Floor pan fitting

9th September 2012
Ok, so we continued and removed all of the old floor pan halves.

Things are looking pretty good.

Now to start fitting the pans.
The new floor pan halves come slightly wider than required and need to be cut down to fit.

The best way to do this is to clamp the front and back of the pan the same distance from the finished position.  Next cut a small block of wood exactly to this size.  Then you can mark a line all the way along the tunnel to cut too.

I used a thin blade in an angle grinder to cut, and the pans fit perfectly.

 

 

 The finish pans laid in place.  A very good fit, and it took less than an hour to cut both to fit.
Before we weld these in place, there a few jobs to complete:

• Cut new pedal assembly hole to convert to RHD
• Cut new master cylinder hole to allow conversion to RHD
• Remove front beam
• Remove rear axles and gearbox
• Remove old under seal etc from whats left of the chassis

Leaving the pan halves off means we can lift the tunnel onto some tressels and roll it over to work on the underside easily.

If you have a friend to help, the front beam can come off by removing the 4 mounting bolts.  We left everthing else on, even the wheels.

 

Unfortunately, the beam has seen better days.  Lots of dodgy welding all over it.  Looks like this will be scrap.

 

Removing the gearbox and axles is a little more complicated, but not much.  Remove 3 bolts each side which bolt the spring plates to the axles, remove to bolts holding the gearbox to the chassis, undo the gearstick shaft coupling, unbolt the shocks.

All done.