The G-body floor pan is well-known for rusting out in certain areas. The Hot Rod Regal was fortunate to exist for most of its life as a California car, but lived in the rust belt of the Mid-west for the last 10 years. It had some signs of normal rust, but as stated before, not bad enough to warrant a floor pan replacement. The floor pan clean up was performed with a wire wheel on an electric drill, small torch to soften the under coating, and a paint scraper.
I wanted to find a car with as minimal rust as possible, because this would save time and money later. I was a little worried at first when looking at the bottom of the floor pans, but found that the metal was still very solid and only had minimal surface rust poking through the under coating and dirt. The pictures tell the story. So, if you have a car that is showing some age underneath, it may still be salvageable. Follow along to see how nice these floors turned out.
Before the clean up.
During…
After…
Before clean up with the wire wheel…
During…
After POR-15…
Upper floor pan – painted/sealed
Lower floor pan – painted/sealed
To totally encapsulate the floor sheet metal, the internal surfaces of the rockers needed paint… I did find a couple soft spots in the rocker panels on the exterior body side. So, the decision was made to replace the rockers also. When performed, the remaining interior rocker areas will be painted/sealed.
During the clean up/painting process, I was also working on firewall modifications. The next post, I will update the firewall modifications I performed.