Lady Luck was kind enough to bless me with doing the job twice. I’d like to add some notes about drilling the upper brace out.
There are 27ish spot welds, the count was not the same. Not all in the same spots either. The trick to finding them is to use the light and look for a circle. Use a spring loaded center punch and a spot weld drill bit, both from harbor freight. If you are lucky, you’ll get them all and they will pop loose with just a little convincing. If you bend the brace, and it’s easy to do, put it back on the old door using the holes to line it up, use the bolts from the window stop to hold it tight, and using a few pairs of Channel locks, clamp it back together and it’ll easly go back. If it’s really bad you could run bolts through the drill holes or even use self tapping screws.
For welding it on the new door. You want to minimize how much raw metal is left. What I did what used the various methods to get it firmly in place. Chose a hole, used the channel locks to make sure it was flush, then used a drimel with a bit to knock back the paint to have a good clean area to weld to. I would go from front to back to make sure it stayed in place and used as many clamps as I could. When I was done, the whole brace got scuffed with a scotch bright and primered and will get top coated later.
The brace is the biggest part of the job besides paint.