The Official 356Talk Forum

Hi all, trying to educate myself on how to properly evaluate floor pans with only pics available.

I took liberty to use some clips from recent BAT candidates to provide some examples.

The pic below shows some areas of flaking with a red/brown hue underneath From the auction comments, I did not get the impression this was of concern to most people, is this simply the undercoating removed from wear and tear showing a solid pan below?

as opposed to the pic below while this floor pan seems to have a new undercoat making it appear smooth, there is significant wrinkling in the corners. This seemed to make people concerned despite not showing rust because of the new undercoat thus am I correct in assuming this is just hiding several "ills" under a layer of undercoat?

Apologies if I am using incorrect terminology

Thank you

I have done several floors, the first photo is surface rust, pretty typical. The second is either fresh undercoat or paint, but the wrinkles are from improper jacking or lift arm location. Both look drivable to me from these photos.

The top photo is from a Texas from new car. Multiple different areas with superficial rust where undercaoating had fallen off. But area of bare pan looked like superficial rust of a solid undercarage. Of couse there will be rust spreading under the remaining undercoating and hopefully just surface. The bottom photo is from a car with a history of original owner in Germany and a whole lot of poor rust repair in the past with flat metal including repair of diagonal member, both rear frame rails and replacement of front pans so the irregular areas are probably NOT surface rust irregularities. One must use all the information you can get from the complete underside, history and experience. You get what you pay for if you are lucky.

Thanks all for the replies

@doug mcdonnell, what is your process to gather all that important information on the second car by the photo?
Even looking back on the comments on the auction from the second car, I saw no mention of the repair on dx member, rear frame rail and front pan replacements.

See June 24th 2:40PM comment in the BAT auction Eric Obviously I didn't get all that info from just the photo you posted here. Although you can certainly see the flat panel front pans above.

There are several gas or mig welds in places the factory had no joints and the jack receivers are a bent up mess with embarrassing weld beads instead of a few spot welds.

Ok I am putting two and two together now. Referencing Paul Hatfield's website with all your comments helped as well.