A little more progress

I started thinking about getting the pieces lined up and welded together but then decided that maybe I should clean up the underside of each of the sections first. I started on the middle and front sections and found a little bit of rust in each. Have removed all of it from the front section but still need to weld in a couple of new steel pieces. The sliding door track was also rotten and so I removed the entire track and lower sill section. Unfortunately you can only get sliding door track sections for a LHD not RHD so I had to custom make my own which still needs to be welded into place also. I've done the inner sill by the sliding door which had started to rust out along its length and welded in little patches for the front floor cross rails under the floor. Will also put in new cross members and outriggers.

the front section before being cleaned up:

the passenger side repair to the floor cross rail and the inner sill

the drivers side floor rail repair

the sliding door side without the outer sill and track

The middle section has a previous rust repair patch which I still intend to remove and and re-work. It doesn't look like it was done all that well - possible just an extra bit of steel welded over the top of the rust. To prevent it from rusting further behind the patch I will cut out the patch check for any remaining rust and then weld a new patch into place.

After 'digging' around for rust I decided that it may pay to apply some paint stripper to all the surfaces to remove any loose flaking paint and to roughen up the good paint so that I can apply a new coat of paint to the underside before joining the pieces together. The front section has had an additional coat of paint applied under the cab area which wasn't prepped properly and so doesn't stick that well in places but OK in others - a bit of a pain to get off. The middle section had underbody seal on it (the tar like stuff) and while the paint stripper does soften it nicely it turns into a messy goo that is quite hard to get off! So still a little more work to go before I'm ready to paint them but we're making progress at least.

the area under the cab (still needs a little more tidying up before painting)

the 'cargo' area floor virtually ready to paint (needs washdown light sand/steel wool rub down)