Accomplishment without struggle isn't as rewarding

I pulled everything out in preparation of the arrival of the mobile welder tomorrow afternoon.  The seat back with the broken brace, the flanges for the muffler and the adapter pieces, along with the pan that'll get a new kick panel bracket.

The angle of these two pieces doesn't look too far off, until...

 ...you take a step back and take in the whole picture here.  The adapter piece for the heat exchanger is about as far 'up' as it's going to go and still have adequate space for a proper installation with the OE clamp.

What I fear here is that the right side is both the wrong angle and too high on the muffler for the adapter piece to be mated to it - especially when I compare it to an OE muffler.  I suspect  this might become a boat anchor and end my pursuit of this exhaust because I can't do this again at $500-600 for each attempt.  It's technically my error since I didn't realize that both the angle and location of the right side port was different from the left.  I didn't have an OE muffler at the time and based everything off of visual cues - one important cue that I missed was the difference on the right side...and it may have cost me.

 Careful inspection of this photo shows what I would have seen if I'd had an original muffler on hand when I sent the dimensions to MT at Vintage Speed.

One thing I noticed between the OE muffler and the VS:  The flanges that mate up to the heat exchanger are significantly shorter on the OE unit.  That leaves me wondering if I can modify those pieces and make it work if round one fails.  Guess I'll find out tomorrow.

In the event I bought a boat anchor in the custom exhaust, I have two NOS units to fall back on for now.

I wound up buying the third NOS kick panel bracket from Mario at T3HQ.  It's scheduled to be welded to Ferris's pan tomorrow afternoon.

Once this bracket is welded on, the pan will be transported to RediStrip where it'll be both media blasted and alkali dipped to remove all of the seam sealer, paint and rust...so that it can be prepared properly and painted prior to assembly.

It has been years since this pan has been flat.  In the process of moving the pan from the back of the garage to the front of the garage and then laying it down, I freed about 1/4 cup of media sand that was inside the tunnel.

The RediStrip process is supposed to eliminate most of the sand - I hope that's true.

Kind of a bummer that I've got $2k into this pan and I'll be essentially starting over with the strip and repaint but it'll be done.  It's absolutely unreal how much money I've got into this car given its current state.