Can you tell what kind of shape your inner rockers are in by looking from underneath the car? The reason I ask is they, along with your outer rockers, play a crucial part in the stuctual integrity of you car. Your car definitly needs to be braced for a one piece floor pan replacement judging by the amount of loss of structure you have. Plus you'll need it anyways if the torsion bar crossmember is coming out. If your inner rockers need to be replaced they will have to be done before installing a new pan seeing the pan spot welds in at the top lip of the inner rockers...
Hopefully you'll be able to patch them up. I know your model of car, parts are a bit harder to come by compared to a 68-72 model mopar.
Ok, My inner rockers seem to be pretty good. a little rust but I hit them with the pick end of my body hammer and they seem pretty solid from what I can tell. The only bad part of the inner's is where the rocker meets the wheel house. Your right... the further forward you go on the rockers the better they got.
I'll see if I can find some rockers, if not I think I can patch them. Hey.. .that part is only going to take time and some steel, welding wire and argon.
First off...You need to decide if you are going to have the car media blasted or not.. You cut off the rot or panels you will be replacing and know will be hitting the garbage can before the blaster, you will need to further brace the care exponentially to the metal you remove. DeMatt and Donny have great threads showing brace work. Donny will answer any media blasting questions you have
If you decide to go the more conventional route and attack it with wire wheels/spot blasters/chemical means, you want to get the car off the ground via large jack stand at the frame... or rolling jig. If you go the rotisserie route, again, you need to brace that car, even jam to jam if you can.
I don't know how much is going to be left to blast. I'm going to try to do as much as I can with the wire wheel and spot blaster. If I can't get the rest then I might take it to a blaster.
This is my opinion or route I would go on your car.........(just my preference and what has worked(s) for me)
Decide how cost/time saving media blasting would be for your project...My current project i'm not blasting seeing the limited availability of a professional media blaster as well as so much metal is being replaced, why bother..isn't cost effective. I'm not scared of a grinder/sander/die grinder and rust bullet.
In a lot of senario's it makes much more sense to have a car blasted.
When all is said and done...get the car on stands/rotisserie/jig and come up with a battle plan. Detmatt built a jig that supports the car as well as creates a template for installing new metal in the proper position.. Myself, I put the car up on 6 ton jackstands and marked out all positions with a plum bob, sharpie, and drawings.
I always like to work from the rear of the car moving forward. Generally that's how the severity of corrosion flows as well. Start with rear support(rails,crossmember,trunk pan, fill panel), and move forward (inner/outer wheelhouses).Your rockers on your car will obviously need to be addressed before quarters seeing they tuck in under the quarters south of the jams. Also, like i said earlier, you're gonna need to know the shape of your inner rockers before putting in that floor pan.
The rear of the car and the truck is fairly good. The trunk has two holes the size of a golf ball, but all and all the trunk is solid. It's good enough that I wasn't going to replace it, just fix the holes and be done with it.
I'll start there along with finish striping the back tail piece of the car to make sure there isn't any suprises. Then move on to the rockers. That will give me time to come up with a game plan before I start cutting.
I don't know how in depth you would want me to go on this, but obviously a guy could write a novel pretty quick...Check out all thee great threads for resto on here, FABO, FEBO and others, along with the world wide web before you get started. Take a good look at your skills, confidence, pocket book, equipment, and facilities and put together your own game plan that is going to accomodate you, your family and the bank account. Take your time haste makes waste!
Please don't hesitate if you have any questions. There is a lot of great guys on here always willing to help another mopar nut out!
Good luck
