Thanks for the offer of help, Mighty! I'll definitely be in touch so we can try to work something out!
Snowed a bit here yesterday, kind of messed up my plans, ended up spending the afternoon working on my work truck to get 4x4 functional again. I was putting off doing that in hopes that I'd have my 88 fixed up and on the road before 4x4 would be needed, thus being able to spend that time working on the 88 instead of my work truck (since I won't be able to drive that this winter anyway). Oh well.
I have done a bit of chipping away at things on the 88. Almost have all of the rust repair squared away and what's left I have a plan for dealing with. Just need to do a little more cutting and bending of metal and I should be good to go with that. Did some more prep work on getting the engine back together too, or at least until my grinding bur broke. Going to order a replacement this morning, should have it tomorrow (I love living close to the warehouse, standard shipping usually gets it to me next-day, lol).