Replacing rockers with rectangular tubing

[james curl]

Has anyone on the forum replaced their rockers on their P-15 with rectangular tubing?  I have discovered major rot in my rocker boxes due to forty years of Colorado red dirt that had accumulated in the rockers below the door posts.  The first twenty years that I owned the car it sat in my neighbors garage and after I retired in 2003 I sat it in my driveway so i could drive it and my 55 Chevy pick up every day.  The rain since then has gotten in around all of the glass and soaked all that dirt over the years.  About a year ago I started to see bubbles in the paint in the bottom of the door posts and the bottom of three of the  four doors, none in the drivers door from opening and closing the door every time the car is moved.  I can rip the sheet metal out of the bottom of the box with my bare hands, its bad.  I want to repair the damage as cheaply as practical as the car will need paint and upholstery as well as rust repair  and I am not willing to put $6,000 to $8,000 into a $3500 car.

[Plymouthy Adams]

key here is, do you intend to do your own work, rocker repair is pretty straight forward and easy...the cost if doing your own work is very little....time is a bit consuming and in my opinion a welding torch is the better method...outer rockers on a P15 are bowed a bit..do remember this with as with some suppliers this is going to be shipped to you 100% straight...you will need to be up on your game to install.

 

the manner in chick the cross braces attach to the inner panel would make me think twice about throwing in some piece of square tubing

Edited February 20, 2014 by Plymouthy Adams

[BigDaddyO]

Joel Torres over on The HAMB did something similar on his 47 Plymouth.

[Don Coatney]

Joel Torres over on The HAMB did something similar on his 47 Plymouth.

Have not talked to Joel in a long time. He is a member here.

 

http://p15-d24.com/user/366-joel-torres/

[Frank Elder]

http://p15-d24.com/topic/8131-i-have-been-kepping-busy/

[DJ194950]

Boy if you do all the repairs needed and it's well done let me know and i'll find a buyer overnight for $3500! Put that much or more in My pocket!   
Think a bit more, worst would be a break even and that sucks but things/prices are going up with other car prices /brands moving up making Mopar cars seem cheap-And they are-too cheap! 

Doug

[james curl]

I am not real sure how much of it I can do.  The welding will be the hardest part as I no longer see as well  as I once did.  It would have to be gas welded if I do it.  I can lay a nice bead with my wire welder using a self darkening helmet but just not on the joint.  It is only the lower portion of the floor board that makes the closure forming the box under the car.  The tops of the sills are still pretty good but I do not know how much rust is in the outer vertical surface on the closed side.  I guess when the weather gets good and hot I will get under the car with my angle grinder and body saw and start cutting that portion of the floor board away then sand blast the inside of the vertical surface and see what I have left to work with.  This will all have to be done on plywood in my dirt driveway as I do not have an enclosed space to do the work.  In the meantime I guess I will just drive it like I just stole it and see if it falls apart.

 

I guess the rectangular steel tubing is not a good idea but it was a thought.    Thanks to all for your replies, I will mull this over to see if I want to tackle it at 77 years old, not as young as I once was and the getting up and down is getting difficult.

[40plyrod]

Mine's not a p15 but I made my rockers out of 1x2" box tubing. To get the tubing to curve the same as the body I just made some cuts to the one side of it with a zippy disc in a angle grinder and bowed it then welded up the cuts back up.

[Daliant.]

I used a length of barn door track from Tractor Supply when I built the rockers on my '46, my local steel supplier didn't have anything in a light enough gauge that I could easily work with. The only drawback to the barn door track is that it's more of a squred off "C" shape than a rectangle tube, there's a cut out along one edge for the sliding hardware. The rockers on a P15 do have a slight bow to them if I remember correctly. I've never been a fan of the way the bottom of a P15 flairs out so I built the bottom of my car to look like a '39 Dodge (minus the running boards).

 

 

 

 

Those were some of the in progress pictures, the site wont let me load any current pictures I have.

[Daliant.]

Here's a current pic