So the pan is ugly, that's pretty obvious now. I got it loaded up in the truck and made the short trip over to Washburns in Orange to let them take care of the repair and mods I wanted.

I dropped the pan of at 8 am and by 10 they had it stripped of its halves and ready to go to the blaster. A few quick points about pan Resto. It is perfectly fine to wire wheel your pan at home and blast it with Rhino liner or something similar for an off road car. I have seen that done, it looks just fine and probably works well too but for me, I wanted to go a step further and since I was turning the reins over to Washburns on this pan fix I went the extra step to have the pan first baked, degreased and then blasted. This does a few things. Baking and degreasing the pan at very high heat will get rid of all that baked on grease and grime that has accumulated in the tunnel and tubes. By doing this you end up with a completely clean pan both inside and out. It also gives you an ultra clean surface to make your repairs on which is what we were after.

Coming back from these processes the next day you can really see that the pan is actually not as ugly as it was at drop off.

By mid morning that 2nd day they new pan halves were installed. We used Wolfsburg West halves since they seem to be the most correct in size and shape. These were spot welded in place as seamless as factory for that OE look. I did make a few changes though. We eliminated the heater cable tubes behind the seats and at the frame horns since this car wasn't going to have any heat. I think it looks cleaner as well. I also had Washburns repair a hole near the pedal assembly mount. Aside from that the pan was actually in good shape. Fuel line pressure tested perfectly, clutch cable tube was solid, shift bushing hanger was great too.

Even the underside which you may never see is in great shape now. Keep in mind all this was done in under 3 days. The best part of this exercise is the next part, locking it all in with fresh powdercoat.

Im really happy I chose to go this route. This could have all been done at home, but with outfits like Washburns all set up to knock out this level of a job in under a weeks time, it just made more sense to farm it out to them. My schedule would have made this a 30 day job at home and it would not have come out this nice.