Denis' Chevy II Bodywork - Page 2
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One mistake I made was not taking a picture of the butcher job that someone had done to
"repair" the floor. The best way I can describe it, there was no center support brace
under the front seat. Actually, there was a patch of metal cut out from the original
floor where the support was suppose to go. The person cut out the metal from the inside
of the rocker panel to the driveshaft hump and about 8 inches wide. Then, they proceeded
to replace the hole with a piece of flat sheet metal. There was a few problems with the repair.
First, the patch was pop riveted in. Second, the center support was not in. Third, the
patch was flat. The original floor was contoured upwards of about 1.5 inches. What made this
worse was that the front seat looked like it was laying back. Obviously bench seats in these
cars do not do that. It was pretty bad.
I had managed to find a supplier in the local area that supplied N.O.S. Parts for early GM cars and had connections to other after market parts. John Golden, (a.k.a. John Nova Parts as my wife refers to him), owner of J&M Auto in Pelham NH. He soon became my lifeline. This guy was good, his prices were very competitive, and he had the stuff 15 minutes away. If there was a bad quality after-market part out there that did not fit like it should, he knew it, and would not sell it to you even if you begged him. He set me up with new full length floor pans. I bought the center braces from Year One.
John, from King Street Autobody, had to fabricate the drain and vent channel by the foot box. You can see the work done in the left picture above. The pictures show the passenger side floor cut out. John left extra material in order to fit the new floor pan.
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The top left picture shows the drivers side floor welded in place. The new floors were not as bad to put in as I thought. Of coarse, John did a lot of the fine detail work for fitting them.
The right photograph above shows the passenger side floor in and primered. Once again, if you take your time to measure and take the items off carefully, the job is not that bad.
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The cutting of the floor revealed more hacking from the previous attempt at fixing the rust. The firewall, behind the front tires, had more roofing tar. Remembering what I had discovered in the rear wheel wells, I knew this wasn't going to be good. John had me scraping away pounds of tar. Once removed, we were staring at a lot of bondo, rust and holes. Not good. The only way to repair this, like the other suprises, was to cut it out and weld in good metal. In the left piture, the photograph shows the amount that we had to cut out in order to get to some respectable metal. In the right photo, You will see the new metal patch welded in place. The drivers side of the car was not as bad as the passenger side, but it was close.
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