The floor was gone, I mean everything. So I broke out the torch and welder and away we go. The whole floor was cut out and what a mess. If I were to do it again I would just work on one part at a time. The only thing I left was the middle piece where the tranny and x-case shifters come through. My father is machinist so he could help me come by a lot of the materials and tools for next too nothing. Anyway a lot of the measurements I did gave them to Dad and he cut and bent the sheet metal. then I took over with many of night a welding. We decided to use galvanized sheet metal because we really didn't want to do this over again too soon the entire floor was rebuilt, including the rear wheel wells. While I was working on the body, I figured now would be a good time to beef it up, a 3" square tube cross member was welded on the back under the tailgate (behind the sheet metal) this would act as a place to tie into the frame via body mounts and also a great place to tie the roll cage into the frame on the rear, that way the roll cage can flex a bit with the body mount (but not much at all!!). Since We were there, the old body mounts were toast so, Dad and I figured we'd give it a bit of lift, so a 2 1/2" Homemade body lift did the trick (no pucks either). Also beefing it up in the front, the front cross members that run under the seats were rebuilt with thicker metal and the roll cage in the front was tied to the frame with a 1/2"plate that attaches the roll cage to the 1/2" plate and there's a hole tapped for the body mount to hold the mount to the plate.
The outside body was all welded and any rust that was found was ground out and galvanized was put back in. The stock grill was shot, but I had a grill off a '76 I have in the yard that was in perfect shape, so that was reinforced and worked a bit to fit the later style signal lights, cleaned it up a bit and I was on the road again. The rear corners were real bad after I welded them up so I figured I might as well save myself some body work and strengthen them up a bit with some 1/8 tread plate. I put it around the rear corners and the rocker panels so the rocks can kiss that!
So by the time the body was done I estimate I used about 55lbs of wire and a lot more stones than 55!
Now the interior is a bit different the seats that came with it were comfortable, but didn't hold you in place, so as lucky had it I scored a set of VW Sirocco seats from a race car a friend and I were building at the time, which work prefect. New seatbelts had to be put in as I burned the old ones when welding and cutting with the torch, try weren't hard to get off, but going on wasn't so bad I just welded new braces so I can get them off easier next time. Next time will probably be 5 points anyway. And a full cage is in the works for next year. Probably soon I will have the tire rack made, I designed and am building it myself. The rear bumper is custom built and the bottom tube acts as a air tank as the front one will too, after it is built, for now a tow bar is on the front.