Driver Quarter Panel Replacement

Folks,

I am the original and only owner of my 96 4x4 standard cab Tacoma with 293,000 miles. After 25 years I finally put the first significant dent in her. My dumb ass forgot I was pulling my trailer and went to park into my normal parking spot at work and jack knifed the trailer into the driver quarter panel. Fortunately it was 4AM and no one else was there to witness the stupidity or worse, crashing someone else's vehicle. Put a large dent and a nice 12" slice into said quarter panel. Ordered a new complete outer bed panel yesterday. Body shop wants $700 for install and paint. I think I can do the install myself. My bed is metal, unlike a lot of Tacoma's with the plastic bed. Is the bed panel welded or bolted on or both? I do have a welder and I can weld at an amateur level. I was unable to find any you tube videos. Any help or advice is appreciated.

 

First, that $700 for replacing/painting the entire bedside seems pretty reasonable.

If you do it yourself, and you cut the damaged area out instead of replacing the entire bedside, get one of these flange tools for $35 from Harbor Freight.



They create a nice, recessed ledge for the placement and spot welding of the new piece. Also it will help with minimizing weld grinding and body filler needs.

If you are doing the entire bedside, there are both bolts and spot welds you'll need to remove.

Without pics, it's a it hard to judge, but I'd probably cut out the damaged part and replace it.

 

Just pay the 700 and be done with it. Sounds like a pretty good deal. I doubt that anyone is going to want to paint it after you’ve tried to do the body work yourself.

 

Put the entire bedroom side on or it will look like shit.Grind off the spot welds you’ll have to set the bed back a little bit so you can get to the spot welds on the front behind the cab

 

Whichever way you go if you’re gonna be separating spot welds I’ve had good luck with a tool such as this. I don’t know the quality of the HF cutter but they are cheap.

 

I've had great luck with that HF spot weld cutter. I needed to cut through 52 spot welds replacing a radiator support on a 2000 Nissan Maxima.
I was sceptical about the harbor freight spot weld cutter so I bought 5 of them ($5 each back then).
That tool worked great. The 1st one i used cut through all 52 spot welds ( i oiled it down while drilling). It cut as good on the 52nd spot weld as it did on the 1st.
The other 4 are still sitting in my toolbox unopened.
Also note how the serrated part is double sided, it unscrews so you can flip it around.
Great tool.