Doors back on; Fitting Front Half of Floor Pan

Here is a picture of the finished diagonal member brace which connects the back side of the battery box to the front bulkhead/floor pan area. I finished it last week but didn't get a picture until this morning.

After doing a bit of finish grinding on the seams of the diagonal brace this morning, I set about unwrapping my doors, which have been in storage for months, ever since the media blasting last fall to be exact. They aren't in primer either; they were simply treated with Ospho or some other metal treatment and left bare, because they need some repairs on the leading edge and at the bottom. Originally Frank Gibson was doing this work, but I think I'm going to finish it up.

It is suggested by many people to make sure that the door hinge pins have good clearance and work freely before beginning re-assembly. I took this time to make sure that this was the case. Forty years of accumulated gunk and rust had made the hinge pins want to stick inside the hinges, and if you look back, I had a very difficult time removing them in the first place. I used a small round file to clean out the bores of the hinges, and I did the same to the outer surface of the hinge pins. I kept at it for all of the pins until they slid into the hinges with only a bit of effort, and didn't take extraordinary measures to remove. Then I put the doors back on the car!

Door fit remains good but they may need a bit of adjustment. Especially the front edge on the driver's side seems too narrow, and it seems to stick out more at the bottom than at the top. I don't remember it being this was upon disassembly, but who knows, the whole car looked like such a mess way back then, I probably didn't notice things like that.

The main reason for putting the doors back on the body is to make sure that I don't warp things dramatically when I weld in the floor pan. There will be a lot of heat going into the car, and the potential for tweaking things badly is there if I don't go slowly and deliberately. Having the doors in place will make sure I don't mess up the front and rear gaps during the process. I'm not concerned about the rocker gap, because I don't have any rockers right now, and I can make that gap perfect whe I put the new rockers on.

I spent the last hour or so today getting the front half of the floor pan into shape. Same routine as at the rear: Measure, trim a bit off the sides with air shears, measure again, trim a bit more, get it roughly in place, and then do more small bits of trimming with the plasma cutter. I finished about 80% of the job today, there are still a few small areas of interference at the front portion where there are some curves and angles, but I should be able to get that addressed tomorrow. If all proceeds according to plan, I'll punch holes for plug welds in both the front and rear halves of the pan tomorrow, and get them both fitted in place. If I have enough time, I may even tack it in! Posted by pbrown at June 28, 2004 10:10 PM