Advice on doing body repair needed

[BoxerPitMix]

So the genius that owned my truck before me had a plastic bed liner that came over the rails and a tool box in the bed. The bed liner ruined the paint on top of the bed rails, and 4 nasty holes were drilled into them for the tool box as well.

Friday I am going to drop my truck off for a color-matched spray in liner and am going to have it ran over the bed rails to cover everything up.

But here is where I need help! I would prefer to fill the 4 holes up somehow before I get my liner installed. I do have a small welder like the one pictured below - should I put a small piece of metal underneath the bottom and try to partially fill the hole with weld, then bondo the top? It will be covered with spray-in liner, but I just don't want to make it worse. It looks like a rust has started to develop around the holes too... Should I grind it down to bare metal and bondo that as well?

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Here is the little Mickey-Mouse welder I have

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[kennythewelder]

No need to bondo. The bed liner spray will cover any imperfections. I would weld up the holes, but just grind the welds flat.

 

[Jrgunn5150]

Get a piece of copper pipe, pound it flat, or whatever shape you need to fit in there from underneath.

Weld to the side, then tack to the weld, to the weld, to the weld, etc, until you have the gap filled. Then just grind it flat. Just make sure that once you start you only continue to weld to the weld as it can take a little more heat than the sheetmetal.

 

[lester622]

I cut small pieces of metal and put them under the hole and welded them up and filled it with weld. Id finish it as best as possible because bed liner will not hide everything.

 

[kkirwan71]

If none of these work they make ceramic wrapped in foil that's sticky so it'll stick under the holes so your weld won't fall through

sent from my glade air freshner

 

[Jrgunn5150]

If none of these work they make ceramic wrapped in foil that's sticky so it'll stick under the holes so your weld won't fall through

sent from my glade air freshner

Really? That's neat, that's what I use the copper for, but it doesn't fit everywhere.

 

[kkirwan71]

Really? That's neat, that's what I use the copper for, but it doesn't fit everywhere.

Yeah we used to use it all the when I did structural steel work plugged up to 13/16 holes using it

sent from my glade air freshner

 

[Jrgunn5150]

I'll have to get a pic when I get home, but I totally goofed on my F100 floor pan and have been able to bridge some pretty big gaps using the method I outlined above also.

On sheetmetal, the key that I found, was to make sure I was welding to the weld, otherwise it got to hot and fell through.

 

[BoxerPitMix]

Well I welded them closed... I looked everywhere in my shop. Thought I had some scrap pieces or copper somewhere but I didn't. So this happened. Don't be too hard to me. Lol it'll be covered up with bed liner.
I've welded plenty of heavy gauge steel, but man this stuff was thin. After I blew a few holes in it I finally got the hang of it (sort of).

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[Jrgunn5150]

That looks fine to me, very good. And now you see what everyone means when they ***** about sheetmetal lol. It's not even hard, it's just, a certain technique is needed.