I am going to be helping old timmy out of fredrick maryland with his new brat project but she is far from garage kept, in fact were going to have to repair the lift points running from the unibody to the engine sub-frame.. I know how to handle that thats a cake walk, the part I am unsure about is located behind the drivers seat in the cab corner the rust is scawery. I am wondering if I am going to need to reinforce the whole mess to make this work or can I handle it like a floor pan cut out the bad and replace with good????

if you guys were closer, i`d let you take my parts brat, or come and cut sections off of it. from the cab forward its nearly rust free. if i cut it up to bring it to the dump, and you guys haven`t fixed this one yet, i`ll try to cut and send sections.

 

but yeah, from what i`ve seen you can just cut the rust out and weld new sheet metal in its place. just make sure you overlap panels. these cars have good structure.

hey nothing is to far man just means a longer road trip

Yeah, I've done some patching to a brat, or two...

 

Make sure you cut far enough away from the rot to insure clean metal, and overlap and weld your new metal in, and seal it all properly. You'll be good to go. If I knew of any clean patch parts around here i'd offer them up as well.

hey, if you guys seriously want to drive this far, you can have the whole thing, or bring a sawzall and cut away. its a great carcuss for all the peices you need. its towable if you have a dolly as well.

on another note, penguin are you going to the va beach area in the near future? there is a guy down there that i stopped in to see a week ago. he was a subaru dealer from 68-2002, and has been a dealer for over 50 yrs total. (he now runs a little hole in the wall style place) seemed like he was down on his luck, and most of the cars looked as if they have been there a while, but he was a real nice old fellow. i stood there talking with him for probly an hour.

 

anyway, he has a REALLY clean ea82 5speed d/r coupe with very little rust and working a/c for $900 obo, along with another coupe, a few xt turbos, a few wagons, ect ect. his prices seemed very reasonable. amazingly he also said he has a TON of new early subaru parts in his storage, like 2 containers full. he bought out some dealer in MI in the 80s and put it all in storage. he said he really couldn`t even remember all thats there.

 

if you ever go down to the beach, please pm me, i`ll send you his #. if you could take pix, or a rough inventory of what he has, that'd be great. you probly would find something to buy as well. i`ll gladly give you some $$ as well.

hmmm, i wonder if hte guy in va beach has any replacement panels and floor pans in his storage. would be neat.