Hello,
I recently installed one of the two piece floors in my 70 442 and ran into two problems.One, the floor pan doesn’t meet the front brace on the passenger side.The second problem is the toe kick doesn’t go up high enough on the firewall.The toe patches for a 68 to 72 are the same length as the existing floor, so they do no good.I found ones that are longer but they do not include the hump for the transmission.The ones for a 64 to 67 and 68 to 72 4 door are the right length but the tunnel for the transmission isn’t the same (I ordered one).So I am trying to figure out the best way to fix the problem.Do I use the new floor pan I found that stops before the toe kick and try to use the 68 to 72 4 door toe patch and modify it?Do I buy the new floor and firewall and install both?Do I buy the new firewall and floorboard and only section in the part of the firewall that is needed?Or do I do nothing and just patch the hell out of what I have. The issue on the firewall wasn’t rust, we cut it too short when installing the new pans.
Any help, ideas or advice would be greatly appreciated
Thanks
JD
Two piece floor I installed
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1968-72-CHEVELLE-GTO-CUTLASS-442-2PC-FULL-LENGTH-FLOOR-PANS-W-TRANS-TUNNEL-/400664863330?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories &fits=Model%3A442&hash=item5d497ca262&vxp=mtr

Toe patch 68 to 72 – these are too short
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1968-72-CHEVELLE-GTO-CUTLASS-442-2PC-FULL-LENGTH-FLOOR-PANS-W-TRANS-TUNNEL-/400664863330?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories &fits=Model%3A442&hash=item5d497ca262&vxp=mtr
Toe patch 68 to 72 (longer) – no transmission tunnel
http://eastcoastchevelle.com/productview.php?cat=sheet metal&id=1361992447&sectionPID=1

Toe patch 64 to 67 and 68 to 72 4 door – the transmission tunnel is different
http://www.ebay.com/itm/64-67-GM-A-Body-Front-Floor-Toe-Board-at-Firewall-Patch-Panel-PAIR-/251258346788?pt=Vintage_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessorie s&fits=Model%3A442&hash=item3a802a1d24&vxp=mtr

New Floor
http://www.ebay.com/itm/68-72-GM-A-Body-1pc-Interior-Standard-Floor-Pan-NO-BRACES-NO-SUPPORTS-Dii-/330698403000?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories &fits=Model%3A442&hash=item4cff292cb8&vxp=mtr

Firewall
http://www.ebay.com/itm/68-72-Chevelle-Cutlass-Firewall-for-models-with-A-C-Air-Conditioning-Dynacorn-/390128637895?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories &fits=Model%3A442&hash=item5ad57a97c7&vxp=mtr

 

Anyone??

 

How much space do you have to fill between the end of the floor pan and the toe kick?

 

Can you use the old pieces to fill in the gap?

 

Well, you need to replace the missing metal. You can either cobble something together or buy a firewall and section the piece you need. Your call, your money, but there isn't an easy answer here.

 

The gap between the firewall and toe kick is about 2 inches in one spot and an inch in another.. I am more concerned about how it looks with the hood open.

 

X2 on can you salvage some fillers from the original parts? It will be a challenge to just use sheetmetal due to the contours in that area.

 

Rather than buy an additional piece just to use 1-2" how about some used metal? If you don't have a usable piece yourself post pictures of the area you need. There are several of us here who have spare parts and one if us may be able to cut just the area you need from a parts car.

John

 

Hey:
Had the same problems w/ the new floor pans not meeting the new floor braces completely, I had to hammer massage them a little to close up the small gaps. I used 3/4" screws to pull the pieces before welding them in, I then removed the
screws and welded the small holes closed, then applied a brush on seam sealer to seal everything up. The finished result was pretty good, the carpet covers the surgery scars inside and the undercoat will hide the bottom side. Good Luck.
Thanks Ron

 

Guys,


Thanks for all the replies. I went and looked at it again over the weekend and the gap between the floor and the brace is over an inch and the firewall looks like ****. I basically want to replace the firewall and floor pans but the guy doing my welding wants no part of it. So I either need to find a new welder and pay 3K to fix the issue or I am going to part out the car, which is a shame. My wife suggested I just cover it in the garage for a while and forget about it.


JD

 

Johnd:
A picture or two of your gaps might help us help you, and save the car from eventual parting-out.

 

I'll be blunt. I redid the entire floor of an ext cab s-15 sonoma using nothing more than old computer cases. If one inch of metal is so far beyond your welder's skill level, you need to find a better guy. As for paying 3K for it ... shop about. If nothing else, post a help wanted on Craigslist. There's plenty of shade trees like me out there willing to help for little more than a cold case of suds and the pleasure of having helped. Try your local car clubs ... certainly you'll find help there. Maybe the local highschool or community college has an automotive or welding class that would help. Plenty of options.

BTW, my floor .... looked awesome. Particularly the embossed IBM dead centre of the driver's side.

 

Dang! I didn't dare to confess until now: I got an official Fujitsu/Siemens passenger side panel where my heater core used to pee...

Hello IT? Have you tried welding it on and off again?

 

Likely this is less about his skill level and more about his profit level. It's much more profitable to weld in pre-formed patch panels than to have to do any custom fitting of metal.

Frankly, for well under 3K you can buy your own 110V MIG (I've got the Lincoln 130HD) and weld it in yourself.

 

Do you have any idea how much lemon ice tea hurts when it shoots out your nose. Good thing my keyboard is waterproof.

 

Thanks for the support and laughs, although the firewall will look like ***** I would be happy with a patch as the areas are small. The thing that bothers me most is the underside brace. Unfortunately, none of the pictures I took came out that good. But as I mentioned, the gap is about 1" near the rear of the passenger brace towards the tunnel, and about 1.5" on the front brace next to the tunnel. My buddy who was doing the welding wants to cut the pan, bang it down and weld in a patch. At the end of the day I had planned on dumping about 25 to 30K on the car and don't want something that looks like **** when it is on a lift.


It just sucks that no one makes a patch like the 67 ones that cover the tunnel.


BTW - the floor pan in my 68 442 when I was 17 was a stop sign - I was very surprised when I replaced the carpet.

 

Mr.Blunt again. If you're budgeting $30k, get someone with more experience. A good butt weld is invisible when finished right. But to be even more blunt .. I'm not sure you understand what your buddy it wanting to do. It might be worth getting him an old door skin and have him show you how the joints will look. There's no reason for you to even be able to see the welds after finishing

 

I gotta tell ya, that gap is not nearly as bad as I was envisioning. I bet this piece would give you plenty of material to make an almost perfect patch. And yeah, those welds are kinda iffy.........

 

If your car has bucket seats it will be real important to get that floor back down to the level of the brace. I would think 1 " to 1.5" off at the base would make the seats lean a lot! Floor pans are not that expensive. I would buy a new one to use as a patch for whatever you need to make the other one right.

 

I just did both of my floor pans and didn't need the upper parts ill look and sse if I have them if so u can have them just pay for shipping

 

I just did a full pan w braces on my car and I patched the toe boards with some salvage yard pieces I bought from AZChev. I may have enough metal lefty over to patch your pass side. I used the whole patch to fix drivers side so I won't have anything for you on that side. I can't get to my shop until the end of next week. I'll post a pic for you then.
Rodney

 

Hi Rodney,


What is AZChev? Is it a salvage place. What I really need is the toe kicks with the transmission tunnel to really fix it right. Do you have any pictures of how you did your repairs? How hard was it to do the full pan with braces?

 

AZChev is an ebay seller who sometimes posts on this site. As his moniker implies, he is in Arizona and often has good sheet metal pieces. Here's a play-by-play description of my floorpan replacement. It's a bit long winded but worth the read as I spent several months researching the best way to do this before I started cutting.

I decided to do a full pan replacement (including floor braces and inner rockers) because most of the welds would be in factory locations so there would be less evidence of the repair. This was a body-off-frame restoration, not sure this could be done with the body still attached to the frame. I bought the AMD 400-3468 pan because it was the only replacement pan I found that had the correct top reinforcement brace necessary for a convertible. I used a special drill bit to drill out all the spot welds at the top and bottom of the rockers, keeping the existing outer rockers. You only need to drill through one layer of metal to separate the panels and spot-weld bit is very flat so it doesn't go all the way through both pieces. The most difficult part of this replacement was separating and welding the 3-layers of sheet metal where the inner rocker, outer rocker and cowl meet at the door jambs under the A-pillars.

I split the factory floor seems between the toe boards and the floor pan but didn't remove any of the original rusty toe boards until I trial fitted the new floor pan several times and finally I used few sheet metal screws in the new floor to keep it from moving around too much. I bought 10-15 small vise grips from Harbor Freight and use used them to clamp some of the other seams together until after I aligned the floor pan to the front toe boards. This way I could "wiggle" the pan around a bit until the front seam at the trans tunnel would fit like the factory did

With the new floor screwed in a few places, I drew cutting lines with a black sharpie and a flexible metal ruler on the rusty old floor until I was satisfied I could make the necessary cuts with a small grinder or cut-off wheel. I cut the patch panels about 1/2" bigger than my sharpie lines and laid it on top of the original floor and traced around it with a red sharpie, this way I could see how much the patch would overlap the original floor. After making a few tweaks to my cutting lines and trial fitting the patches around 20 times, I cut out the patch panels and started carefully removing the original toe boards until the patches fit snugly enough to butt-weld them together. It would have been much easier to overlap the 2 panels and plug weld them in place but I wanted to "hide" my repairs as much as possible.

Next, I welded the front seam at the trans tunnel, welded the spot welds across the rear (behind the back seat cushion) and the 3-layer "sandwich" at the A-pillars leaving the rockers still loose. I set the body back on the frame (on new body bushings for proper alignment) and using a floor jack and a 2' piece of 2x4 I pushed up on the bottom rocker seam until the inner and outer rockers were more or less flush. Then began the long process of plug welding the bottom and top rocker seams.

The key here is to make sure the body is indexed to the frame at all times (which is why I didn't weld the rockers with the body off the frame). If try to weld it all together while hanging in the air you may find that the body twisted a little when you welded the floor and it won't fit properly when you put the bod back on the frame. Here is a link to my major build thread and a few pics.

https://classicoldsmobile.com/forums...nvertible.html

PICTURES:

 

Guys,


Thanks for you feedback and advice. I went to NH over the weekend and made a deal with the welder, he could try splitting the pan as Professur mentioned, but if I hated it he would put a new pan and firewall in. After about 4 hours he had it to a point where I can live with it, and it touches all the brace. I need to drop the driveshaft and exhaust next weekend so I can get in and clean up the under side. Overall, it really doesn't look that bad. He is going to spray the top and bottom of the pan with 3M Shultz which dries like a rock and will hide some of the repair. Next weekend we will work on the firewall patch.


Thanks again
JD

 

Glad to hear you found someone to help and get your project back on track. Post some pictures when you can to let others see the finished product.

 

Hi Eric,


I am heading back to NH over the weekend and will take some shots from the top and bottom - the bottom looks better than the top, but no one will ever see the top once it is covered in 3M Body Schutz.


On a brighter note, I had to take out the heater box and AC box to get give room for welding and the underside of the dash and top of the firewall are in nice shape. Which just goes to show all the damage came from the rear window leaking into the trunk and rear floors.


JD

 

Glad it's working out. You should see the soul wrenching mess of a Jeep my daughter laid at my feet. Floor? What floor? Rockers? Body mounts? Thank Gawd Quardatec ships for free. I'm ordering an entire body in kit form. I think the gas tank is being held up by a ghost ... there sure isn't any steel involved.

 

Glad to hear you're not giving up on the car! I really upsets me when our cars suffer damage because of the carless neglect of previous owners. My convertible project sat in a Texas cow pasture for at least 10 years, uncovered, open to the elements. Most of the damage I've repaired could have been avoided if someone had taken the time to cover the car to keep out the rain. $5-$10 worth of plastic could have prevented thousands of dollars of rusted sheet metal. Sorry for the rant. Good luck with your project.

 

Professur - I'm glad my daughter is only 5 Sad part is I will be 50 this year - so I will be in my 60's when she gets her 1st car.

 

Yeah, you keep telling yourself that. My daughter was 5 or 6 ... yesterday. I remember her sitting on the sofa holding her new born brother. Today she's 18 and her brother's 12 and supposed to be doing the lawn this morning.

 

After taking Professur's advise and cutting the pan so it would fit the brace and stitching in some metal the floor pans are finally finished. Below are a couple of pictures, for more please see my major build thread.

 

It turned out nice, the carpet and pad will cover the ugly part. Now you can move on to the next project.

 

Thanks Eric


I'm just glad I got past this... I am hoping the rear window and trunk go smoother, and I can start work on the suspension and brakes

 

Glad you got it worked out. It came out fine.

 

John:
That worked out well. Glad you were able to get it right. GOo dluck with the rest of your project.

 

Now you just need to bang a dent in it with the back of your gas pedal.