Exploring the "Hell Hole" Options

[Neal]

How does one inspect the hell hole looks like you can't see much from up on top.
Geoff looked at mine quickley but I would like to dig a little deeper. Any suggestions
Neal

[SirAndy]

Please give me a tutorial on "cut it out" and what needs to be removed to accomplish this. Do I have to remove the battery tray or can it be done with the try in place, also should I inspect from the wheelwell ?. This is my daily driver so this will be a slam bam fix for sure.
Neal

depending on where exactly that hole is the tray might be able to stay in there.
if you can't get in and do the work because the tray is in the way, and the tray itself is not rusted, drill out the spot-welds so you can weld it back in afterwards.

cut out the rusty area with a cutoff wheel, give yourself plenty of room, meaning cut PAST the rusted area. cut a square (rectangle) hole so you can patch it easy with some sheet-metal. make the sheetmetal bigger than the cut-out, like at least 1/2" wider all around. drill holes in the new sheet metal and weld like you would do spot welds. when done, you can lay a seam around the piece if you want. if the area is not flat, make sure the patch sheet is molded into whatever shape you need. this is done with cuts and a BFH (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smash.gif)

if you look closely, you can see that in my first and second pic.
Andy