Vintage Turntable Restomod: GE Trimline 500

Over Christmas I inherited my grandfathers old GE Trimline 500. The fundamentals seem solid but it still needs a decent amount of repair:

* The interior of the casing was subjected to moisture during its years in storage so the inside of the metal housing has rust damage. None of the actual turntable components are affected. * The tone arm has significant wiring damage which will require fixing - in addition to a cart replace. * The speaker housings are completely gutted out - with the factory drivers being replaced with some random speakers that are the incorrect impedance for the internal GE amp which drives at 16ohms not the usual 4 or 8.

So my plan - I have the idea to have a fun restomod project, using the cavernous casing to house a modern tube preamp & amp setup so I can use a modern MM cartridge and some nicer speaker drivers; essentially bypassing the original GE electronics. Based on other threads I have found online the tracking force of this Trimline tier were actually around 3 so it should take a MM setup?

Interested to see what thoughts/opinions folks have on the subject. Has anyone else done a project like this? Any huge Trimline 500 enthusiasts out there who want to throw rotten vegetables at me for giving this thing a brain transplant? 😂