Floor me baby one more time.
Before the floor pan can be dropped in and declared DONE, there are a few more things that have to be taken care of.
Remember my talking about the dangers of using an air chisel to work on sheet metal? Now I have to repair all the damage from that folly.
There were some braces and brackets that I cut into and those had to be welded on and then ground flat. Some other sections, like the transition pan at the back of the cars interior, I dented the hell out of the lip where the floor overlaps the transition pan. The metal even got torn in a couple of spots. The rents were welded over and an acetylene torch and hammer were used to try and flatten that lip out a bit.
It took some patience but the affected areas were cleaned up and brought back to being usable again.
I debated on this one for a while.
The rear torque box covers that make up a portion of the floor. The existing ones weren’t in bad shape. I really thought about staying with them just because but the more I thought about it, it just felt wrong not to swap out these bits of sheet metal. I was also concerned to know what the condition of the boxes themselves were like. Were they rusted out like people have discovered.
I swapped the covers out.
The torque boxes below were in great shape and for my reward, I get two panels that didn’t want to fit. I don’t know if it was the car that was warped or the panels. I had to use a combination of screws and clamps to get the panels to conform to the contour of the floor but they eventually came around.
The floor can now go home for good. Don’t think that all of the above work was done blindly. For every repair performed, the floor was dragged back in through the windshield opening and dropped into place to check the fit. This was done every time until I was happy with how the sheet metal came together. Finally I can drag that floor pan in for one last time and drop it into place.
Very similar to when the old floor was cut out, holes were drilled through the sheet metal at every corner spot of the supports and brackets, front and rear sheet metal where the panels overlap to make a ledge to support each other.
When the drilling was finished, all of the holes were connected on the top side using a white paint marker and in the end there was a pretty good outline of all of the fastening points beneath the floor pan.
There are areas I can reach with clamps to hold the sheet metal together to weld them. The rest had to be screwed together using self-tapping screws. When the metal was finally squeezed together, 3/16” holes were drilled all the way through both pieces of metal and then welded shut.
Once each section was welded together in this fashion, the screws were removed and those holes were welded closed as well. I would have preferred a giant Harbor Freight resistive welder for this work but the little plug welds will do fine.
If I recall properly, there are only a couple more things that have to be taken care of before I can get out of the interior of the car for a while.
First up are the seat platforms.
After spending weeks moving the platforms to different areas of the shop to keep them out of the way, it’s pretty nice to dig them out and place them into the car. Guess what? The right-side platform won’t sit into its spot. Resisting the temptation to throw it across the shop, I take a deep breath and slowly look over the fit to see why it won’t seat in properly.
The platform sits equally between the inside of the rocker panel and the transmission tunnel. The rocker panel side is nice and flat, no issue there. The tranny side is that’s giving me the issue. The fastening lip has been stamped wrong. The front part has been bent up too shallow which makes the platform too long to fit. There is a lower tab that appears to be correct.
Like the firewall I cut the mounting lip off and cut the platform at an angle so the cut-off is wedge shaped. The freshly cut edge is cleaned up to provide a cleaner seam for welding.
I use a carpenters square and clamp it to the lower tab at the front of the platform and then lay the cut off lip against it and then tack welded the strip to the flatform.
I worked the tacks down the length of the platform and then put it into position on the floor pan. It fit. I was able to use various clamps to hold the platform securely in place and used plug welds on all four sides of the platform. That sucker ain’t goin nowhere.
The left platform fell right into place. No issues.
The final
Two brackets, one on each side of the car. These are the lower anchor points for the side panels. I mangled them slightly when they were removed months ago. Took a little work to get them fairly straight again and then spot welded them back where they were before.
The floor kit came with the anchor points for the rear seat. They looked nothing like the ones that were in the car. I dug out the old floor part that had them still attached and cut them off. I found my pictures showing the measurements and was able to get the anchors located and attached pretty much where they should be. I put the rear seat in and the seats hooked in just as they should.
and suddenly the floor was done. From a pieced together and badly assembled flatform to a single solid piece of metal that should last the life of the car.
Unfortunately, this does not mark the end of the project, just a major hurdle that was overcome. There are still plenty more that have to be cleared before I can even drive this car.
Moving on.