an expedition truck I want to get away from military green. Some countries don't like people driving military looking vehicles across their borders. Dark green also absorbs a lot of heat in hot climates. One option is a beige which shouldn't show dust an dirt too badly and also should reflect more sunlight. I had to do some dent repairs on the front corners so I took the opportunity to try out one of my colour options.

Next roll it on it's back. I put down some scrap insulation to help protect the rear bulkhead.

This gives an idea of how extensive the front corner repairs were.

Both rear corners had identical rust. I suspect the panel they installed here was not properly painted as the surrounding panels are fine.

As this is a difficult panel to make due to the tight radius of the lip I decided to make a hammer form. The sheet steel blank is clamped tightly between the two hammer forms so the edge can be folded over. To form the curved lip on the panel the metal had to shrink quite a bit so this required quite a bit of work, slowly shaping the metal over the form.

The front of the right hand wheel arch needed a fair amount of repair work as well. The first picture is after cutting out most of the rust and the second is after welding it all up.

I am considering converting the truck to left hand drive at some point so now seems a good time to do some of the body modifications needed. There is a bulge in the foot well for the steering column so I cut that part out of my scrap Dodge 50, did some repair work and welded it in the left hand side.

That mostly completes the rust repairs on the cab.

Plastic wheel arch liners made up to try to keep the rust at bay. The liners are made from Polypropylene sheet and moulded to shape using a heat gun.

The underside has been sand blasted and painted. The rest of the body is stripped ready for painting. I didn't sand blast the body because blasting tends to distort body panels. Instead I had to resort to a lot of elbow grease and stripping discs.

The driver's door was quite badly damaged at the bottom with some deep dents and rust. I tried pulling out the dents but the metal was too badly stretched. In the end I decided it was easier to simply cut off the lower half of the skin and replace it. On both doors the wing mirror mounting points were badly rusted. The mirror brackets were fitted with gaskets which stopped water draining out so instead it built up and ran into the structure of the door. I won't be replacing those gaskets!

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