A pair of older Classic pillar supports. No matter how you tried to fit them, it always seemed like the DS pillar cup was on the PS channel. I even cut one cup off and tried the fit realizing you'd have to replace the entire bottom of the pillar.
This is where the pillar support goes. A lot of the bad metal has been removed, but not all. You have to leave some to remember how the car was put together. All of it is removed as the repair progresses though. This may look bad, but there's a lot of good metal left to tack pieces to.
I left some ragged pieces of floor to rationalize how the panels were welded together.
This is the newer style Classic pillar support. It fits into the recess without major surgery and you can build on it.
Since the location of the lowest bolt hole is still available, the cup is inserted and bolted fast to create a starting point.
The cup easily conforms to the floor channel.
Classic Enterprises braces and other parts are top quality, but they have to be massaged to fit together. I ground quite a bit of weld bead off the front brace to make it fit well. Nothing was compromised though and can be rewelded on the inside if necessary. Also drilled up thru the pillar support and welded a captive nut inside to allow bolting together of all the components. With the front brace bolted to the pillar and the frame, you can temproarily fit the subfloor box to mark beginning positions. These will be drilled and screwed together until the final fit is reached, then welded. The floor has to be in place before the boxes get attached.
The forward part of the pillar had a patch riveted on. Removing the patch revealed some more bad metal. The lower part of the pillar has some heavy metal to support all the upper structure. A new lower portion has to be butt-welded to the upper plate. The hole is where a captive nut was located to bolt the fender to. The hole above is where another captive nut is suppposed to be for the center, lower hinge, door screw.
With the cup bolted in place and the new plate pinched in between the cup and pillar, the hole in the old rusty area was used as a template to drill another hole in the cup to weld another nut to allow fastening of the fender. Every step requires all the pieces to be fitted and removed multiple times to get it all right.
