I think I'm gonna take the safe route and brace my car for the floor pan patching I will have to do. Where is the best place to brace the frame? I've seen other people restoring cars brace like door frame to door frame but not quite sure about vertical bracing? Should I go from as close to the front frame rails as possible to the roof?
The passenger side is in the best shape two or three holes no bigger than a baseball roughly all located under where the front seat would sit. The drivers side is the worst. Almost if not all of it is directly under where the seat would sit like the opposite side. I would say the entire area where the seat sits is junk right up to where the trans tunnel starts. In other words if you made a square off of the front seat edges and the fourth edge being right against where the trans tunnel starts to bend upwards.
Dont need to brace it up if thats all you have to cut out. I did both sides in my project mav...Basically from the front edge of the seats foreward to the toe boards. Doors off, car gutted and sitting on jackstands 2 ft off the ground. Had no issues at all with flex...Its a unibody car, they fairly rigid...You'll be fine.
That's good news. I really didn't want to mess with it. I'm gonna try to get all that crap cut out this week then so I can have it as ready as possible for welding in the patches. Have to haul it to my friends for welding. Are the toeboards what are basically against the firewall? Mine are in pretty bad shape. Lots of rot but no huge holes.
I hate to ask a newb question but where the hell are they located? In the rear all I see is the subframe wrap up behind the back seats into the trunk area.
It's not a good idea to cut the entire floor out at once. It's better to cut and replace a section at a time. The floor pan IS factored into the unibody design. Having only the rocker panel holding things together is against the rules
Toe board is the lower portion of the firewall...It does butt up against the torque boxes on both sides. Do one side at a time though, not all at once.
The torque boxes look fine. Ill.make sure todo one side at a time. Hey mavman what did you use to patch those big portions of floorpan? I noticed the drain holes. Did you use a donor mav or mustang pans?
When I did mine I did full sides, one at a time with mustang pans, left that door on that side.. Did my thing, put the other door back on, that one of and did the other side, in the end all measurements were the same and nothing had flexed. During this I also rebuild the driver side torque box.
So if I get a 1970 mustang pan the contours should line up with my 1970 maverick? I dont mean contours like edges that butt against the rocker panels I mean like the dips in the actual floor and ****? I hope I'm making sense.
I used 66 mustang pans on mine...They did need some trimming (To narrow them a bit) I cut 2"?? (Dont remember exactly but it wasnt alot) out of the rocker side to get the flat area over the frame rail. The rest went smoothly with no issues.
