Floor Pans

With the subframe connectors in place demanded for the floor pans to follow. I received a pair of full-length Taiwanese floor pans when I purchased the vehicle. They felt like fitting nicely when checked prior to installing the connectors. They have a lot of excess material in front and on the curved inner side which were cut off roughly first.

The connectors prevent fitting the pans exactly before making the final cuts so I paid a lot of time verifying the correct position and the little by little cut pieces off. I used marker pen to help decide how much overlap I had and finally left a couple of centimeters.The problem in fitting is that the pan does not fit correctly until the final cut is done and the final cut cannot be made until the final position is defined.

The subframe connectors required the pan to be 'sunk' around it. The area was marked under the car and cut about one centimeter smaller. The remaining extra sheet metal was then twisted upwards and hammered tight to press against the side of the connector while gently hammering the floor pan downwards.

Cutting the opening for the connector

Once the fit was satisfying, the pan was removed, the necessary spot weld holes drilled, the pan was installed once again and secured with self-drilling screws to the frame rail extension and to the transmission cross member as these are the most crucial areas and need to be welded first.

Final fitting before welding

Seat platform area

The long seam weld to the drive shaft tunnel was the last when all the spots had been welded to the frame rails, cross member and to the rocker panel. I tack welded the panels together and used my angle grinder to cut both sheets simultaneously. Then they were butt welded little by little.

Both sides done

Now I had the floor for the front passenges and for the rear foot well area. But the floor under the rear seat was still to be addressed.

The opened areas of rear frame rails were cleaned, painted and boxed with 10x30 cm sheet metal patches. Before that I had to cut and remove the quarter trim panel support brackets. I took some measures before cutting to be able to place them back in the same position. Then the remaining rusted material was removed by drilling, cutting and grinding.

Measuring the distance between
quarter trim panel support and the rocker

Brackets removed

Patches for boxing the rear frame rails

Patches welded

I wanted to avoid removing the seat brackets so I only used a piece of the patch on the driver side. The passenger side had so much pitting and rust so I had to replace a larger piece and add a small triangular patch in between. The seat bracket's position was measured prior to removing.

The panels are Canadian made but to my disappointment the passenger side especially needed a lot of massaging to fit. Once the sheet metal was attached, I welded the seat and trim panel brackets back.

Quarter trim brackets still missing in this picture

Now my car does have a floor, despite that a lot of grinding is still left to be done.