Started welding to fill-in some of the tears and holes from removing the firewall brackets:

I am getting some burn-through and pinholes.  After doing some googling, looks like I need to ensure both sides of the metal are clean and got some other tips to try.  These are some links that I found helpful:

http://www.chevelles.com/forums/showthread.php?t=130848

http://www.redpowermagazine.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=58063

http://autobodystore.com/forum/showthread.php?2947-welding-small-holes

Part of the differences between what I had practiced on and the car is the metal I am welding is in an awkward location to access and the back side (engine side) wasn’t cleaned and has some contaminants.

So something that I didn’t think would take so long is once again taking longer than I had hoped for!