Post 1: https://classicoldsmobile.com/forums...-part-1-a.html

Picking up where we left off on the last post, the body is now braced, the frame removed, and it's being supported by wooden frames on the floor.

The floor was rusted all over the place, so I opted for a complete unit from AMD. There are two floor braces across the floor beneath the front seat. These come with the AMD unit already in place. This was a good thing because our braces, though they didn't LOOK rusted, they held a TON of mud, silt and debris. They were probably in bad shape from the inside out.

Also, the AMD unit is the FULL floor. It is 100% of the limits of the original GM floor as the assembly plant would have installed it. It starts at a natural body seam 8" from behind the fire wall, goes from rocker panel to rocker panel, and stops at the rear seat bulkhead.

I'll try my best to explain how the floor is attached:

1. Starting at the front, the natural body seam is about 8" behind the fire wall. Here, the fire wall begins the floor, and the floor section overlaps about 1" or so ON TOP OF the fire wall portion. There are spot welds across this full seam, about 3" apart. You can drill these out with either a 1/4" or 5/16" bit. All considered, we had to use the bigger bit just about everywhere.

2. The rocker panels are attached along their full length, starting at the front door jamb and then going all the way back to the rear wheel well. The top of the rocker panel overlaps the floor by about 3/4 inch. Again, there are spot welds every 3" or so that must be drilled out.

3. The rocker panels are also attached to the floor along the bottom edge, which is the vertical lip that sticks down along the full length of the body between the front fender/door jamb all the way to the rear wheel well. Again, spot welds 3" apart.

Some of these welds will be obvious. Others will not. We found that scuffing the surface with a grinder or wire wheel did a good job at showing where the weld dimples were.

As we planned to remove the floor, we opted to torch cut sections out so that we could see what we were doing and have better access. So, we cut about 3" clear of the front seam and the side rocker panels, and then cut across the pan just ahead of the front of the back seat. We split this in two, cutting the full length of the tunnel. The hardest part was cutting the floor braces, but with a little patience and persuasion, we got it out in two sections.

This left us with the section of the floor that is beneath the rear seat. I'll cover that and some trouble spots in separate posts!

Next post: https://classicoldsmobile.com/forums...-part-3-a.html

 

Your boy needs to have safety glasses on.

 

Nice post looks like an ambitious project