Ahhhh i need new sills for my pickup to pass my MOT an i know you cant get the anymore :( garage quoted me 5-600 to rebuild the current ones which im not happy to pay for a rebuild, what have you guys done with your rotten sills???

if you dont want to rebuild them or pay substantially more than the car is worth for someone to custom make some new ones, it looks like the end of the road for the pickup.

Seems like a lot of money to patch up a couple of sills, try getting a quote from a different garage or a mobile mechanic that does welding...

sounds like one of those classic stories where the garage owner is after a pickup on the cheap and is hoping that you will throw the towel in and just hand over the keys...

let's see some pics of how bad they are.

^ Def +1 with TT on this! That's way too much so shop around as I'm sure someone could remedy at a much lower price! Good luck

I cant scrap this pickup, i mean come on i brought it from a scrap yard because i felt it didn't deserve to be in there lol, i would give the sills ago myself but ive never done any sill work and don't really know how they are made up, i managed to weld the rear arch's back together after the shocks had blew through (reason it was in a breakers yard) i will deff get some pics Tom, wont be today though, more likely tomorrow

Decent engineering firm would be able to make new ones for far less than that with a suitable drawing.

Probably find if there were a few people wanting them and somebody did the drawings they might even make up a batch for sale.

^ Agreed, defective sills shouldn't result in scrappage! Try as above + perhaps some smaller garage outlets that may be more geared up for that type of work.

My truck would have failed on the sills. I got round this by using hatchback sills, which are still available on ebay most of the time. My Dad has a hatchback which I measured and compared with those on my truck. I just cut the bit out where the rear door would normally go. The rest of the sill simply meets up where it should, although you will probably find the floor edge/inner sills require some extra metal too. A small amount of fettling is necessary, but any half decent car bodywork dude should be able to handle it. I'm not a half decent car bodywork dude and managed it! I did pose the question on here about using hatchback sills on a truck and was told it wouldn't work, but it is possible to make it work.

Good luck, hope you get it sorted. I think the quote of £600 was possibly a 'we don't really want to do the work' quote. I used to give those quotes out occasionally when I was a carpenter and didn't want the job.

thanks jonny, i shall have a look on the bay for some hatchback ones and then match them up to the pickup and decide if i can weld myself or if i should pay someone else to do the job, im just not going to pay 600quid... in my eyes they are charging me for 20hours work when i can really only see it taking 4-8 hours... i may be wrong though lol

Hi,

I'm involved in car body restoration and although I do agree that 600 pounds sounds too much, replacing two sills to a proper standard with the necessary finishing and rust proofing (without which your back to holes within 18 months!) is much more than 8 hours work

If you just want them bodged to get through an MOT and look like ****, it could be done in four hours though lol!

Edited 23 January, 201313 yr by favguy

Mine took me best part of 2 days to get both sides done. The nearside floor edge/inner sill needed much more repair than the offside. (More crap in the nearside of the road I guess)

hadrian panels have been taken over now by this

http://www.crashrepairparts.com/parts/markid/720/cat/repair-panel/skoda_felicia_hatchback_1998_2001?_ts=12251

and it looks like they are running out thier stock (they had stock of both sides sills last week, but onlt 1 side now).

£600 isn't that unreasonable though (if they are chopping out all the rust and then letting in fresh steel), most garages are charging £40+ an hour (or round by me anyway) so that is prob 2 days labour and the materials to rebuild the sills, and if that is from flat sheet steel, you can quickly burn up the hours making the repair panels. Plus they will be budgeting on finding a lot of rust inside the sills to rectify.

That is considerably less than I paid, dunno what their post charge is? I paid about £70 for a pair. Snap one of them up ASAP I recon.