Rocker Panel Replacement

[hotdimmes]

If anyone is curious as to what you get when you order rocker panel replacements from rockauto.com, here is what they look like mocked up on the car. Keep in mind the sill tabs on the replacements are sitting on on my aluminum sill plates so they are sitting a little high and I don't have the pinch weld section pushed in against the original. As mentioned in other posts, these don't come with end caps for the wheel wells. The fit looks pretty decent otherwise though.







Unfortunately, these just replace the rocker skin, I'm pretty sure the actual internal structure is starting to rust out pretty good and unable to support a jack on the rear side:

 

[jbarner]

My rear is about as bad as yours...going to take it to a body shop someday soon and see if they can do anything for me @_@

 

[hotdimmes]

Grr why does this car continue to run so well!? For anyone interested, I repaired my rocker with pop rivets. Just rolled 200k and i don't have the skill to weld it and it isn't worth a shop repairing. I cut out all the rot(I acknowledge that those thin pieces of sheetmetal are structural in some way and I'm not crazy about them not being there but they were already rusted out and separated from the pinch weld for who knows how long already) and opened the rocker skin up all the way to the front so I could preventatively coat as much as possible. I left some original rocker(what wasn't rotting away) to attach the new one to. The rear is pretty much shot and I wouldn't put a scissor jack or jack stand on it but its good enough to get me another year out of the car. Attaching the new skin to the old pinch weld doesn't go that great because its too thick blistered up from rust and imperfect jacking.






I pop riveted the top in place and then had to use a jack to push the pinch weld side up and in because the fit wasn't great:


Not much meat to attach to in the rear so it sticks out a bit:


Painted with a rattlecan from Paintscratch.com ford code UA. Used a black autobody seam sealer(could use a touchup) around the perimeter of the new skin. Looks like crap. No one will ever notice and the car is practically disposable at this point. Still need to install my aluminum sill plates.