Matt and Shawn's Custom Flatbed 1981 Toyota 2x4 (some rust)
As you might know, Toyota trucks from 1979 to 1988 are notorious for having rusty beds. Click here to read about an important and potentially deadly brake problem you might not be aware of. I live in the heart of the Rust Belt, and I get to see exactly where a Toyota is going to rust. The most common area is on the box seams between the upper sides and lower quarter panels and the spot welds above the wheel wells. The box floor also rusts out to the point of being unsafe to walk on. As you can see in the above picture, this box floor looks like swiss cheese. The only thing holding these box sides on were the bolts at the front joining the sides to the center section and the bolts to the topper which rested on the tailgate. We originally planned on just sledgehammering the sides off, but the sides pretty much fell off when the topper was removed. The sad truth is that this is pretty typical for early Toyota trucks. Check out my fiberglass bed section for a permenant fix!
There are other typical areas of rust besides the box. The bottoms of the doors on 1979-1995 Toyota trucks and 4Runners also rust out to the point of seperation of the inner and outer shells. 1984-1989 4Runners rust out around the rear wheel wells and tailgate to the point of massive amounts of missing metal. Even 1990-1995 4Runners have a serious rust problem up here. The rear wheel wells, door bottoms, and tailgate rust out pretty bad. I will have pictures to show this soon. I saw a 1990 4Runner the other day that had a good three inches of metal gone all the way around the rear wheel wells. The bottoms of two doors were separated, and the tailgate had numerous holes. Though this is a little worse than average, it's a sign of things to come. The severity of the rust problem on 4Runners is made worse by the fact that patch panels are not available for the rear wheel wells. An entire new side must be purchased directly from Toyota. 1995 Toyota 4Runners are still pretty new to be rusting severely, but I have seen them with popped door seams and quarter-sized bubbling on the rear wheel wells.
It's too bad these vehicles rust like they do. The rust is what sends them to the salvage yards here. Rust is a Toyota's biggest flaw because they are otherwise very depenable.