By late 2010 I had started to dig into the project to see what I had bought. There were areas that I already knew like the battery box and the pop-riveted outer sills. Those sills were home-made and didn't fit well, stopping the doors from closing properly but they were made of heavy gauge stainless steel !.

The deeper I dug the more I found. Firewall, floors, front kick panels, most of the rear valence and the infrastructure around it had serious rot. The inner sills both had issues at the front and rear but I deemed them to be repairable. Once you get into replacing the inner sills you are into a whole other magnitude of complexity and I wanted to avoid that if possible

I was still at this point thinking tidy up and not frame up resto but that would change soon.