Need opinions on severity of RUST

[Treebeard]

So I finally got my '73 240Z back from my dads who stored it for me and into my garage.

I wasn't able to do much with the car while it was at my dads since hes got his garage packed with his own stuff, so I was anxious to get it up on stands to see if there was any rust in the hard to see places. Like a lot of the 240Z's you see on craigslist for more than $400, the exterior looked great. Interior looked pretty good (there were 3 layers of carpet for some reason but the seller was older, maybe he just wanted plush carpet like he had in his house?)  and there wasn't much that I could see rust wise lying on my back in the sellers driveway with a flashlight.

 

Welp.....I shoulda brought a jack and stands (probably an angle grinder w/ wire wheel too)

 

• The close up pic is of the passenger side frame rail towards the rear. It was originally covered with undercoating but when I was tapping around it just crumbled and opened up that hole. I picked off the undercoating that gave way easily with a screwdriver, the rest seemed to be secured to sturdy metal.
• The pic including the tie rod is the extent of the damage on the pass side frame rail / floor pan. Looks like someone did a crummy job of replacing some previous rust spots in the floor as well.
• Last 2 pics are of the battery tray area which seem to have contributed the most to the rot on the rail.
• Drivers side frame rail is pretty clean, except for some light surface rust and a bit of denting on the floor pan. Nothing compared to pass side.

 

My intent was to just give it a light refresh (fuel lines, suspension, bushings, etc) and drive it until there was a major problem or I got bored with ~130HP and swapped in a RB.  

 

My main question: How serious is this rust? Can I wire brush, weld in patches and POR15 it for now or is it to the point of stripping the car and getting new floor pans and frame rails welded in?

 

I'm a newbie to the forum officially, but I have been soaking up as much information as possible over the past few years getting ready for my first project car. 

 

Any and all feedback is GREATLY appreciated.

 

 

 

 

Edited May 15, 2019 by Treebeard
Fixed redundancies

[rturbo 930]

Doesn't look bad. I see two spots in your frame rail that will need patching, and one area of your battery tray looks rough. Depends how nice you want it I guess. If you don't want any pitting, then you're probably going to be doing surgery in the battery tray area. A lot of the orange spots on the underside look like nothing more than surface rust. Wire wheel them, and see what's left. I don't see anything to suggest that you'll need a total floor replacement, mind you, I haven't seen the top side. Overall it looks good with just some minor rust issues to be addressed. 

[Treebeard]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm from Texas and not used to rust so I wasn't sure. I'm stripping the interior right now and will have some pictures of the pass top side sometime tomorrow. 

 

Driver's side is stripped and it doesn't look too happy

[LLave]

You will be doing rust repairs. My suggestion is do whole floor pans and bad dog rails. I wish I had. Doing it spot by spot took way longer and the result is not as good.