ColonelColt

Greetings. This is my first post here though I've been lurking for a couple of weeks now reading a lot of threads and linked sites. A week ago today I got my hands on a 1993 Cherokee. The thing is in amazing shape for its age and aside from a wiper motor mount strut I already replaced, it's just about perfect. That is aside from the rocker panels. Or I should say, the former rocker panels. The driver side wasn't too bad but big gaping hole under the rear door... The passenger side, well, it ended up pretty much being so rotten on the inside I could stab a screwdriver through it and pull toward me cutting the metal. Yeah. So after cutting away a significant portion of the rockers last night and discovering the horrible condition of the rockers, and that the rust was starting to eat its way into the floor panels and frame... Something had to be done. So starting today I pretty much cut off the entirety of the exposed rockers on both sides and starting on the driver side used my angle grinder to grind out and sand out as much of the rust as was reachable. Cleaned it up and sprayed it with Rustoleum Rust Reformer which is supposed to neutralize the rust chemically like this much-vaunted POR15 I keep reading about and that I couldn't find.

I also bought a welder. And it started snowing today. Hooray Alaska.

Needless to say, time is against me in this as winter will be here very, very soon so any spray on things need to go on sooner rather than later. My conundrum is this: How the Hell do you get the rocker panels completely off? After looking up inside of them, there's very little point in even leaving the parts that are in good shape attached to the rest of the frame... But I'm having trouble determining what is the rocker and what is the unibody frame, especially where it curves out and down and seems to be spot welded to the body metal.

Are the actual door seals/steps the rocker? I thought they were part of the unibody but now I'm not so sure.

While I haven't welded myself before, I've watched others do it, understand how it works, and I'm generally very good with tools and machines so with some practice I feel I can accomplish what needs to be done on this project: Replace sections of the floor panels and weld in some angle iron and tubing to completely replace the stock rockers. How do I get them off? I searched and couldn't find a guide to their removal, mostly stuff on building replacements after the fact and some pictures seemed to indicate people leaving parts of the rockers in place while welding to the rockers and unibody at the same time.

Any help you can provide will be appreciated. I've went from a much newer Toyota I didn't feel like affording and couldn't play with to this old Jeep I'm already in love with. Visual guides would be especially helpful. Thanks!

Black00XJ

Where the detours sticker is, that the unibody frame. And the bolt holding the slider on, the most northeast bolt, thats as far as you should cut to

2Evil4U

I've got to replace the driver's side on mine. I was planning to buy a set of aftermarket tins and see what they looked like prior to hacking into the old one.

ColonelColt

Unfortunately the entire pinch seam is gone on both sides along with that bolt, if I'm looking at your picture right. I'm surprised no one has a guide for removing the stock ones or replacing them.

ColonelColt

This might seem like a dumb question but are the sides of the floor panels actually welded to the rocker panels and that's what's holding them up on the sides?