I decided to pull off my bumpers and sliders to clean them up and give them some new paint. The undersides were getting rusty and dinged up from rock chips. I pulled off my sliders and got another surprise -
To go along with the other side rockers I talked about in my post above -
I prodded around and wound up cutting and grinding out a lot of rust from the rear dogleg areas on both sides.
I applied rust converter to the insides and then made my own patch panels out of 20ga steel since the entire dog leg wasn't too bad except in a few spots. After much welding and sanding I got it all smoothed down and looking good for a skim coat of bondo. Before completly sealing everything up I did apply some primer and then some rubberized sealant to the insides of the rockers as much as I could access. As a bonus I was able to finally seal up those "tupperware" holes on the passenger side from a previous body shop fix 14 years ago when I had it repainted. I smoothed it down and applied some truck bed coating to match the texture of the lower body paint (it had a tough coating applied under the rubber trim all around) and to protect against rock chips.
Lastly I tracked down some factory color matched paint (Medium Sandalwood Metallic in this case) in a large spray can with another can of automotive clear coat. It was the most expensive spray paint I have ever bought but it worked out great. I also shot my frame with some gloss black and used some undercoating on the backside of the rockers and in my rear wheelwell. I applied some POR15 seam sealer to a few places that needed it as well, that stuff works well and is tough!
All-in-all it turned out pretty good. I did all the work in my driveway and without any real bodywork experience.
I also got my rocksliders and rear bumper sanded down and repainted. I had to replace the swingout bearings on my rear bumper as the old ones were getting rusty and smashed/flat in spots. I wanted to see how much my bumper and sliders weighed so I put them on the scale before reinstalling. Rear bumper with bare swingout came in at 155lbs and my sliders were 67lbs per side. Thats a hefty 229 lbs!