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Hey all i dropped my l series 88 into the smash repairers the other day, as rego is coming up, the windscreen is cracked and theres rust surrounding it (front windscreen), i thought seeing as im putting another windscreen in i might aswell get the rust done while im at it.
Everything looked good until the old windscreen came out, got a call today to come and have a look, doesn't look good. the bottom plate/sill is rusted therough and is buggered, and to fix it good they will need to get a new plate and weld it in and said it would be "more then the cars worth", thats worse case scenario if its structually screwed, but if its not his gonna sandblast it and nicky it up. but he said it will probably only last two years and the rust will come back.
whats your thoughts? if you were in my situation or have been in my situation what would you do/have you done??

i really dont want to get rid of my baby, but i might have to
cheers all.

I would fix the rust but i have all the tools i need to do the job at hand. It may be cheaper if you remove the dash and all parts that are needed for access. and then reassemble it all when the job is done

I concur, fixed similar, possibly worse, and for me took about 2weeks i think, including front A pillar, but having all the tools doable, so work it out if you had to pay someone professional $60+/hr for 2days......
they should be able to do it quicker, mainly because I got just aviation snips etc to cut out steel, whereas they probably use a plasma or oxy cutter.

hmmm just pulled my dash this arvo to see where the water is coming in and you guessed it the bottom of both l & r sdes are rusted through, looks like a difficult job and expensive!!

L series like to rust in half across the middle under the A pillar it seems. Mine had the misfortune of blowing a heater core, which promptly dumped wet where it shouldn't be, long before I bought it. It's now very bloody rusty everywhere across the 'screen and cowl area. I just basically ignore it because there's bugger all that I can do about it economically.

You'll need to make some really tough calls as to what's worth repairing and what isn't. A re-shell may be cheaper if you haven't all the stuff to do the panel work yourself. Lets face it, the L series is really long in the tooth and this sort of age related stuff is going to surface in plenty of cars.

Pragmatically, what you're looking at here is a personal question, how sentimentally attached you are to your wheels.

If you do fix it though, fisholene and rust seal it as best you can to prevent a redux of the same issue.