Looking to buy a Carpet kit and try to install myself. Any suggestions about what to do with my floor board before I install? Has some rust and two dime size holes on the driver side. Some guy outside of this website suggested that I put black frame paint on it. This is my first resto, but I would like to do as much as I can on my own. Whats the proper thing to do with my floor board before carpet??

 

It depends on your skill level and whether you can weld or not. If you can weld in some patches that will be the best way to fix the small holes and then use some sort of rust converter coating.


If not you can still use some sort of rust converter coating and rivet or screw some patches. Clean thoroughly and seal with undercoating, fiberglass, tar, etc.

 

Also depends on what level of restoration you want. Rat rod guys would use a flattened beer can while prefectionists would weld in all new pans. Eric strikes a good balance for most drivers.

 

Actually when I was a young lad, street signs worked really well.

 

Any particular brand work better than others?

 

Being a Texan, I'll say Lone Star but has to be an old steel can for a period correct resortation. Maybe Stroh's for a Lansing car.

 

I'd use POR-15 or an equivalent for this. Repairing the holes depends on how badly rusted the surrounding metal is. Typically a hole means that the metal around it is pretty thin for some distance. As noted, the question is, how good a job do you want? If you are looking for functionality and simplicity over "correctness", I'd go with something like POR Epoxy Putty and fiberglass reinforcement.

Actually, here's an article about repairing exactly the rust problem you have using POR-15 and fiberglass cloth.

 

That's funny, I recall tooling around back in the day in a 64 Riviera that was as much street sign as Buick

 

I'm getting ready to do the same to mine! The holes in mine have gotten worse as time goes on, and this winter really took a toll on it. I found floor pans on Rock Auto for a little over $100, so I'll be cutting the rest of the rust out of mine and welding them in! A buddy of mine filled his Camaro with indoor/outdoor carpet from an outlet store for under $20. I think I'm going that route.