Rear Cab Support

[andyh1956]

I brought home a freebee last week & tonight after supper went down to remove the cab. I was given an '84 short K10 cab, frame & L & R fuel tanks.
All the cab mount bolts spun so I had to cut them. On the front I think I can cut some round holes in the floor & access the nuts in there & make that repair. But the real problem is gonna be the rear cab support under the rear of the cab. It's not rusted but busted, broken & some pieces missing! On top of that Bubba at one time crammed a piece of flat bar up into the right side mount area (After he cut a slot for it in the support) & tried to weld it from the bottom! Holy Dirt Dauber Bateman! What a mess!
Anyway this support is quite a substantial piece of metal welded to the bottom of the cab! Also the floor behind the seat has buckled & the bottom of the rear cab where it meets this part has buckled also.
The only rust I have found is in the lower windshield corners & this is fixable. I hate to waste this cab but can't find this support reproduced for the square body truck, only the earlier ones.
I have another '84 up the hill, it got wrecked when a mini van drove up into the cab with me, but I think the rear of the cab is good.
Have any Yall ever had to deal with the rear support on these trucks?
If you have I sure could use some guidance (And Encouragement!)

[old Rusty C10]

id love to see some pics of this but id imagine if youre handy with a welder its pretty simple to fix

[andyh1956]

This aint gonna be easy to fix. I thought about taking a wrecked cab I have & sawing the cab back off about 4" up from the bottom & the sawing across the floor in front of the seat mounts in front of the rocker radius towards the back & changing this whole section. But when my donor cab got wrecked it damaged the rear of the pass side rocker/ corner area so I don't have a donor cab as of right now. There is other damage as well, the area above this is damaged, the floor is cracked in several places where it rode on top of the transfer case & driver front cab support has risen up thru the floor about 3/8".
This was prolly a farmer's truck & lived on washboard roads all it's life.
I'm a mechanic not a body man but the body men I know all tell me the same thing, that's not the kinda work they do!
Man this is a shame cause the bottom of the cab, floors, & especially the rockers are rock solid. I'm gonna go to pick a part & look at the rear section of the 73 I cut the cab roof offa for my M1009 project & see what it looks like but I remember it as being badly rusted.
I have a nice 85 GMC cab I can use just don't wanna waste this one if I can help it.
I posted two photos but sometimes they show up on my computer but not others. Weird! So let me know if yall cant see them!

[vics stuff]

The piece pictured looks rather easy to replicate. I would cut that part out and bend up a replacement with the the nut attached and weld back in .
Have done similar surgeries on other parts of bodies in my shop.
Good luck
Vic

[andyh1956]

My problem with this is there are multiple bends on this part that are in un-accessible locations for drilling spot welds. The ends of this part weld to a 45deg pieces behind the outside corner.
I'm sure I can flip the cab over & torch this part out.
I MAY could just cut the center of this part out, then fab the new one a little larger to slip over the leftovers on each end. Nothing says it has to be xactly like the one that came out, right?
Besides, the oem one failed miserably!

[andyh1956]

After studying this problem I came to conclusion that only a rear lower swap was gonna really repair this properly. so I made plans to cut the part from a black 84 cab up in the woods I have that got wrecked. But upon closer inspection the black cab was wrecked on the right rear not the right front as I remembered!
So this blue cab is going to the parts pile for now & I will use an 85 GMC cab I have. I hate to waste this cab but maybe I can fnd a donor later on.
I went to pick a part today to look at the 73 I cut the cab top from but it was gone...