The body is back from blasting and priming. All flaws have been laid bare. I knew it was bad, but its even worse than I thought. I am going to end up replacing more sheet metal than I thought, and I thought I was going to be replacing a lot. First step is to do inventory of all the rot and previous owner debauchery.

If you stand back, it looks pretty good. only a few transparent spots. But looking closer, there is a lot of thin metal and a lot of poor welding of cut up pieces.

Doing my walk around, I noticed both kick panels are pretty thin near the bottom. There is also some strange hackery on the edge. I can’t figure out what type of welding the previous owner was doing. It’s very splattery and not correct. It looks like they replaced the torque boxes based on several of their unique welding artifacts on the kick panel. I added these to my parts list. Due to how they interact with the A pillar, replacing them in whole is not really doable, but I will probably replace parts of them.

The front section of the driver frame rail is heavily pitted, but it’s solid. Judging from the welds, it is also original. Current plan is to leave it.

The radiator support holds no surprises. Its rotted through under the battery. I already have the 1 piece replacement for it.

This bothers me. Mostly on an ascetics principal. It’s ugly. I spoke with Barry at Jo Daddy’s Garage and he suggested I remove the nasty work and redo it with a new patch. The part here looks like a replacement, but I have no idea why the top front cutout is chewed up, or why they didn’t replace it with plug welds like the piece they took off. Barry was concerned with what might be inside as well. Replacement rail repair parts added to the list.

I’m starting to get an idea what’s going on here. I think the front clip is not the same car as the rest. The front frame rails appear to have been re-attached. The welds on the aprons is original, so the front clip is one piece. Where the frame rail attaches to the floor supports and firewall is all bugger welds. This also explains why there is a diagonal seam on each side of the floor up through the firewall. It’s also very poorly attached, making me concerned for structural soundness of this whole car.

Possibly my biggest concern is the inner frame rails that are convertible specific. As I mentioned before, they appear to have been replaced. But its more than that. The driver side still has the original welds for the seat pan. But there is a cut in the inner rocker behind the pan. And it was welded poorly. There is also a cut in front of the seat pan and another section grafted in going forward. Similar welds.

On the passenger side, it looks like the whole inner rocker was replaced, but they never finished doing the plug welds. It’s a mess. And on top of that, the back corners of the floor, under the rear seat is thin enough to also have rot through.

A closer inspection of that area also reveals the passenger rear torque box is rotted through.

Going under the car in that same area I found the rear passenger frame rail has previously been hacked together. From what Barry says, it is also not a correct splicing since its a flat cut, not an offset to add more structural support.

After going over the pictures with me, Barry suggested I would be better off just replacing the whole floor from the firewall all the way back to the back of the trunk. I was hoping to avoid it, but I know that’s the right thing to do. There is just too many little parts that need replacing, causing a ton of work. And in the end, I still would have some previous owner mess lingering. So now I’m working on getting complete one piece Dynacorn floor shipped to me. This is turning out much like my 65 fastback project, where I also used that floor.

With a new floor, I will have to take off the front clip again, so its good that it’s not well attached. It should practically just fall off. I also ordered some new 2 piece front torque boxes so I can do them right and not mess with whatever was done to the existing ones.

At least everything is in the open now. The is a bit of mess around the B pillar area that will surely have some surprises when I open the quarters up, but that should be the last of it. I’m ready to start cutting and clamping new parts in place and start fitting things.