Front Bulkhead and A-post�s bare all!

During the past week I have stripped back the foot-well and bulkhead area of the shell with the drill-mounted wire wheel:

My drill died about halfway through this task (the 3^rddrill casualty so far in this resto), so off I went to the large DIY chain store where I originally purchased it and exchanged it for a brand new one �.ahh, the system works ;-)

It should be noted that the doors have never been particularly well aligned on this car, especially the driver�s side. So, once the wire wheel had made short work of the thick filler layers, I was able to see what was truly going on with those feeble A-posts. The passenger�s side had been repaired in the past using a standard off-the-shelf repair panel, but it looks awkward and somewhat crooked: 

The driver�s side was just patched in a half-arsed way and completely lacks strength, which explains why the door would always drop a couple inches when opened! 

Luckily Hooky�s panel shop make top quality replacements, so I now have some on order along with a handy �Door Alignment Tool�, which will allow me to weld the lower door mounting brackets in perfect position. 

I then removed the remnants of the rotten heater channel that was attached to the front bulkhead using a mini grinding disc attached to the Draper Multi-tool: 

I then ground off the hideous repair patches from the other side of the bulkhead: 

I am not sure how much of this metal work will be kept or how much I will eventually cut out, so I may well be taking the long route by spending valuable time carefully removing these old repairs. However, I find it hard to visualise what needs doing and how things should fit back together with these rusty distractions in the way � so for me it feels like a necessary task...