Floors - not bad for a first try

[Pat Dilling]

If I say so myself. I mentioned earlier that many of the things I am attempting on my Conestoga I have never done before. Seeing examples here and other places have given me confidence to try, and I hope that sharing my attempts will encourage others. One of my favorite quotes comes from Jim Davis (Garfield creator) "It's amazing what one can accomplish when one does not know what one can't do." Any way here is the mess made by a previous repair that I inherited. You may remember that the piece I cut out was at least 10 gauge or maybe 1/8", it weighed about 20 pounds


I bought a piece of replacement floor off EBay for about $80. It was not big enough to cover the complete hole, so I had to fabricate additional pieces on the side. I filled in the clutch pedal hole since I am going automatic. All the metal is 18 gauge. My welds may not be beautiful but the floor is solid. I still need to go back and stitch in the blank areas. That will be good practice for when I tackle the rust on the fenders later. I will eventually have more detailed pictures in the journal in my signature. Now I get to go weld some more! Arrrr Arrrr Arrrr

[Corvanti]

nice job!

[afgarcia86]

They look great. We are doing something similar with our Hawk with a $80 bead roller. I will add photos and do a blog post soon. What are your plans for that new master cylinder? Looks like the one we picked up off Turner. I see you didn't go with the circle cut, I don't know what we are going to do there since I am pretty sure the carpet set we bought comes with a circle cut out.

[Studerick64]

Looks great Pat. You can run a remote reservoir for the master cylinder like the disc brake hawks had.

[Pat Dilling]

Rick, That is a great idea, I will do some research on that. Andres, I have not thought far enough ahead for the carpet yet. It is a Turner dual master cylinder set up. I will fabricate a metal cover to fit the hole and once I get around to carpeting I will probably make a flap held in place with velcro and have my upholstery guy put edging around it. I still need to drill a hole for the bolt to the frame and also need to secure the bat wing mount to the underside of the floor.

I have now uploaded more step by step photos and descriptions to my journal.

[hawk58man]

Pat, Damn Nice Job ! Not bad for your first go at it. It gets better the more you do it. Good fab on the floors and cut outs. Keep us in the loop please. And thanks for signing your work . Mike..

[dean pearson]

Nice Welding Job young Man!
What Machine And Wire Are You Using?

Dean.

[sweetolbob]

You never know what you can do until you do it. Keep pressing the envelope, looks durn good for a first shot.

Bob

[63avanti.]

Looks really good. What is your tool of choice for cutting the old panel sections out?

[Pat Dilling]

Let's see, to cut the old panels out I used a cutoff wheel on my right angle electric grinder. To cut and trim the new sheet metal I used a pistol grip electric shear that I got at Harbor Freight, works real well. I used snips for minor trimming. For welding I have a Lincoln 180 MIG 220v and used .023 wire with an Argon O2 mix. It is very forgiving. To clean up my welds afterwards I used a 120 grit flap wheel on the grinder. It seemed to work better than a hard grinding wheel. Thanks for the encouragement. Here is a poster I have had on my office wall for many years.

[Noxnabaker]

Real nice!
(I've seen much worse done by "pro" people who only want customers money...)

[wittsend]

Your extra pieces look very nice. A question though. The metal towards the exterior side and rear of the car looks very rusty. I have welded numerous floors and other sheet metal sections with a similar Lincoln MIG, .023 wire and Argon/Co2. Even after I grind the metal clean and treat pock marked steel with Phosphoric Acid (to remove the rust grinding can't get) I find welding the metal to be very frustrating. Where the metal is thinned (pock marks) it just blows holes. Moving down a power setting doesn't get enough penetration (or still blows holes). Welding onto untreated, rusted metal is only worse (not that I make it a practice).

Am I missing something, or are you having success welding onto rusty metal? I don't mean to be critical of your work but it seems you are overlapping clean metal over rusty metal and then welding it? From what I saw in the pictures (especially #5 & #6) I can't see any cleanly ground (original) metal. I'm perplexed that the welds are made and holding. And, I'd also be concern about what could be trapped rust at the overlapping points. For the record I do see correct grinding on the clutch pedal plate repair. If it is working well I'm happy for you. On the other hand, after my meticulous preparation I'm baffled I would have far more difficulty than you seem to have.

BTW, I agree about the flapper wheels. And, even the cut off discs (used as a grinding disc) do a decent job. Their thinness provides needed flexibility. The hard grinding wheels just bounce around too much.

[LarkTruck]

Lookin real purdy Pat. Keep up the great work!
Jim

[Pat Dilling]

Your extra pieces look very nice. A question though. The metal towards the exterior side and rear of the car looks very rusty. I have welded numerous floors and other sheet metal sections with a similar Lincoln MIG, .023 wire and Argon/Co2. Even after I grind the metal clean and treat pock marked steel with Phosphoric Acid (to remove the rust grinding can't get) I find welding the metal to be very frustrating. Where the metal is thinned (pock marks) it just blows holes. Moving down a power setting doesn't get enough penetration (or still blows holes). Welding onto untreated, rusted metal is only worse (not that I make it a practice).

Am I missing something, or are you having success welding onto rusty metal? I don't mean to be critical of your work but it seems you are overlapping clean metal over rusty metal and then welding it? From what I saw in the pictures (especially #5 & #6) I can't see any cleanly ground (original) metal. I'm perplexed that the welds are made and holding. And, I'd also be concern about what could be trapped rust at the overlapping points. For the record I do see correct grinding on the clutch pedal plate repair. If it is working well I'm happy for you. On the other hand, after my meticulous preparation I'm baffled I would have far more difficulty than you seem to have.

Actually in the areas where you indicated I cleaned the rust away pretty thoroughly with a flap wheel first followed by a stiff wire brush wheel on the grinder. I did not want to grind it down shiny smooth for fear of taking too much metal away and then suffering blow through as you mentioned. So while it is not shiny I am reasonably confident that most of the rust was removed. The penetration of the welds seem to be good and are strong. Across the back edge I have the old metal overlapping the new metal and the edge has good thickness and had raw metal exposed. Again I cleaned the top surface real well with the wire wheel and welds are strong. I did make a real rookie mistake of not getting the undercoating well scraped off the underside and by the time I realized my goof I already had the panel welded in place on two sides. So as I spot welded that back edge I was getting smoke and occasional small flame. Even after grinding down the high spots all of the welds have held. I accept there might be a chance of some rust forming, but hopefully if I seal everything well the repair will last for many years. I don't know what I am doing differently than you are, but maybe my "old" metal is a little thicker than what you have been working with. As I mentioned, I am learning so I am fine with any critiques folks have to offer.

[Noxnabaker]

Well Pat, if you wanna stay away from the worst, my suggestion is that you do like me: edge-to-edge = no overlaps at all & no room for future rust either!
Or; only the overlap that the weld actually takes itself, but in both these cases you need to weld the whole way, one inch at a time in different spots to avoid uglyness.
But then you're home free for sure.
& if you blow a hole you just put a piece of brass or copper under, maby a padlock, & then just fill it in.

& one more thing that really helps:
when it's still warm (not boiling hot!) you put on the best primer you've got (best is led, next is copper & then zink & alu) & then cover it as soon as you can with a strong covering shiny paint to keep humidity out.

But I still think you're doing GREAT!