Well, I've been slowly taking this car apart. Its a 4 door hardtop that I picked up missing the engine/transmission so I'm parting it out. The rainy season is here and I've not got the floorpan cut out yet so I went to pop the floor drains and found the drivers side and passengers side were installed differently. The drivers side has heavy orange sealant holding it on. The passengers side has a thin layer of black sealant and two screws holding it down. Why would these not have been installed the same? What do you guys think? I've included some photos to show the differences.

 

Perhaps the passenger's side floor drain was removed and reinstalled sometime in the past...

 

Maybe, but they both have paint on them that matches the floorpan.

 

Maybe the one with all the sealant and no screws was a defective punch out when the floor pan was stamped... If you remove all the sealant does the hole diameter compare with the other side that had screws???

 

I've seen this, however I have no explanation for it. I've never seen a Lansing built car with screws in the plugs. But I have seen it used at other assembly plants. In fact today I was cutting up a floor section of an Arlington built A body and the front passenger side was screwed in just exactly like the pics above and all the rest were glued in with sealant. I also noticed all of the plugs screwed down on a 71 lemans GT-37 we restored a couple of years ago. ~BOB

 

Was it one station on the assembly line where these floor plugs were installed? Perhaps the passenger's side plug was installed first and the driver's side plug was installed later...

Was there an "undercoating" option on Oldsmobiles back on the day? I was thinking that the driver's side could have been installed at a later point on the assembly line depending on whether or not the customer ordered "undercoating."

 

plugs were installed with sealant, it was just flowed on and pressed down, the one with the black could have come down the repair line,or it was missed ,and had to be chased down by the relief guy and used tube sealer. the sealer line used huge vats of sealer,pushed thru overhead lines by air over hydraulic pumps,it then flowed into flex lines to the "wand". picture a small air bow gun with a 1/4" brakeline screwed to it and a small round brush that screwed onto the end of that,the brush has a hole in it for the sealer to come out,and the brush just lets the worked smear it where it need to be. no real speck on the sealer amount,what ever came out as long as the plug was in and the seams were filled.usually there was a portable pump assembly that was used to chase down a missed unit.