Bed sides rust repair

Some previous owner had tried and replace the lip that lies ontop of the bed wood, I would say that he wasn´t that sucessfull of doing a good looking job. Functional yes but not good looking. The bed side also had some heavy pitting hidden under some bondo, so I decided to replace the whole area from scratch. 

My little helper was caught lurkin around in the garage ;-)

It almost looks like there has been something moist ( pile of dirt or leaves or similar) against the bed side front part for a long time, resulting in some heavy pitting.

Removing spotwelds up front.

Cutting out the part parts

Preparing new tack welds (fake spotwelds).

That was the left side, time for the right side and then tack weld everything together.

Measure twise cut once.

Time to add tack welds and let it cool in between.

A few hours later. Witch some hammer and dolly on the welds inbetween to stretch them slightly.

Whats left to do is some light grinding without letting the grind wheel introducing any excessive heat.

Then its anding cleaning and primer on the to do list, before assembling the bed.