Sphincter Factor

Began some exploratory cutting on the right hand floor panel up against the rocker. It's not going to be all that bad to fix up that section.  I just have to decide how much of the floorpan I'm willing to cut out.  It would be technically easier to just replace the whole pan on that side, and I have the correct patch panel.  But I'd rather keep as much of the old car there as possible, so I'll just cut a patch out of the replacement panel.

The spot weld cutter I bought a Harbor Freight works pretty well.   It's going to get a real workout shortly.

I also found another nasty surprise with the outside rocker panel.  For those of you not well-versed in auto parlance, the rocker is that chunk of the floor that goes under the door.  I saw some bubbles in the paint while cutting away that small section of floor, and hit them with the wire wheel.  It was nasty.  All sorts of holes just bloomed out from under the paint.

I'm sort of stuck right at the moment.  I need to clean the body, and spray down some of these repair areas with metal-prep.  One of the most important things I can do for this restoration will be to prevent new rust from eating holes in the car later on.  So I need to come up with a methodology of cleaning and coating all the little nooks and crannies.  It's just too cold to be out in the driveway going over the car with a hose.

You can see the rot from the back in the picture just above, and below, the nice collection of rust, dirt, sticks and leaves stuck inside the rocker panel.  Gotta figure out a way to make sure that doesn't get so nasty in the future.

I'm going to go today and probably pick up a mid-size shop vac.  Try to vacuum out all the leaves and junk inside the rockers. I may be able to just do what I did on the frame, which was to get a sponge on a stick, and get some of that good ol' POR-15 down in there.