Monday, 9 May 2016

Floor Pan Preparation

During the last few weeks I have been preparing the chassis and new floor pan to fit together ready for welding. It turns out there is quite a lot to think about. First off you very quickly realise how many holes you have to drill. I lost count after 200!




Then there are the tube sections which will be covered up forever more. I wanted to treat these with rust protection to hopefully give them some extra life. Midget's have seemed to suffer badly around the crossmember area, probably because of the jacking point clear lets moisture into that section.


 



Another area that will be mostly hidden is the gap between the inner and outer rear bulkhead. Once I have completed the chassis the plan is to take it to a sandblasting company to take all the metal back and prime with an Epoxy paint. I am sure these gaps will be hard to blast when the floor pan is in, so any protection will be useful. Both of these sections I used rust converter or primer and then black chassis paint. 




I then spend some time cleaning down the bare metal and zinc priming all the contact welding points. This included the new floor pan and as you can see the panel on the right is all prepared. Shame really as the new panels look so nice!



I've got quite a lot of welding to do here. Best to take it slow so not to warp the metal.



It was only the other day when I realised I might have hit a problem. If I weld in the floor plan now, it will be very difficult to weld in a repair section that links the shock absorber bracket to the rear suspension mount as shown in the pictures below.



I have made it even more difficult because of my chassis tilting device that uses the shock absorber bracket for support. So the option I came up with was to weld the part to the suspension mount first and complete the weld at a later stage when I can get better access. 


  
Hopefully I can get welding soon!