The driver wings has given me the most heartache so far though, as there was a lot of Bondo repair and I'm doing the homework to find out how to get that all squared away. Most of the panels are straight-enough for a truck that's going to see a lot of off-road, and that's good enough for me. I'll hammer out the bigger dents and get things aligned, but leave some of the smaller ones for the rustic/used but not abused factor.
Once I pulled the driver wing I was able to get a good look at the weld that had failed and man, did it fail! Pulling the truck and starting repairs was the smartest thing I could have done as it just wasn't safe to drive anymore.
As you can see, the weld put in by a previous owner just wasn't done properly and the stress was too much. It shifted the entire front frame horn up on the driver side about an inch and another piece that appears to have been fabricated with it died entirely, dropping the bumper mount down into the channel of the frame. This entire piece will be cut out and re-fabricated.
In this last photo you can see where the original piece was held in place, almost as if it was just tacked in and the real welding never done. It's dropped significantly because of the weight of the spring pulling it down up front.
As I said, this was the catalyst for the resto to be moved up, but we didn't know how bad it was, or how lucky we were, until we got the wing off and were able to see the injury.
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