I'm Heartbroken. Time to face reality that my Cuda is a parts car.

I agree with Mat, sometimes it’s a lot easier just to do the full factory panel.

These cars were just spot welded together. If you use the factory panels there’s actually not a ton of welding involved. There’s more labor- more spot welds to drill, more fitting to do, that sort of thing. But welding? Less than doing patches. My ‘72 Challenger is a rust bucket. It’s kinda strange though, some parts are really rusted, others are just fine. Like yours I think it sat outside in a field for awhile before someone decided to do a flip job makeover. I started by doing patches, like the drivers side floor pan. The rest was fine so I left it. Well, I did more welding for the patch than I would’ve needed to do for the whole panel.

My Challenger is getting a ton of metal replaced. I’ve already replaced the drivers side floor, about 1/3 of the firewall and foot box, half the trunk, half of one rear frame rail and about 2/3 of the other. What I learned from all that was to stop being cheap and buying sections and making patches and buy full panels! And I’ve got full quarters and the entire hardtop structure on the passenger side to do, plus the left front frame rail. But you know what? The frame rails were easy. Taking all the measurements and making sure it’s all square is time consuming, but it’s not super hard. And the welding is just more spot welds. Lots of spot welds, but mostly just spot welds.

As for the flux core, it sucks. No one that’s used gas with a properly set up welder would want flux core. It spatters, it makes a mess, and it’s lousy for sheet metal. For the amount of work you’ve got, can the flux core and get a nice gas set up. You’ll appreciate it.