That's as far as I am on the engine. Now for some body things.

Geeze many years I started on this car by replacing part of the rear floor pan as it was rotted from rodent excrement. So there's a rear floor brace that goes over this and it has just enough large holes for mice to make a home in. I remember flushing this out originally before I realized it was rusted out from within and the sheer of mouse turds was just disgusting. It just never seemed to stop. I had no recourse but to remove the brace, if anything to clean out the crap, literally. If you didn't, you'd always have that smell that seems to emanate from somewhere and you don't know where.

Anyway I was a newbee at metal work back then and I left this and it's not that good, but I finished the welding and made sure all the metal was filled in with weld and ground flat for the floor brace. It's not the greatest, but it's strong and it's a floor pan going to be painted and covered with sound/thermal deadener and then carpet. As long as corrosion control is in place and there are no holes this will work.

working on this side.

The red paint is actually weld through primer and since I previously scraped most of the old seam sealer (it's asbestos mixed with rubber) I wanted to POR 15 the exposed seams first, then once that dries I can apply urethane seam sealer before the brace is welded back in.

This is the brace from the donor gal 500 XL. The rear brace is the same for the gal 500 and gal 500 XL but this one didn't have rust holes through it. It's ready for install after the seam sealer is applied.

Once the rear brace is welded back in, I can remove the front braces to replace them with the XL's braces since they are different for the bucket seats vs the bench seat.

Just a little more progress.

I bought some Urethane seam sealer and applied it to the pan to rocker joints that the rear seat bracket would obscure once welded.

Now to properly locate it and weld the brace in. I wanted to measure many times before welding it. So I referenced our spare '66 rolling body.

Since it's a 2 door hardtop it uses the same rear brace and I measured 15 - 3/8" from the wheel house to the back of the brace.

Interestingly I checked the 4 door hardtop and it measured the same but the brace isn't as deep as the 2 door.

This had me wondering why are the rear seat floor braces different. The seat clips are in the same place and there's no structural reason for the deeper one. This one has me scratching my head as to why. Technically you have a wee bit more foot room in a 4 door but it's the exact same floor pan as used in the 2 door hardtop, 4 door hardtop and 4 door post model.

Just dunno.

Anyway, it's located properly and welded in. At least it doesn't smell like rodent excrement anymore. Now it just smells like paint and burnt paint

To squeeze the pan to the brace to plug weld I used the floor jack and a piece of wood to push up on the pan to meet the brace. The body jig allowed me to move around the jack easily.

Continued in next post