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1st Gen. Ram - All TopicsDiscussion for all Dodge Rams prior to 1994. This includes engine, drivetrain and non-drivetrain discussions. Anything prior to 1994 should go in here.
So I’m looking at a 81 4 door that some one had as a project and I believe they just got in a little to far for them self, so For the 4 door guys out there have you had to replace some of the drip edge or other parts of your cab? Have any pictures or links to some good reads or videos would be great!
A lot of the threads on such things are getting real old and pictures are disappearing. I had an '80 crew project that I sold a few years back. That floor is no problem as long as you can find donor sheetmetal. The front and rear sections are common regular cab parts. The middle section of floor is crew cab only. The roof is a can of worms but anything can be done. Around here all parts and donor trucks are getting really pricey and scarce. I dont remember if the crew front roof profile is the same as regular cab or club cab. If you can find a solid donor roof to get your patch pieces out of then it's do-able. If I recall guys were removing the outer skin to get to the other layers. If you like working, fabbing sheetmetal buy it, if not then run!
I know the front of the cab is made up of the roof from a club cab and I just happen to have one, so that isn’t going to be a problem to find, I know charley pitcher makes floor pans for this trucks and the rest is standard cab parts I just don’t k ow how the roof lines come apart if you grind out all of the seam sealer in the drip rail and drill out the spot welds fill it just peel off? We’re that joint is in the back how does that come apart?
The rain gutter is 3 separate pieces spot welded together. The rear of the cab is spot welded on the inside on the seam above the rear glass, and behind the inner panel.
You can see the spot welds in this pic (that I got from the link in a previous post in this thread) along the rear of the cab.
How do you get to them rear spot welds or do you have to pull the roof back and cut them that way I really don’t want to have to remove the entire roof like a foot or so bad I hope would be sufficient
I've been there and done exactly this. Its no small amount of work and honestly you better have a lot of time and patience. I worked on mine for give or take a couple years, drilled hundreds of spot welds and my front section wasn't nearly as bad as the one you have pictured. I can tell you that, whatever rust you can visually see now you can expect it to be a good 12" further back in the roof if not more, and the only proper way to do the repair is removal of All the rust. I had a donor truck with a decent roof and that's what I used for my repairs, you can patch in pieces from extended cab trucks for the outer roof and cross member (piece that spans the A pillar that has the front drip rail) I believe if my memory serves me regular cab trucks have a slightly different front outer roof line and it wont line up properly, but that only gets you so far. The front section is made up of 3 pieces spot welded together (outer roof welded to the cross member in the drip rail, inner roof welded to the cross member where the front windshield seal goes). How I went about it was Step 1: drill out the spot welds on the outer roof in the drip rail the whole way around ( this gets you everything but the rear inner pinch weld that is hidden, because i was replacing the whole roof section i just cut the old roof off and drilled the spot welds, putting the new skin back on required the inner roof to be removed to gain access to that pinch weld. Also wasn't a big issue as I replaced the inner roof sections from the donor as well) . Step 2: Drill the spot welds on the inner roof, above windshield, above and around doors, around back window (where the window seal goes) Also the B pillar inner panel between the two doors had to be removed to drop the inner roof as its sandwiched in behind that panel (also if the roof looks like that I can almost guarantee you will encounter rust behind that panel in the b pillar the rear door hangs from, the roof can drain down through there) . Step 3:Start cutting and replacing all the rust, neutralize it if you cant cut it out with phosphoric acid. Give everything a good coating of paint and start putting it back together. 1- Weld in new roof cross member if required (it looks like it would need one) 2- Weld on outer roof panel all the way around the drip rail and the inside pinch point above rear window 3- weld in the inner roof ( I had to remove the rear part and re weld it inside the cab as I couldn't get it all in 1 piece. Hope this gives you an idea what you might be up against, its been a while since I tackled mine, still have nightmares drilling spot welds for days/weeks. Don't mean to scare you, I wanted to save mine and would do it all over again.
