After the initial tear down I had a choice, part it out and take it to the scrap yard, or spend countless hours and buckets of money that I'll never get back.
Like I said, the car has sentimental value, and I'm dumb, so guess which choice I made...
Time to start hacking it up and making patch panels.
Luckily there happened to be a vert in the junk yard with no rust in the areas I needed, couple hours with the Sawzall got most of the steel patches.
Battery area fixed.
Went ahead and removed the battery tray in the process, and made a nice clean hole for future intercooler piping, although at the time I had no idea what engine would go in this thing.
Now onto the wiper cowl.
But wait, there's more!
Right behind both front wheels, with no fender liners and these rusted open both door sills were filled with 10lbs of Florida sand.
Onto the door hinge pillars, this rust is the gift that keeps on giving.
This was multiple layers of steel that had all returned to the earth.
Same story on the passenger side...
