I had got two new sills from eBay and my plan was to fit these first, then swap out the seat wells, the foot sections, repair the wheel arches and then tidy up anything that still needed work. The problem was that the areas where the wheel arches met the sills were largely missing – rusted away. I first had to reconstruct these pieces from sheet steel before guestimating the point where the sill s attached. Actually, the precise height and position of the sills was pretty important because it would determine whether the body would ever fir on again. I made measurements from whatever datum points I though I could rely on and once again started work with the angle grinder.
I was getting reasonably confident with my MIG welder by this stage. An impartial observer would have described my panel beating skills as rudimentary but I was very proud of them. I had three hammers and a set of dollys, and was able to use them to fabricate simple repair sections! Having reconstructed the inner corners of the wheel arches and welding on the sills, I then cut away the passenger side seat well. It was attached at the factory by spot welds along the central tunnel and to the sill, as well as the section under the rear seats, and the footwell. I wasn’t too worried about the join to the footwell because this was going to be replaced but I was careful when grinding out the welds along the central tunnel and the rear section. The crossmembers above and below the seat well was also cut away and discarded. The lower one was not original anyway and had been ‘improvised’ out of a length of square steel section!
Now I had a nice big hole where my brand new seat well would go and, after a couple of hours work the new panel was in position. It didn’t look bad at all. All I needed to do now was to weld in new crossmembers and the salvaged the seat rails from the old section. I fitted them first to one of the seats before tack welding them in place to make sure that everything would fit later.
