And ground down to almost pretty.

Since the front floor corners are where the front jack point donuts, mount, I decided to reinforce things on the inside.

Left side welded in.

And the right side.

While welding in the neighborhood, I filled in some holes in the floor from where a PO pop-riveted some sheet metal in a cheesy attempt to cover the holes in the floor.

With all the preliminaries down, its time to fit and weld in the rear floor panel. To make that easier, and avoid any asymmetric sag with the car sideways, I rotated the car to upside-down.

While I have been hibernating you have been busy.

Got the floor panel fitted today. My plan to is do a few spot welds along the sides, tack a few spots on the butt seam with the front floor, and a few short beads along the rear edge. Then I can flip it sideways again to get all the flanges on the inside.

Before welding on the new floor section, I painted the areas that will be inaccessible (inside the center tunnel and the firewall). That's Rustoleum self-etching primer.

While waiting for paint to dry, I started work on the rust at the base of the A-pillars. This is the right side. Note the small hole above the sill edge (and remember the car is currently upside down). That was probably from when somebody pulled the pillar straight from a previous collision--and did not bother to fix it.

Here is the rusted section cut out, after removing part of the sill edge.

And a cardboard template for the patch. (The left side is about the same, maybe a bit smaller.)

No garage time today, but got some more body parts from AA and RD.

Great. Now I have to check the rotisserie lock.

Yep.....just a whee bit left of the tin worm in there.
Doing a great job there Dr. Bob!

Thanks, Doug. I may need to pick your brain soon. I hear little voices telling me about how I should "improve" the car and deviate from a stock restoration.

Back to 914 work today. First up: finish the A-pillar patches. Here is the right side patch in place.

And welded in, ready for grinding.

Left side patch, a bit more challenging since the base of the A-pillar is curved inward for clearance for the fuel vapor hoses.

Tack-welded.

Finally on to attaching the new floor section. Here it is after tack-welding the butt seam (with metal work during welding to improve alignment), about 1/3 of the plug welds along the sills, and a few tack welds along the rear seam.

Allright! I flipped the car to right side up, and started work on the new floor cross member. Here is the piece as it cam from RD, with the ends notched for flange tabs but not bent.

After measuring and bending, here is one end after bending some.

After more fitting and bending, here is the cross member installed ready for welding.

Nice work you are doing, what sort of tools are you using for the job, Welder's, spot weld cutters etc?

Thanks. I have mostly electrical tools: 4.5 inch grinders (new Hein and old Bosch) with cutting, grinding, and flap-sanding discs, Makita die grinder with 2 inch cut-off discs and carbide grinding bits, Rigid reciprocating saw, plus cordless drills, drill press, etc. For welding, I have a Hobart MIG and Easton TIG. 95% of the welding on car sheet metal is MIG. For metal forming I just have some hammers, including body work hammers, dollys, and miscellaneous bits of metal bars or angles. I have been cutting spot welds with the Blair 3/8 inch cutter (and lots of bits to stay sharp) as well as standard drill bits.

Just some incremental work today, mostly rescuing the brackets on the floor cross brace that hold the teeth for the seat tilt mechanism. Here is the left side, still attached to the section I cut out of the rusty floor.

Here's the bracket and surrounding sheet metal cut out.

And finally both brackets, after removal of old sheet metal and welds, and initial cleanup.

Some progress on welding inside the floor panel, including the cross member. Until I ran out of MIG wire (next time, buy 2 spools).

Also progress on the A-pillar bases. Ground down the welds on the left side.

And the missing piece of the sill ledge, in place for welding.

Right side ground down.

And right sill edge piece.

^ Nice work—in an inspiring thread...wow!

Thanks. Nothing fancy or as quality as some really talented people can do. I just figure I can learn by doing and get something functionally better.

Right sill edge welded.

Right side floor interior welding done. Still a challenge to get the plug welds functional and pretty. I go for functional first.

And the left side done. Getting a little better at plug welding.

Left side sill ledge piece. Had a couple of burn-throughs so these beads are a bit fat.

An overall shot of the car--feeling like I have made some progress, and maybe over the hump. (At least this hump)

So after 3 days of measuring and fitting and aligning, I was confident enough to weld in the seat bracket mounts. I did the hinges and floor mounts first, then lined up the front bracket that holds the tilt adjustment teeth.

Here's the left side:

And with the seat mount in place. It tilts!

And the right side:

This side tilts, too!

Only one more thing to weld on the floor interior. Any guesses?

Carpet buttons.

E-brake mount?

Here it is.