Jeep XJ Floor Pan Repair Advice/Help

I guess it happens to all XJ's eventually but I didn't think it would happen to mine so soon... Yesterday I was at the junkyard and found some front seats in a WJ Grand Cherokee that were in perfect condition. Grand Cherokee seats are much nicer than the XJ seats and are a bolt in swap so I brought them home and when I went to swap them I discovered that I had some holes in my floor pans right at the outer rear seat mounting point on both the passenger and driver side.

I pulled all the seats and carpet out to do a full assessment. It doesn't look too bad but I definitely want to take care of it before it spreads. The actual seat mounts appear to be in good shape. Its just the sheet metal floor pan that is rotting away.

I have no experience with this and no welding skills. What do you guys think is the best way to fix this? I know you can buy complete formed floor pans and weld them in but is that needed here or could they just be patched? I plan to keep this XJ for a long time so want to fix it right so I don't have to fix it twice. Everything that isn't in the pictures I took looks nice and solid.

Anybody want to help me do some welding?

Driver Side Seat Mount


Passenger Side Seat Mount


Passenger Side Foot Area


Driver Side Rear Wheel Well Area


Passenger Side Rear Wheel Well Area

The way I have fixed this is to cut the rust out and weld in new metal. It can be tricky since the metal is so thin. On my daughter's jeep the rust was so bad I swapped the body. When I pulled up her floors there wasn't anything there in places.

If you decide to weld in patches, here is the best "tutorial" for welding in patch panels I've found.
Look at all of the posts by MP&C, he is an artist with the patch panels.
https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53534

frieed said:

If you decide to weld in patches, here is the best "tutorial" for welding in patch panels I've found.
Look at all of the posts by MP&C, he is an artist with the patch panels.
https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53534

Click to expand...

Thanks. I read through a bunch of that thread and will use it as a reference.

I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do exactly. I'm planning to work on cleaning the layer dirt and oil off the bottom so I can do a thorough inspection from that side.

What I really want to do is replace the floor pans completely and then coat everything in something like Lizard Skin to reduce noise and heat through the floor without putting the carpet and padding back in but that is a lot of money, equipment and skill that I don't currently have.

Others used Lizard Skin on the inside and then applied bedliner on the underside