We were also careful to drill out the spot-welds from the floor bracing, so the section would come right out without distorting the crossmember. | 
Here's a look at the areas we are replacing versus the entire patch panel. | 
The panel fits the truck pretty well, and we used the pieces we cut out as a template. Tin snips were used to cut right through the aftermarket sheetmetal. |
After test-fitting our replacement panels , they were MIG-welded into place, using a Millermatic 110 welder with a wire speed setting of 150 and a heat range of 13.1 volts. | 
This setting allowed us to lay tack-welds down without burning through the thin metal. | 
If you look closely, you'll notice that we filled in the areas of the floor braces that were tack-welded to the floor from the factory. This keeps the floorboard from moving up and down, and God forbid, creaking as we drive. |
The floor patchwork is finished, but as you can see, it didn't fix our other problem, the kick panel areas. There is a sizable gap between the kick panel metal and the floorboard, and there's still the matter of those darn speaker holes. | 
To strengthen this area of the truck, we sanded off the paint from the kick panels and then welded our own patch panels over the holes. | 
The 14-gauge steel panels extend all the way to the floor to join the two areas, as well as provide a strong base to reattach the door hinge mounts. |
From the outside, you can see the heat traces showing the penetration of the weld between the old metal and new. You can also see how much work was needed to fix the damaged door mounts. | 
The last area we fixed was the rocker panels. Brothers' parts fit the truck pretty well. Once we sanded off the coating, we needed only to reinstall the doors onto our truck to align the new panels, clamp and spot-weld them in place, and then seal the seams to the truck. This was perhaps the most painless operation we performed. |  |
The Final Word
Now that our cab is solid again and free of rust, we are ready to drop it onto the new chassis. We'll show you how the chassis and suspension came together next month, so stay tuned.