The complete trunk that I ordered also came with a new rear shock mount bracket that runs underneath the front of the trunk just behind the rear seats. Originally I had not planned on replacing the bracket as the current one was in pretty good shape, if covered in a ton of sand that had gotten trapped inside of it during the sandblasting. Over time I softened to the idea and eventually decided that I might as well replace it while I was in there.
After some quick work with the pneumatic saw I freed the bracket from between the rear frame rails, leaving only the ends that were welded to the frame rails in place.
After cutting out the spot welds that held the remaining ends of the bracket to the inside of the frame rails I was able to wrench them free and was left with the bare frame rails.
I knocked down the weld locations with a grinder, cleaned up both frame rails, and covered them in a layer of primer to help protect against future corrosion.
Mocking up the replacement bracket I found that it was about 1/4″ shorter that the original from left to right and that it was slightly shorter between the top and bottom flanges as well. Thankfully even the original was not perfectly flush by any means, and this is one of the least visible parts of the car.
I was able to bend the bottom flanges down enough to bring the top flanges within clamping distance and welded them in place.
The fit still wasn’t perfect and you can see that I was still left with a bit of a gap between the inner flanges and the sides of the frame rails. If I could go back in time I would address that gap prior to welding the bracket in via the bottom flanges, that would have made my life a fair amount easier.
I had similar gaps between all four inner flanges and the sides of the frame rails. After stripping off the primer where I intended to plug weld the flanges I decided that I needed to cut some shims to help close the gaps.
I cut out some shims, drilled holes in them to allow the plug welds to connect through to the frame rails, then coated them in primer as well.
With the shims in place I welded the inner flanges through to the frame rails. The shims worked out well, though it would have been much easier to get them properly located and affixed if the bracket had still been out of the car.
Not the most efficient work I’ve ever done but I’m happy with the way it turned out. With the rear shock mount bracket in place it’s back to preparing to install the new trunk floor.