MetroX
Member
Here's some details and photos of my recent follies with fixing up my 2004 Model B Toolcat. I've owned it since new, and it's never been exposed to salt in it's life, but it does serve it's duty on a horse farm so it's been muddy and had all sorts of crud tracked into the cab for nearly 2 decades. I patched a few spots on passenger floor, but made a full replacement panel for the drivers side. I really think the rubber mats hurt more than they protected the floors. If anyone had theirs bedlinered when still solid and can speak to their results I'd be interested to learn more.
Making the whole floor with a 1.5" flange around the curved wheelhouse area was quite difficult with the tools I have, which is a 6" vise and an anvil. I did have to cut some reliefs in flange area to get the final fitment. I wanted this to be strong, but I'm not fooling anyone into thinking it's not been repaired. The replacement metal is all 16 gauge mild steel, .0625 thick. It's pretty strong stuff. Everything I cut out seems to be at least 18 gauge if not 16.
Rockers surprised me a bit, it was obvious for the last couple years that the DS rocker was getting ugly but when I cut out the damaged area, the inside was filled with rust scale and crud. there is no sign of any coating on the inside of these panels, so hitting them with a cavity wax / undercoating would be very helpful.
Any metal I left with surface rust was cleaned, then treated with a rust converter and weld thru primer on top of that. I'm considering having a bedliner spray applied to the floors now for future protection.
![20210611_182529[1].jpg](https://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/attachments/20210611_182529-1-jpg.703169/ "20210611_182529[1].jpg")
![20210613_115209[1].jpg](https://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/attachments/20210613_115209-1-jpg.703174/ "20210613_115209[1].jpg")
Making the whole floor with a 1.5" flange around the curved wheelhouse area was quite difficult with the tools I have, which is a 6" vise and an anvil. I did have to cut some reliefs in flange area to get the final fitment. I wanted this to be strong, but I'm not fooling anyone into thinking it's not been repaired. The replacement metal is all 16 gauge mild steel, .0625 thick. It's pretty strong stuff. Everything I cut out seems to be at least 18 gauge if not 16.
Rockers surprised me a bit, it was obvious for the last couple years that the DS rocker was getting ugly but when I cut out the damaged area, the inside was filled with rust scale and crud. there is no sign of any coating on the inside of these panels, so hitting them with a cavity wax / undercoating would be very helpful.
Any metal I left with surface rust was cleaned, then treated with a rust converter and weld thru primer on top of that. I'm considering having a bedliner spray applied to the floors now for future protection.
