S-30 floor replacement -Zed finding -pics galore!

[madkaw]

I have read many threads and posts about doing floors on the s-30 and using the Zed findings replacement floor panels. I recently was asked for pics; and I thought I had a thread on this-but maybe I never did. Sooooo, I am going to post up pics of the floor replacement I did and what was all involved.

This is NOT an easy project-especially if you are shooting to make the car look original. Nothing aftermarket is plug and play. Expect to spend 40 hours of hard work to get this done and look original. I had plenty of tools that made this possible, i.e. air compressor, air tools, mig welder, grinders, cleco sets, welding clamps, etc...

I am in no way endorsing Zed Findings floor pans with this thread, just letting you know what path I took. You can read the thread and make your decision.

First-the carnage. Remember, it's what you can't see before tearing into a project like this that will take time.

DISCLAIMER; I am in no way a bodyman. This part time fun and mad money for me. There are probably many other ways to do this, but i am sharing my adventure. I have had no training on such skills-just school of hard knocks!

Edited January 22, 2013 by madkaw
Disclaimer

[madkaw]

The pictures illustrate that that little bit of rust you saw under the carpet is probably a lot worse. In this case the cancer ate into the forward inner rocker and started up the front floorboards behind the pedals. It wen all the way back behind the rear seat mounts.

Somewhere in here you'll need to decide how much metal to cut out. might want to wait till you get the replacement panels first so you will know what they will and won't cover. It is also prudent to cut out a little at a time till you find good steel. Just because the panel is such and such wide-you don't need to use it all. If the original steel is clean enough to weld and has good integrity, it can stay. Don't make more work for yourself.

If you ordered complete panels then you might have serious rust and you will be using all of the replacements.

[madkaw]

Ahhh, the panels. The Zed panels are very sturdy being 16 gauge-probably thicker than original.

They are pretty heavy when you start moving them around all day. From the pic you will see 2 side by side. Onepic I have worked to fit the trans tunnel and the other pic as it came. Like I said -no plug and play here.

They are meant to attach to the inner rocker lower edge and the rear floor behind the seat rails and along the tunnel, and finally the seam under the pedals.

You will be drilling or grinding off a lot of spot welds to fit the complete panel. Some might get lucky and beable to patch the panel just below the inner rocker and not have to mess with the spot welds there. I wasn't that fortunate since the rust ate right thru the forward inner rocker.

You will also find that the panel falls a bit short covering the forward floor. It seems to me if there was a fault in these replacement panels, it is that extra material was put on the rear of the panel and not the front.

The only other issue I had as far as the panel itself was that the outboard panel edge that attaches to the rocker was not quite formed right. The bends to form the panel make the footwell too deep on the outward edge. Hard to explain, but maybe you can see this on the driver's side.

[madkaw]

Somewhere along the line here you have to decide what your going to cut out and how you are going to fit the panel. My choice was obvious, I was using all of the panel-and then some. I cut out the most of the floor as you can see. There is always questions regarding bracing the body to keep everything square when cutting out this much metal. The only bracing I did was on the tunnel. I tacked a brace under the tunnel to keep the width of the tunnel the same. Since my inner rocker was still intact and strong, i didn't see a need to brace across from the floor to the tunnel.

To remove the floor from the inner rocker will take removing all spot welds holding it there. hopefully the metal behind the floor will be solid. I tried various methods to remove welds. Spot weld removal bit works pretty well, but it takes a good one to hold up to all the drilling. You can simply grind the welds down to a point that they are so weak you can cold work the panel apart. Dirty nasty hard work and I LOVE IT!

I cut right at the floor bottom along the trans tunnel. The rust usually doesn't creep up the sides too much and if you cut the floor nice and straight and parallel, you will have a nice guide for the new floor.

You might also get lucky and get to keep your seat mounts and they will have to be spot drilled also to seperate from the floor. I didn't have such luck, and they get pretty flimsy once the floor is not under them. Replacements can be had, not all that cheap, but nice new metal to weld with and you have to consider time is money or the aggravation factor. Also consider that with the seat mounts out of the way the new floor can be dropped in from the top for test fitments easily.

Once you have all this stuff out of the way, you can start fitting the new panel.

[madkaw]

OMG, I had a bunch typed out and i lost the page:mad:

Hopefully enough is out of the way to do some fitment. Since the tunnel side of things will not match up very well, I fitted first from underneath. Your points of reference on the panel to line it up are;

frame rail lining up with the 'bubble" on the new panel

Inner rocker panel attachment point to the outer edge of Zed panel

The rear part of the Zed panel should lay right on top of the rear floor that angles up to bulkhead

The floor should be level and run parallel to the tunnel bottom edge that you cut

As stated above, the Zed panel gives a bunch of extra material at the rear, probably won't need it. The Zed panel will have to be worked along the tunnel. You can see from the pics how things line up and how i marked(crudely) the Zed panel so i could see how to work it.

[Hardway]

This is a great write up Madkaw! Thank you for taking the time to do it. We have already chatted about this and I have pretty much all the tools I need to do this job, now I just need to buy the floors. This helps to set my expectations on what I will be getting in to. Look forward to seeing more of the finished product.

[madkaw]

I hope it helps folks see what's involved in a job like this.

It's a good way for me to give back to the z community for the help I have received .

Also a good way to kill sometime sitting in the hotel!

[madkaw]

I will continue with pics of the passenger side. The pics show how I worked the tunnel side of the Zed panel good enough to fit it in place. Then I starting installing clecos to temporarily install the floor. The clecos take a 1/8" hole and hold very strong-like a rivet. There are 3/16" clecos also for heavier stuff-i used both. You wind up having a hole to fill, but it's small and you can pull the floor in and out in about 60 seconds with the clecos.

On the tunnel side it went slow since I had to cold work the Zed panel so it would lay flat against tunnel. This is where the trans being removed is helpful. I could hold a body dolly against the back side of the tunnel as I beat the Zed panel into submission.

[grannyknot]

Steve, thanks for putting these pics, always good to get another perspective.

Chris

[madkaw]

Now that the floor is in place, it's time to tie in the frame rail. Pretty much a no-brainer where it goes, but something to consider. The rails are a bit long which gives you an oppurtunity to fix the tension rod boxes if they are beat up-like mine.

I cut out the bottoms of my tension boxes , then trimmed up and bent the frame rails to fit. once things lined up well-- it was Cleco time again.

More pics

[madkaw]

Well things were fitting good so it was time to make some things permanent. Since I wasn't going to be able to flip my car over to weld, i needed to be inventive to avoid welding on my back. This is where the Clecos are worth their weight in gold-IMHO

I just pulled the complete assembly out and put it on a stand to weld my patch panel and frame rail-WHILE STANDING UP:classic:

I had a flanging tool that also had a 3/16" hole punch on one side. I used the hole puncher to set up for plug welds on the panels. I like the idea of plug welds since you get the weld closer to the center of the project instead of just welding on the edge of everything. The plug welds duplicate the spot welds the best. I also used some stitch welds in between the plug weld for extra strength. I didn't see a reason to stitch weld the panels solid-IMHO.

After the rail was welded to the floor it was time to put the assembly back in the car to finish welding it all together.

[madkaw]

The seat rails are heavy duty and nothing like welding with new metal. It was easy to see from the removed spot welds on the inner rocker where the seat rails should be positioned.

Now it was a matter of placing the rails on the floor and throwing in a seat to check alignment of the rails. I marked or outlined the rear rails so i could tack weld them to floor after removing the seat. You might be able to tack with the seat in.

Make sure the rails on the seat are parallel and square when you are lining things up. The seat should drop in the holes easily when the rails are tacked in place. Once confirmed you can finish welding them in solid.