Took a break and went to GoodGuys. Fun times. Not much more welding/cutting to do before it's just all cleanup and painting. One broken bolt to remove, and 3 plates to replace. One of them is perfectly fine, but knowing my luck as soon as I get it back together it breaks. At the absolute least I'll drill a hole in the trunk where it is and inspect the cage nut assembly.
don't be an idiot like I was, I rebuilt about 8 cages and bought new metric bolts to use with the original plates.....sae bolts and nuts would have saved me hours and lots of money cause those metric bolts are the price of gold...