Rust Repair, Part 2

The passenger side floor pan needed a little work as well, though as with the drivers side things could have been much worse to start with.  In the front footwell, I had to cut around the large hole and weld in a patch panel.

 

 

Behind the central lateral support member, the floor pan had rotted through in the middle, leaving a gap once the loose metal and undercoating were removed.  I was torn on this one, since a proper metal repair would be difficult and time consuming and perhaps beyond my skill. At the same time, the rust damage was not all that structural in nature and didn’t seem to warrant full replacement of the floor panel for a rally car.  Thus, I decided to make the repair in fiberglass, figuring I could always redo it in metal if this didn’t hold up over time.  Here is the area cleaned up and treated with POR 15.  Warning: the pictures to follow may offend the purist:

 

To apply the fiberglass, I covered a small piece of cardboard in wax paper, then taped to the underside of the hole.  I also wedged a towel underneath to push the cardboard up to the proper contour.

Then time to lay the fiberglass in two layers for extra strength.  I don’t claim that this was the best way to repair this, but sometimes “good enough” has to be good enough.