Triumph Spitfire Body Repair #23 - Yet More Floor Installation Prep

Here's the video. Please understand that my write-up here and the video are not necessarily in the same order of performance. I jump around a lot at the garage, but I try to make my write-ups topical, staying in the same general area or repair.

There is a significant amount of time in the video devoted to how I get the floorboard fitted in the car. It's not a good fit at this point, but I had a YouTube viewer ask me, so I provided (hopefully) good information on how I am going about it, which is not to say there are alternative options.

The rest of the video was more of my "mainstream" as I continued to fight the lower 4 inches of rust on Dorothy. Essentially, the bottom 4 inches, or so, of her is rusted out. I'm trying to take care of this an inch at a time. In that pursuit, I located cancer at the back of the lower B post, similar to what I found on the driver's side.

Drilling out the spot welds in the search for cancer!

Cancer found...blurry cancer...so odd.

With that, I knew I had a significant enough problem that I needed to take more extreme measures, so I needed to cut away the lower front of the rear wing. I really <really> didn't want to do that on this side since it appeared to be in good shape, but in the end, of course, there was cancer throughout so it was good that I did. I cut the lower portion of the wing away from to gain access to the cancer-riddled areas.

Cancer from the inside. Outer lower wing cut away in this shot.

View from external. First cut for cancer extraction.

With that, I resigned myself to the fact that my cancer on the passenger's side was as bad (at least) as it was on the driver's side and I needed to just get it all out of there. So, I cut, cut, cut and did that.

Cancer removed!

Same cut but from inside the car.

I didn't get to making a patch part for this area yet, but I don't expect it to be too difficult, especially considering that I don't have to worry about running wiring through the "hole", unlike the passenger's side.

While taking care of the bottom B post, I was also taking care of the bulkhead in parallel. This was an identical, though smaller, repair as from the driver's side. I paid a bit more attention, however, to how everything fit together.

Closeup of the repair area.

Another shot of the area, with the front cap cut and bent away. 

Same as above, but a longer view.

Same as above, but closer showing the "paper repair" that I saw on the driver's side.

Assessing the damage and how everything went together,  I moved on to fabricating the repair piece. I had some more old outer sill metal remaining, so I used that.

Template traced out and ready to cut with tin snips.

Part ready to weld in, plug weld holes ready for use.

Another angle of same shot above.

Post welding. Need to get my heat increased or wire feed decreased. Caterpillar welds...

 That was about it. I still need to fabricate a repair piece for the lower B post but the bulkhead is all done (it ground out ok).

Unfortunately, I have some family in the Naples, FL area that we are very worried about. We had a cousin in Houston (who made out okay, no flooding at their house, thankfully) but we have essentially the entire extended side of my wife's family in Naples, FL. Her parents have had a condo there for the last 30+ years. I expect it to be a total loss. They also had a beach house in Ocean City, NJ that was flooded and lost during Sandy a few years ago. While I understand that this may sound like a "woe-is-me" with all of these beach properties, understand that this are historical properites before living at the beach was "cool". The NJ beach home was a Sears home built in the late 1940's and the Naples, FL condo was bought sight unseen in the mid-80's.

Real people with real losses. I pray for them all..please join me in doing so.