Triumph Spitfire Body Repair #22 - More Floor Installation Prep
A slightly abbreviated visit to the garage today as I had a social engagement tonight with friends. I did get over there about 8:45 or so and continued with floor preparation. I did some cleaning up in the general area so that sucked up some time as well. Here's the supporting video:
In support of installing the floor, I had some things to take care of, one of which I forgot about until the very end. What I tackled first was preparing the black car's rear radius arm mounting bracket. As I mentioned in my last post, it was covered in some undercoating the PO had put on. So, with a variety of wire wheels and a bit of time in the blast cabinet, I got it cleaned up. I applied some POR-15 Metal Prep and let it do it's magic.
Ready for paint. I will seam seal those curved parts on the bottom plate after installation.
The driver's side bracket I had finished up a while ago, but I still needed to paint it. The passenger's side was in a bit rougher shape and needed some weld buildup in a cancer spot (I show the hole in my video) and a quick repair where I got a bit overzealous with the cutting wheel. I lit the welder off and got it done with no problem.
Top view of weld repair. Not great, but it fixes the hole.
Bottom view. I left the weld fat since it won't interfere with anything.
With that all done, the next chore was to remove the remaining parts of the floor pan that didn't come off with the initial cutting. The floor pan, inner sill, strengthener, and outer sill all form a big metal sandwich that I needed to break apart. The rear of this area, however, replaces the outer sill and strengthener with the B post.
The rear B post metal sandwich area. Spot weld cutter to the rescue!
This B post is in better shape than the driver's side was, but I think it will still require some repair. In any case, I knew that I wanted to preserve it as best as possible so I used my Blair Spotweld Cutter to remove those particular spotwelds and broke that portion of the floor free.
Since the rest of the sandwich to the front of the car was going to be replaced, I took the cutting wheel to it all and had at it.
The rust shower from just the cutting wheel. Lots of bad metal on the floor.
With that extra metal out of the way, I was back to fitting the floor pan itself. Much like the driver's side, it was a process of putting the floor pan in, making some cutting marks, taking it out and cutting it, putting it back in, making some cutting marks...you get the idea. This takes a lot of time and I didn't get it fitted...but I'm close.
Initial fit after the first cut. Some adjustments required.
One thing I did figure out was that my dash support angle iron that I welded in last visit and the factory dash support cannot be in when fitting the floor since they just simply get in the way. Maybe if I did it different...but I took them both out and proceeded with the iterations of fitting. Also, while leaving the frame is probably the better overall decision, it does make fitting the floor a bit trickier than without it since it provides some interference. Like I said, though, I think in the long run and to prevent alignment issues (like I have on the passenger's side) I think it's a better idea leaving the body on the frame.
As the end of the day drew near, I got pretty close to final fit but I had issues with the rear of the floor sticking out out past the sandwich area. I'm pretty sure I can just adjust the bend radius of where the floor will meet the driveshaft tunnel (picture above), but I didn't get to doing that. It lines up well at the front, so it is definitely not in there straight.
The overlap of the floor.
And the long view.
With that, my day was over. I totally forgot about fixing the front of the bulkhead until I did my last video update, so I will probably tackle that first on my next trip over. Otherwise, not a bad day considering I only got about 5 hours and with the tedium that is getting the floor fitted.
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