Working on the undercarriage and repairing the fender well

A bit of a long day today, but I really made big strides in getting the undercarriage in better shape.

I started small.  The hood's hinge is cracked and in need of a few inches of welding.

A blurry shot, but you get the idea.  I'll post a better one later.  The weld is obviously thicker than I need, but I'll grind it down later.  Lots of my grinding work is being put off so that I can do it in the garage with the doors closed so as not to annoy my neighbors with what has got to be the loudest tool/attachment combo I've ever used.  In the past, I was conscious of any router activity I did while woodworking.  Not anymore.

As I've said before, what is rotted on one tub is in good shape on the other.  In the pic below, I've already removed the hat channel that runs out under that triangular firewall/chassis bracket, which is bent and has been hacked on a bit.

The donor tub brackets have a protective coat of paint, and they are considerably more "true" in their cutouts and lines.

I cut both of them off.  Here they are side by side for comparison.  Fortunately, this is one of the areas where the 2A and 3A tubs are similar enough to allow for interchange.

I prepped the area on the 3A tub for the "new" bracket.  I made a few tears in the firewall sheet metal, but nothing I can't repair.  The air chisel sometimes can't distinguish between what needs to go away and what needs to stay.

With the bend in the top of the triangular bracket, it was easy to locate its mounting spot.  I tacked it in place (no pics) and then proceeded to getting the hat channel cut and shaped for install.  Rather than buy authentic repopped channels ($$), I spent about ten bucks on six feet of 1"x2" .120" wall DOM tubing.

Mock up.  It's a little thicker than the original hat channels, which is fine.  I'm a fan of beefier replacement parts.  I hammered the end that meets up with the remaining hat channel so that they will line up for welding.

Welded in and ready to go.  I can lift the entire body from this one area, so I'm confident in my welding.  (In fact, each day I'm getting more confident that I know what I'm doing, but I've been tricked by my other Jeep into erroneously thinking that same thought, so we'll see.)  The green paint is self-etching primer, which is what you want to use against bare metal.

Up next today was the underside of the passenger flooring.  Recall that I'd already removed the hat channels.  So now I needed to start cutting out the cancerous sheet metal to see what can remain. I've used a sharpie to mark out where the 1"x2" tubing will go.

I knew that I wanted most of the original floor panel gone.  It was thin, rotted, and Swiss cheesed.  Here's the initial excision.  On the right side of the pic is healthy flooring, a good chunk of which is not underneath the 1/8" added-in flooring.   

Once I started cutting into it, I found a little surprise.  If you look in the closeup pic below, there a build up of what looks like rusty mud just above the hat channel opening.  That's the rust dust of the original floor and hat channels.

It took a while, but I was able to vacuum out the bulk of it.  Unfortunately, some of it still sits in the gap between the new and old floor where the tranny hump rests.  I scraped out what I could and mixed in some POR-15 to help convert it.  I also coated the rest of the exposed usable floor with the same.  

Remember this hole behind the passenger seat?  It was time for me to start making a repair panel.

I started with a 2'x5' sheet of 16 gauge mild steel.  As I was buying it, I had the feeling it was thicker and heavier than the original sheet metal, but I was willing to err in that direct rather than its opposite.  I cut a piece that was oversized by at least an inch in both directs.  I had some black scrap L-bracket steel that I put underneath my bend line (you can see it peeking out by the upper clamp).  It helped keep my bends fairly crisp.

I used a piece of coat-hanger wire to get an approximation of the bend I would need to match the opening in the 3A tub.

This is a better shot of the L-brackets I'm using.  You can see below how I'm getting the edges to bend over.  These lips will be my attachment flanges.  The next few pics don't really need explanation.

Getting it in place with that channel bracket still there was quite tricky.  You can see the holes I've punched into the bracket to provide me more opportunities for welding.

Once I got it in, I realized (not surprisingly) that my panel was a little too long; its width was fine.  I was not willing to remove it for fear of damaging it, so I knew I'd just make the top and bottom flanges a wee bit larger.

The back side.  Not too shabby.  It does, however, present a nice contrast between it and the scaly/messy original sheet metal.

That was enough for today.  I wasn't ready finalize it.  That'll be tomorrow's or Sunday's task.  For now, it's in, it works, and I'm pleased.