Hey, who wants to see a completed floor pan in The Juggernaut??
Yeah, me too.
😔😅
I do have a little bit of good news though, the large piece for the passenger side is fully welded in and done now. I just finished it up last night and I think it’s looking pretty good.
Took me a little longer than normal to get back into the swing of things with figuring out how to cope with the knee, but once I got rolling it came together pretty well.
There were some challenging areas to contend with, I knew there would be, but I just took some patience pills and worked through them. Areas like in these angled corners where access is extremely limited and tough to work on…
…and up tight against the back of the rear inner seat mount…
…and also in this outer front corner where the rear seat bracket meets the inner rocker:
But I persevered and got the areas pretty respectable I think.
I guess this piece isn’t entirely finished, I have these couple of plug weld holes still left to buzz up the next time the tail pipe comes out:
I only welded up the top two because that’s all I could comfortably access with the pipe in place. The flanges that aligned with the driveshaft tunnel and the inner rocker turned out the best in my opinion, they are almost truly invisible where they were welded:
I’m a little disappointed with a couple of areas, I tried really hard and spent a lot of time trying to get the bead roll in the new piece to look seamless where it meets up to the existing stamping with what I would call only marginal success:
It looks ok, and will be acceptable for what it is, but I’m going to try and make it a little better on the driver’s side if I can.
Also, there was simply too much distortion in the panels from bead rolling for the sections over the crossmember to meet up perfectly flat. I got it to the point where it’s acceptable, but I really wanted it to be perfect and flawless.
Other than those couple areas, I’m pretty happy overall with the end result. Ok enough teasing, here’s the photo dump of the whole thing. Just don’t judge too harshly, it is just a floor pan afterall.
Obviously still have the last little section to figure out and fabricate/weld in, but I’m moving on to the same panel on the driver’s side next, first. That way both sides will be at the same stage of completion at the same time.
In somewhat related news, I also put in and received an order from Summit for some new 3” three hole exhaust flanges.
Pretty impressed with them tbh, nice and thick at nearly 3/8”.
These are necessary because I’m going to modify both tail pipes slightly. Mostly because they need to be clocked or rotated slightly, to buy me a little more clearance to the rear floor crossmember than I currently have now:
So that just means cutting off these existing flanges and welding on the new ones with the pipes rotated slightly. It’s not worth the effort or electricity for the compressor to try and cut off, grind smooth, and save these ones.
The other reason for modifying the tail pipes slightly, is because with the new alignment of them, they no longer line up nicely with the outside of the car. I currently have masking tape spacers holding the tail pipes centered in the openings, but as you can see the cuts are no longer straight or even from front to back:
It’s the same story with the passenger side too unfortunately. If I end up having to splice in short sections to extend them slightly and re-cut the ends, then so be it. It’s a pretty high visibility area to have things not fitting well or looking right.
These tail pipe mods will take place after the driver’s side large pan gets welded in, but before the very last sections get fabricated and installed.
Should probably mention the rear firewall too, it’s been several weeks now since the last bit of seam sealer was applied. It’s likely fully cured now and won’t shrink any more. That means I’m free to shoot it in the black epoxy at any time now, but I’m going to hold off until the last of the floor fabrication is done. Still too many welding and grinding sparks flying, no sense in risking damage to it until all that’s done.
So that’s where I’m at now, after posting this I’m going to start cutting out the piece for the driver’s side large pan and get that underway.
No rest for the wicked, but it feels great to be back at it again.
D.
