Restoring a RUSTY Tailgate

Finally found the pictures of the tailgate restoration. I thought I had lost the before shots. This is a great resurrection story.

 This is the rusty tailgate that came with my donor truck. Here you can see where I finally sanded through 4 coats of paint (it was originally a green jeep not brown!) to get to base metal. Finally can see the degree of rust on that tubing part of the base of the tailgate, and over 40 years of beating that tailgate took having things thrown around in the bed.

I was pretty much able to poke a screw driver through all along the top edge.

 Same was true on left side, in the same location. Although the top edge, and the main center panel only had a couple of spots of rust that went all the way through. so I drilled and welded those up. You can see in this picture in the bottom corner the brown paint this whole tailgate started with.

I took my grinder with a cutting wheel and just cut out long rectangles of that rusted thin steel until I got to solid metal. Then I sanded and grinded again to get rust out of the areas.

The one thing I was most worried about was that this is a hollow tube with plenty of rust inside even if it hadn't reached the outside. So I seriously hosed the inside of the entire tube section with rust eater and converter, twice.

 The back was really really beat, but not too rusty once I got really deep into the metal. I started pounding out dents and quickly gave up. Too many and really, who cares?

If you look closely you will see some of the holes I talked about, that I later drilled and welded up. I ended up sanding this with 40 grit, A LOT, to get through that really hard rust coat that forms on old pick up beds.

In the end, I welded in long rectangles of steel into the holes where I cut the rust out, and welded up a lot of holes. Grinded, welded, worked to get the worst of it sealed up. Then a light skim coat of bondo to hide my ugly welding, and it turned out pretty well in the end. Very solid and WAY better looking.