1970 Dart Swinger - father and son project

We have had some distractions but now with the warmer weather we have made some progress. WE ended up cutting all four pans where the passengers feet go, they did not look that bad until we started to try and clean them up and .... so the story goes. Anyway we have now fabricated new floor pans and are staring to weld them in place. My real good friend lent me his snap on welder, never did any serious wire feed before, but with the nice equipment it isn't that much different than brazing which I have done tons of. With a bit of practice we are gaining skills and have also repaired some under-structure behind the lower front quarter on the drivers side. The same side rocker panel was rotten and so was the sheet-metal backing. We trimmed the backing to clean metal and pieced in new metal, then we fabricated a new rocker panel skin, the top section under the sill plate is solid and was left in place. I have some pictures I am attaching here of the rocker and under structure as well as the inside in various stages, up to ready to weld. I would note that I like to screw everything in place before I weld it, generally make certain it fits as needed before committing and the pictures you see here do show some screws, once we weld the piece in place we take the screws out and weld the wholes. I actually have welded the right rear and left front pans in place, but haven't taken pictures yet. Hard at this point to sit here and write this post rather than playing. I will get some pictures of the pieces welded and the crude tooling we fabricated to pound ridges into the rear floor pans and post them here soon. The last picture is the young lad who hopes to drive this someday soon. He is learning to weld with me and we are both having a ball. Thanks to all of you for the support we have received.