Gotta love living in the rust belt VS Rocker panel replacement

Hello boys and girls. I recently traded one of my motorcycles for a (what I thought) was a cherry 98 528I. relatively reasonable miles. Typicall blown engine gasket between cyl 4 and 5 (no biggie). The major pro's to this car (or so I thought) was the body. Nice and solid. with only a little bit of rust bubling at the rear drivers side fender. Got the car home, went to jack it up to pull the engine for a full rebuild and guess what. Drivers side rocker is all rotted through. The front of the rocker as well as the rear of the drivers side rocker panel is completely rusted through at the jack points. The POS PO had fiberglassed over the whole thing and actually put the jack pads back on!! I must say. He actually did a dam good job of disguising the repair and going through the pain of actually making it nice and thin so that it didnt feel like 10lbs of fiberglass when knocked on. Anyway. Long story short. I have to replace or repair the rockers. Back in my highschool days i used to have access to a body shop and I used to bang out rocker panes and various other panels for rusted out camaros and firebirds. Ive done plenty of body work on BMW's as well. Ive had everything from an old 633CSI to a 03 E46. I however, have never had the need to replace rockers on any of these cars. Is it even worth doing, and are parts available? I no longer have the fabrication equipment to even attempt to make rockers for the E39, but I do still have alot of my tools, including my welder and the know how to use it. But are parts for a rocker replacement even available? Im also assuming there is an internal structure that needs replacement?



there is a e39 in my local junkyard just sitting there with a solid body. I ws considering chopping the needed body panels off of that car and just drilling out the spotwelds on the donor parts and replacing the rusted out parts on my car. Though I really would much rather prefer replacing the parts with new ones. Which is really my major question. Are said parts even available?



If so, does anyone have a link?

Gotta love living in the rust belt VS Rocker panel replacement