Rotted out rockers

zedbear · April 13, 2012

So I bought this truck about 2.5 years ago with about 70k miles. It looked really nice at the time, no visible rust on the outside. Some signs of it starting under the rockers. Well, a few months ago the rockers on both sides just suddenly opened up and are rotted to hell. There is also some bubbling/rusting starting around the rear wheel wells but at 12 years old, that's expected around here. The frame is also NASTY and scaled looking but i took a hammer to it and it seems solid, just cosmetic. I wash it regularly in the winter and don't off road with it but I don't know what sort of care it received before I bought it......

The rotted rockers are a concern because it looks as though the rust is heading towards the floor board supports. Aside from the rockers looking like hell, now that they are opened up it's only going to rust faster since they get filled with dirty salty snow. With only 90k miles, I'd hate to dump the truck because of this and resale will be hurt by the rust. Has anyone on here ever had their rockers replaced on a truck from this era? Looks pretty involved as it appears a significant amount of metal/rust would have to be cut out to reach clean metal so I'm sorta scared of what the cost might be. I see a lot of the earlier GMT-800's with this problem around here.....

zedbear · April 15, 2012

No one has had this done??

Easytide · April 15, 2012

I had a couple of quarter sized holes appear in my 2000 back around 5 yrs ago,,,,,i just beaded the lwr rockers down clean,took the compressed air to the inside cavity and dried it very well,,,then spotted in a few bits of clean metal..i didnt even fire up the air paint gun,,,,lol...just sprayed the hell out of it with the Dupicolor cans,,,,,for the little effort,,,i came out looking really nice and hasnt rusted since.....the replacement rocker panels are ugly expensive,,,,so even if i have to do it again at some point,,,way ahaead of the game

zedbear · April 16, 2012

Yeah, mine's way beyond a quick fix unfortunately. I think the damage was occuring from the inside for quite sometime before it split open on both sides. The inside is nothing but rust.