I'm burnt out on the floorpan and frame rail repairs; probably another 8-10 hours of work to finish those and I've been avoiding it because it's so miserable.
On the advice of a friend I decided to change it up and start working on the rust around the headlights/directionals. Strangely enough, having my head stuck inside the wheel well while I media blasted away undercoating and old scale was actually preferable to working on the floor pan and frame rails.
Driver's side after drilling out and removing the headlight retainer ring:
Ditto the passenger side:
Directional signal retainer removed and outside of passenger side blasted:
I am noticing a very strong correlation between rot and factory welding. You can see that there is a spot to the right of the headlight opening that is perforated from the inside. The corrosion here was all in close proximity to the welded joint between the fender and the nacelle:
Same deal here; the corrosion is right next to the weld joint:
My plan is to weld in the two retaining rings (headlight and parking light) so that I'll have a solid structure to work from to patch up the small areas of rot on the passenger side.
Only other progress to report is that I finally hauled the rear axle to the welding shop to repair the cracked bracket for the trailing arm (I broke the weld between the bracket and the axle tube trying to beat out the old bushing). Also brought the vintage IPD lowering springs there to have the spacer on one re-attached and to make sure the other one is properly welded on.