Severe Rust/Rot

I bought an XJ for 700 dollars. I removed all the carpet and there is alot of rust.



I cut alot of the crap out with a grinder






Anything I can really do except sand, and weld in new floors?

Was also thinking on herculining it.

Have you ever seen rot this bad before?

have seen worse....mine. Floor pans are around $325, shipping is another $250. So in lieu of paying all that S&H, buy some 18 GA (16 GA is better but much harder to work with) sheet metal and have at it.
These XJ's are held together by no less than a gizillion,bizillion spot welds (well you get the idea). If you take your time and spot weld the panels to the "frame rails" and weld the edges, go slowly, dont try to weld a long stretch, make many small welds and slowly fill them in.
You could overlap the panels and screw or pop rivet them together, I'm welding mine, I just think it will be stronger in the long run.
While you access to the frame rails I would sandblast and coat with a rust preventative, I am using Zero Rust, have had good results with it in the past. I am also "bedlining" the interior of the rails and then the whole floor, rails and anything else that may try to rust out, interior and exterior floor.

dizzymac, do you have any finished pictures of yours?

Also, did you herculine it when you were done or put the carpet back in?

CARPET will never see the inside of this XJ again, its what caused all the rust. I don't have pics as of yet, mine is no way near done, floor is still out along with gas tank and all the interior plastic.
I never want to get under this thing again for rust damage, so I'm sand blasting everythig in sight. Will be dropping the rear end and rear leafs tomorrow to "blast" but figure while I have it out I'll throw in a 2" or 3" BBL, replace the brake lines, wheel cyls. if needed and the fuel lines.
I also have to replace my gas tank(only 4 yrs old), seem SOMEONE, I won't mention names, he may see this....lol, cut bicycle tubes and slid them over the gas tank straps, good idea in theory, but all the wet stuff got in there and migrated to the tank. DUH !!!
I did some patches on the my floor last year and "bedlined" them, they held up very well. I'll be Zero Rust-ing all floor metal along with the frame, then bedlining it too. Will try to get some pics.

this brings back the memories. I'm not positve but I'm pretty sure this rust is caused by the sound deadening materiel that they have under the carpets. When I took out my carpets these bags of sound deadner were just like sponges, u could squeeze them and rusty colored water would come out. I didn't do a great job on mine (don't know how to weld and at the time I was short of money so it was time to buy some sheet metal and get the old pop-rivit gun working, has lasted pretty nice though). After what I was through making up patches and what not I would highly recomend floor pans.

floor pans are the way to go if you don't mind paying all that S&H. My carpet was the same way, I couldn't believe the amount water it could hold.

my carpet was also soaked and moldy and smelled terrible.

i cant afford floor pans, so I am making templates out of cardboard and then cutting out sheetmetal and using the migwelder to put it all together.

If I were u I would do it in 2-3 pices for each side (front, middle, rear) cut out as much of the weak metal as u can, try not to get into any of the stuff that still good (your transmission hump looks decent, mine was gone up to my 4wd shifter, just trim off all the bad stuff, a recip saw works good for this). I would spot on to what ever existing good metal there is, and to the frame rails. The other thing u can do (this is what I did when I had to use 3 cut out pans per side) is to "layer" them. I'll try to explain. Whey I did my floors I made the pans so they over lapped like this: -_ (the under score being the front pan and the minus sign being the rear) I did it this way so that less road dirt and salt would get in to the seam. If it was done like this _- (the front pan being higher than the rear) the seam will be facing the front of the jeep and act as a scoop for salt and such. I guess u could do it that way if u seam-seal the hell out of it but I would rather protect the seam as much as I could. U can see some pictures on how we did my floor on my website (my grandfather and I did the passenger side with rivits and my friend did the drivers side with the welder). the "layering" I am talking about is what we used on the passenger side. I hope this helps