I decided to use my Saturday to bust out the angle grinders and start cutting the driver’s floor out of the Travelall. Knowing I usually underestimate how much time it’ll take to complete any project, I made a conscious decision to take my time and do it as right as I possibly can. Starting with the triangular seat support, I pulled the entire front bench out and drilled out the last five spot welds. Some gentle tapping with a hammer and careful grinding with a cutoff wheel, I was able to get it out in one piece.

Next, I went around the perimeter of the ‘patch’ that had been scabbed in and ground out the rest of the original welds, except for the one behind the gas pedal, which was impossible to reach from any angle. I finally gave up on getting it out in one piece and cut across the flat section, which came out easily, then bisected the toeboard section and cut it out in sections. When that was clear, I cleaned up all the edges and got them ready for welding. And while the frame underneath was exposed, I cleaned it up with the needle scaler and a wire wheel, then sprayed it with Rust Stop.

Laying in the paper template I cut a few weeks ago, I scribed out the edges of the patch and made notes. Originally, I was going to try to do it all in one piece, but I think I’m going to do it with two—the flat section and the toeboard section. And the good news is that the rust under the triangular support ended there—it doesn’t go under the seat, although the base of the seat support is a little crispy. I’m going to pretend I didn’t see that, and leave it as is.

The other thing I did was disassemble the spare (unrebuilt) fuel pump so that the diaphragm was visible, and bolt it into the truck. With the engine running, the diaphragm was working as it should, which means there’s nothing wrong inside the engine. I know the rebuilt pump will draw manually, so the only other variable is the boat tank I’ve been using to test with. I’m going to swap in the rebuilt pump and stick a regular fuel hose into a regular fuel tank and see if it’ll draw out of that.