I've been restoring a 1971 Cutlass Convertible and once we tore into it we discovered that a previous owner made a short-lived attempt at "fixing" a rusted floor by fiberglassing over it. This might have been done 20 years ago, but since it was on top of the old sheet metal, moisture got into the original holes, causing widespread cancer.

There are a lot of options for replacement metal. You can get just the pan in sections or all-in-one with the support beams welded in place. We opted for this choice, and purchased an AMD pan from Eastwood for less than $600 delivered.

I thought I'd share our experience on this, hoping that it might help the next shade tree warrior who has to travel this path!

We decided to go "frame off", so the first step was to essentially strip the entire body of virtually all removable parts: front clip, motor, transmission, interior, trim, glass, etc. etc. etc.

The second step was to weld in place temporary bracing to keep the body from collapsing on itself. I used rectangular steel tubing repurposed from a bed frame to weld a strut from the top door hinge surface to the cavity where the rear window slides through. Welds in these spots will be very easy to clean up and hide when we're done. I also added a square tube across the body at about the back edge of the door opening. This was attached to the first two braces. Some recommend diagonal bracing in addition to this, but I'm finding that its probably not necessary. We've maintained dimension with these three braces and nothing more.

Then we were ready to lift the body from the frame. After we removed the body bolts, we used a floor jack and 1/2" rope to carefully lift the body. We used four pieces of rope suspended from the garage ceiling joists. It's probably about 700 pounds or so all combined, or the equivalent of a motor, or 4 men. We had to lift it high enough to roll the chassis out from underneath it, so we're about 30 inches off the floor.

With the body supported by ropes, we then built two wooden saw-horses (sort of) and bolted the body to these in order to rest the body on the floor. One is underneath the fire wall. The second is underneath the trunk. It's important to make these a-framed and cross braced in order to keep the car stable. I've been working on it for several weeks with it like this and it's been pretty safe. Still, we kept the ropes in place as an added precaution.

In the next post, we'll go over how we got the floor out!

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