The best thing to do is to repair.
That being said, and from your original post of just wanting a cool old truck to drive around.
You may want to consider treating that existing rust, convert/encapsulate and just repair the blow outs for now.
And Drive Baby Drive!!!!
I'll share this quick story.
A few years ago I got my Dads old 50 Chevy from a family friend. It was In great shape as, I was going through it I found some rust in lower cowl and inner and outer cowl. So I decided to just take care of that rust...Well since I had the front apart to fix the rust I said ...might as well put front disk brakes for safety...well now the old wheels won’t fit....See where this is going
While I had my truck apart I would sometimes stop by my local Lowes on the weekends. Id see this Old 48 or 49 Bolt parked in the parking lot. No grill..primered fenders.. Just a cool old truck parked at the hardware store.. My 50 is blown apart at the house..I’m loading cinder block in the trunk of my 2000 sedan..And I’m sitting there admiring that old truck in the parking lot.
You have a cool truck. It reminds me of my truck. My s/n is very close to yours. Our trucks were probably sitting at the Oakland factory at the same time.
As others have posted, the best thing to do is to cut out all that old rust and replace with good solid metal.
Safety first...but Nothing wrong with getting her together, driving for a while, Get yourself a good punch list as you learn more about the truck. Then as time and finances permit, fix her up.
Good luck
I might add, what took me a few years to get done on my old truck probably could have been accomplished in weeks if I had the knowledge, skills , and abilities of some of the folks on this forum.
I enjoy every minute I spend working on my DADS50
