Father-Son 1974 Duster Project

As I mentioned before, the car is not at our house due to just having moved in and lot's of our stuff is in the garages in boxes still. The car is at a local self storage place, and management is very cool about allowing work on the car. They even hooked us up with a strong 20 amp outlet. We can run a grinder and the Harbor Freight fluxcore welder with no issues.

Right now due to other family obligations we only work on the car Wednesday nights.

It was after dark when we wrapped up this week and I didn't get a good look at the floor firewall seam. I got the passenger front area all cut out with a 4" thin cutoff wheel in a grinder and chiseled the spot welds apart. No damage to fuel lines, emergency brake cable or anything else.

I'm planning to start fitting the new pan from the corner where the firewall meets the inner fender and fitting the firewall seam and along the door jamb first. I was going to cut the new pan 1" over where it will meet the tunnel and vertical rise that begins just under the front edge of the seat. I then was going to tack the pan in and re-cut through the pan and the existing tunnel/floor structure to create a butt seam. Then tack and stitch weld it in.

Do I spot weld it to the frame members before or after the perimeter?

Am I aimed in the right direction?