floor pan, rust down under

[endersjeff]

A friend of mine just gave me a 92 GL. I couldn't believe it. After I cleaned it up what I found was a nice little car that is worth saving. An then I got it on jacks and whew. The rust underneath. There is a pretty good sized hole under the floor on the driver's side. Q: How do I go about replacing the floor? Like VW's years ago you could buy a floor pan or a molded piece for under the car. Can anyone steer me a bit on this? The engine and transmission are tight. It's just the rust underneath.

[91_festy_Gl]

Find a donor car that has a good underneith and use that to replace the rusted out panels. My BP festiva is the same way. It has a beautiful body but the bottom is shot. Mine is beyond repair. im just gonna drive it untill I can find a good donor to transplant the engine into.

That is really the only way to repair the rust unless you feel like swapping everything over to a solid car.

[Safety Guy]

I only had a few smaller holes in my left front floor, so here's what I did:



Sheet metal patch riveted in with a lot of undercoating sprayed on both sides fresh so it would stick together. Here is the "before" pic:



I realized your floor may be a lot worse, so good luck!

Karl

[Fordverde]

I took mine to a shop and they pretty much did what Safety guy has done. fairly quick and cheap.

[Dustin]

Pretty much everything I've owned has had major rust issues somewhere, whether on the driver's footwell, the trunk floor, whatever. It's just a fact of life here in the rust belt where we salt the roads seven months out of the year. I've used sheet metal, a mig welder, and LOTS of seam sealer and spray undercoating to make repairs. I get my metal for free from the local autobody shops, they will give you their discards from accident repairs (lots of accidents here during the winter too, from when they don't get the roads salted/sanded fast enough). Anyway, it doesn't have to be pretty, and it's usually way less work than a drivetrain swap. Riveting works for small jobs too, I usually don't have enough metal to rivet to. Anyway, just my two cents....

[kumalaba]

^

on some other cars i have owned i just used fiberglass & it really worked well for me.

[Charlie1717]

I took mine to a shop and they pretty much did what Safety guy has done. fairly quick and cheap.

What's cheap? Just to get an idea of what you would pay to get a couple holes patched?

[angrygocart]

I removed as much rust as I could from the passengers side floor, a pinhole turned into two large holes. Be sure to scrape away the undercoating and sound deadning from around the hole until you get to nice clean shiny metal. I brushed rust converter onto the reamaining metal and cut patches from sheet metal that I bought at the local hardware store. The metal is thin enough to bend by hand. Sprayed a couple coats of primer on the floorpan, primered and painted both sides of the patch panels. I placed one patch on the floor inside the car then one under the car and riveted them together throuigh the good metal of the floorpan (like a sandwich). I caulked the seams with waterproof paintable sealant then sprayed several coats of undercoating on both sides of the repair. You can't tell there's a patch with the carpet in place. I forgot to take pictures of the finished patch.

[WmWatt]

Usual backyard body work. Remove rust with sanding disk on rotary drill. Optionaly convert remaining rust with phosphoric acid found in rust treatments and some cleaners, eg CLR (read product warning to see if it contains phosphoric acid). Patch with metal and poprivets or with fibre reinforced polyester or epoxy resin. Epoxy sticks better but costs more. If using polyester drill small holes in body to let resin through and lock. Cover patch with rust paint, undercoat, roofing cement, or all three. One of the resins or the roofing cement can be used to bed and seal a metal patch. Resins can be thickened for bedding and sealing with talcum powder or one of the commercial thickeners until consistency of peanut butter. Ambient temperature must be high enough for resin to cure (70 F for expoxy). Temperature can be raised with incandescent bulb, heat lamp, or heater. Sand cured resin for adhesion of paint, etc.

[denguy]

My 91 is rusting on the drivers" side floor exactly the same way as in the pics. Thinking about cleaning the edges back into clean metal and laying some fiberglass mat over the whole thing.

[PhoenixSHO]

I removed as much rust as I could from the passengers side floor, a pinhole turned into two large holes. Be sure to scrape away the undercoating and sound deadning from around the hole until you get to nice clean shiny metal. I brushed rust converter onto the reamaining metal and cut patches from sheet metal that I bought at the local hardware store. The metal is thin enough to bend by hand. Sprayed a couple coats of primer on the floorpan, primered and painted both sides of the patch panels. I placed one patch on the floor inside the car then one under the car and riveted them together throuigh the good metal of the floorpan (like a sandwich). I caulked the seams with waterproof paintable sealant then sprayed several coats of undercoating on both sides of the repair. You can't tell there's a patch with the carpet in place. I forgot to take pictures of the finished patch.

This.

I had only a small hole in mine too , when I stripped the coating (it flakes off anyway) the holes were 20 times bigger.

I removed all of it , welded plates and used a can of undercoating seam sealer paste , re-painted with antirust paint.

[Safety Guy]

Ha! If I had tried to remove all my floor and rocker panel rust, I'd have slaved for days! Since I only intend for AquaMutt to last another three or four years, I figured my repairs will last "long enough" to eventually find another, better shell when I have more time, space and other resources to do it up right.

So keep some realistic goals in mind when doing work like this. It may not have to last "forever." Or even five years!

Karl

[WmWatt]

Note: Good prevention for rust is to spray underside with oil, also inside doors and rear panels by removing rubber plugs. There are services which do it using special formulations but I spray mixture of used motor oil and solvent from hand pumped deck sprayer before winter. Solvent is needed to lower viscosity of oil so it will spray evenly. The oil drips and pools so watch where you do it. I cover garage floor with old newspapers.

[WmWatt]

My rust repairs last about 5 years. Sealing with epoxy keeps out water. I mix small amounts and apply with toothpick along seams.

[endersjeff]

Thanks for the great replies. I've got it in my garage and tearing up the carpet and getting it down to the metal. I might take some pictures and post my first ones on or sight. I'm excited about this project. I'll keep you posted. Think I can do most of the work myself which is what i'm enjoying.