thanks for the words of encouragement!

There were a few poor choices made along the way, but that's lessons learned for the next project.
Perhaps for this amount of effort, it would be worth starting with a better quality unit.

1) This one may have been in an accident vehicle or was dropped, shell was deformed.
The amount of rust suggests that it had spent time outside.
The shell needed welding and straightening and the heavy rust pitting is still visible in places.

2) i would not recommend hot zinc dip to protect the inner chassis, either work more on electro-plated zing to get into the corners well, or find a shop that still does it.

On the plus side, the unit sounds great and is very quiet on vibrator related hum.