I need to update this, just incase anyone was interested.

June 6th, 2022. I started doing body work on the 49. This is important because I really dislike doing body work. I know how to do it, I'm capable of doing it, but I can only stand to do it for about 2 months, then I'm really fed up and I'm ready to paint the vehicle, regardless of if the vehicle is ready to being painted or not. Add to that, I'm really not the painter kind of guy, I can run the paint, and miss other places on the same vehicle, on any paint job. What I often end up with is a pretty good paint job on body work that should have continued for another month, and I basically don't care until a year or two later. In the past, I've used cheap paint, and its usually in pretty rough looking shape in 4-5 years. Then I conjure enough energy to take another 2 month stab at it. After 2-3 rounds, the same vehicle starts looking pretty good, if I keep it long enough.

So, I began the body work fully knowing the time frame involved.
Last year I brushed on some very old, oil based anti rust red oxide primer. This was some left over from a can from 2012, back when the paint was still pretty good stuff. The goal was to protect the body from the winter salt. That old red oxide did the job great! Being brushed on, it was a royal pain to sand off, 100 grit on a DA sort of made most of it smooth. Being realistic, the main goal on this round was to cover the many weld seams at the patches (the welds were all completely welded closed there were no holes), and remove and fill in most of the bigger craters. Places where filler work was to be done, I went down to the bare metal. I'm old school, I put filler onto bare metal (that is not open to debate at this point).
Both doors had the bottom 4" replaced (inner door frame and outer skins), and both doors had the Dakota door handles welding into them. The passenger door had a crease where the door was forced into the fender, and also had a crease across nearly the entire width just about mid door height. Both front fenders had the wheel arch moved and the passenger side fender was really bent up and was badly repaired in a previous life. The passenger side of the nose piece was also badly damaged and badly repaired when the fender was screwed up. Even the passenger side roof had to be repaired after someone's fix from years ago. the box sides had 3 tie down hooks (each side) bolted to the box sides that had badly distorted the box sides at those 3 places on each side. Both rear fenders experienced the life most old pickup rear fenders experienced, both were beat up, but had no rust.

Pic or it didn't happen, right?
Pic 1) You will notice most of the welding on the truck was was done very early in its presence at my place. Nearly all the early welding was covered by yellow paint (preserved the new metal & welds). This 1st pic is the best pic that shows the patch at the bottom of the drivers door.
Pic 2) This shows the bottom of the passenger door, and the crease at the front from the fender contact.
Pic 3) The roof patch. This side of the roof had the windshield opening 1" shorter then the same location on the other side of the truck! After it was damaged, someone welded it back together, but had it too short. I spent a good couple weeks getting the windshield opening and the door pose even close to correct. Notice the curve on this patch? when I got the truck, the steel was bent in, rather then out, there was over 1" thick filler sculpting that roof line. That was the 1st thing I did right after I figured out why the windshield opening didn't look quite right just after I bought the truck. If I couldn't fix this, the truck would have started of with looking for a cab.
Pic 4) This front 3/4 view pretty much shows the worst damage the truck had, and the reason for this round of body work. Perfection was not the goal, improvement was. Gene