Rear Frame Repair Finished; Fitting Floor Pan

I finished the right rear section of the frame repairs, underneath the torsion bar. Yet again, I found this part of the car incredibly frustrating to work on, even with the floor pan removed. There are a lot of frame sections coming together in this one area, and there is the heater tube running inside. Because it is the lowest point of the frame, right where any water that gets inside will collect. There are drain holes, but they probably got clogged up with mud and road debris fairly quickly. No wonder this part of the 356 was frequently rusty.

So the repairs involve lots of little fiddly pieces, and don't look very good. There is no good repair panel for the portion of the frame that I needed to repair. It turns out that the Stoddard patch panel is for the outside portion of the frame, beneath the torsion bar. That wasn't a very rotten portion of my car. The worst part of my car was on the inside of the frame, right where the heater tube enters the car, and inside the longitudinal, where the heater tube comes out of the frame. These sections on my car were in horrible shape. The heater tube itself was also totally rotten at this point. I did my best, and the results are a certain improvement, but not perfect. Not all the rust was gone, which bothers me, but further work would be very difficult. I coated everything with a good coating of cold galvanizing paint, and I'm hoping that since the car isn't going to see the kind of abuse it saw earlier in its life, it will be enough. I would hate to have to re-visit this portion of the car in ten years.

After "finishing" the frame, I started to think about putting on the right side outer longitudinal, and then got excited about seeing how the floor pan will look when it is finally in place. I took some measurements and started trimming the rear portion of the pan to make a good fit, because the replacement pan was oversized about an inch and a half on either side. That part of the trimming was simple, but then I spent a good amount of time working on getting the pan to fit up in between the back of the tunnel, and the remaining "lip/sill" at the back of the car where the bulkhead of the rear seats is. It is sandwiched between these two members, and without bending up the very rear portion of the tunnel, it was too tight a fit. Lots of slight adjustments, banging with the rubber mallet, and cursing, because it was something like 95 degrees outside and I was hot as hell. Finally I got a good fit.

I realized that I was still a bit ahead of myself though. I really should finish repairing the sill of the front bulkhead at the front of the car before I contemplate putting in the floor pan, as the front half of the pan needs to rest on it. Also, I need to re-mount the doors to make sure I don't warp anything putting in the pan. I might as well put on the right side longitudinal as well, because that's how I did the left side. All that holding true, it was fun to see that the car is starting to take shape!

I didn't get much more done last week because of commitments at home, and I was also juggling work on the 356 with getting the air conditioning on my 911 working. While I know that the 911 is notorious for bad air conditioning, I need it to work because it is a hot summer here in North Carolina, and that is my daily driver car. I am replacing the receiver-drier with a ProCooler, and I had a new hose fabricated that goes between the evaporator and the rear condenser, because the one on the car had a tear. I'll be charging the system with R134A and hoping for cold air.

On a last note, I had to return the Husky 3/8" impact wrench from Home Depot. When it arrived, it was 1/2", not 3/8", and the ft/lb. rating was way below what the website description was. A long conversation with Home Depot lead to discovery that the website was wrong. Figures. I bought a slightly used Ingersoll-Rand IR215 model on eBay instead, for the same price. It should be great.

Posted by pbrown at June 20, 2004 04:29 PM