m7r7m

Hey all, long time lurker in the forums while I searched for the XJ I wanted. I finally found it and bought with the intention of having a project.

Long story short - 95 2 door Cherokee with 4.0 and 4x4 - when I bought it there wasn't a whole lot of visible rust areas to work on, got it home, ripped the interior out and basically dumped in my pants at all the hidden rust. I might be in beyond my skill level. Here's a few pictures of what ripping out the carpet revealed. The only saving grace? I caught it in time that the frame rails aren't rusted BUT if this cancer isn't cut out sooner rather than later, I might as well send this one out to pasture.

I think I'm mostly just stress posting this since I've never taken on a project like this and literally have none of the tools / welding skills needed to fix this amount of rust repair. The thing that worries me most is removing the rear seat brackets between the rear floor pan and the beginning of the cargo pan. As far as I can tell the replacement cargo pans online suck and are hard to even spot weld in since they don't have any extra material on the sides, not to mention they don't include the metal on the backside of the rear seat vertical bracket.

Any pointers beyond breathe and hope it all works out? Should I just cave and go to a machine shop / welder?