I'm thinking of welding the tailgate and roll pan (when i get it) on my '91 reg cab to have the smooth look in the rear. And also shave the tailgate handle too. Maybe take out the rear lights and have some custom tail lights installed too. Anyone have any comments? Any Idea what a project like this would cost me?
Thanks,
Jimmy

 

It would be cool, but then the bed would be completely useless you couldnt even sit on the tailgate.

 

if you have a welder its not bad money wise..skin cost llike 100 i think never priced them..

and plan on doing it for hours and hours..body work takes time to get it right

 

Yeah, that's what I hear. The only welding i've done was back in high school when I welded a gun safe for a senior project. I would up grinding with the wheel way more than i was actually welding. I'm not worried too much about the bed being used. What I want to do is eventually is have a custom sub box built in and ported into the cab. So that would take up about 1/4 of my 6' bed anyways. Then I'll get a tonou when I get the little dings out and the body painted and I could use the bit of bed left for storage of my luggage or whatever. I'm doing it just as a project mostly. Not too much for utilities. But thanks for the input, i'm pretty far from that point and my mind is always changing.

 

i say do it..its different and will look good

just take your TIME..dont let it get hot cuz it will wave like CRAZY

 

Here's my s-10 race truck. I did it myself and am still working on it. I bought the tailight fillers and roll pan from cando specialties. The tailgate- I just cut the skin off the tailgate and welded it in. I wasn't worried about the gap between the tailgate and roll pan or the backside. I'll either put a line of fire there or add a chrome strip across:

 

It looks nice. The gap doesn't look bad at all and pretty much what I had in mind. Either that or complete the gap with a weld like I was talkin about. Either way, it should look nice. Good work

 

hey do what ya like, my pref. i use my truck like a truck so i can't have a welded tail gate, do what makes you happy

 

Do you plan to fill the lights also? Thats one factor. When I welded the tailgate there had to be a gap where the tailight butted to it. At least with the s-10. There was no way to get a fully moulded tailgate. Thats why I went with the tail light fillers.

 

Yeah, as a matter of fact I was just talkin to an old friend of mine who did that with his lights. He recommended if I shaved and weld the tailgate, I should shave the lights too and have some customs installed after the gate is welded. He did that with his suburban (less the welded gate) and had some old school cadillac tail lights installed. I know it sounds funny but it looked really clean.

 

I ahd the *** end of my dime like the one above, ran the line of fire led strip in the rear window, took less than a day to do, from start to finish