Floor and longitudinal replacement

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Rusty Ferrell
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Floor and longitudinal replacement

#1 Post by Rusty Ferrell »

As some may recall, I recently purchased a 55 Speedster that had been off the road for some time.
Very original car with some boy racer modifications Sixties vintage. I am in the que to have Dave Miller work some magic but he has another car in front of me to do. In the meantime I will strengthen the chassis as there is considerable rust, left side of floor wasn't attached to the vertical inner support, cut the floor out. Here is my approach; I plan to cut away all the rusted metal or thin metal, but keep as much of the parent metal as I possible. I want to resistance weld the new floor to the flanges, to do this I'll mock up the inner rockers and flanges and screw them to the parent metal, Set the floor and screw it to the flanges then remove the floor and vertical pieces with the flanges and had those pieces resistance welded together following factory spacing and number of spot welds. Fit the floor assembly back in place and position the longitudinals and screw them to the floor and remove the floor one more time and have the longitudinal spot welded to the bottom.
Reinstall the complete floor with longitudinals and weld in place. I have access to a very nice commercial resistance welder or I would most likely plug weld as always. The resistance welding will provide much more clamping pressure. I'll follow Jim Kellogg's suggestion attaching the outer portion of the longitudinals to the threshold. Whew!
As always, suggestions, comments or rude remarks are always welcome from the experts and future experts.
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Rusty

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Robert Reed
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Re: Floor and longitudinal replacement

#2 Post by Robert Reed »

Rusty; I’m not sure that that will work; the floor sits atop the perimeter flanges typically. There would be no way to insert the floor into it even without all the additional pieces attached. Perhaps I’m missing something though; I’m interested to see what more experience has to say.
Bob

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Martin Benade
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Re: Floor and longitudinal replacement

#3 Post by Martin Benade »

I think that can work although getting it tucked in as an assembly may take several pairs of hands. If the lap joint across the floor is already welded it may be quite difficult to get the whole thing in under the center tunnel as it will not flex very much. Will the tunnel remain in place? You will have the door sills off? And what is Jim Kellogg's method?
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Tony Proasi
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Re: Floor and longitudinal replacement

#4 Post by Tony Proasi »

I wouldn't do anything it would be a shame to do all that then your metal guy has to undo it for some reason.

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John Brooks
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Re: Floor and longitudinal replacement

#5 Post by John Brooks »

There are several well documented examples of the replacement at the http://www.abcgt.com/forum/index.html. Look this over and show it to your metal guy. This forum is pretty good at helping do this correctly.
John Brooks

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Jim Hohensee
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Re: Floor and longitudinal replacement

#6 Post by Jim Hohensee »

Rusty, Your plan is interesting but I think it would be very difficult to achieve. Without seeing the car and knowing how much you intend to replace makes commenting on your idea difficult. The front edge of the pan sits on top of the rear edge of the toe board and the rear edge of the pan sits on top of the front edge of the rear seat riser bulkhead. Placing the whole assembly into position would probably be very difficult if not impossible. Individually each piece is not that difficult to do and it seems that the time you save by resistance spot welding would be lost by {off and back on} time. Keeping the metal tight together for plug welding is not a problem. If you are planing on replacing the sills and front and rear pan supports then you idea may have merit. Always willing to learn a new technique.
Best of luck to you!
Jim

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