Bruce -
You have done some really nice work there. I'm not sure that many of us would have attempted it.
Now that the repair is finished, perhaps it is time to ask why the problem happened in the first place. In your first picture, the latch is REALLY mangled. I've never seen anything like that. My first thought is that perhaps the latch was not adjusted tightly enough, so it didn't snug the shell down against the stops. This could let the shell bounce up and down as you traveled, and the latch pin would slam against the latch hook on each bounce. Eventually this would have pounded the thing to death. And your picture looks like that's what happened.
Just my thought - you may have better ideas. But this is worth checking, of course, because you don't want it to happen again.
Bill
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