Welding in New Floorboards

The previous post talked about the start of restoring and removing the rusty Firebird floorboards and this post will talk about welding the new floorboards in place.

First thing that I had to do was clean the areas of the metal where the new weld would be. I usually use a wire wheel brush which is hooked up to a angle grinder. Use a grinding wheel if its tough removing heavier rust & paint. Then wipe up those areas with lacquer thinner or wax & grease remover to remove any residue and make sure the surface is clean.

Once the new floorboard sheet metal was placed & lined up inside the car, I tack welded in various places around the sheet metal. I didn’t bother using cleco clamps since it wasn’t hard holding the new floorboards down while I welded them in place. There was little modifications that I had to make such as cutting excess metal off, but other than that, it went smoothly.

Welding in Seat Support

The next step to finishing the floor was to weld in the seat support on top of new floor boards. The old seat supports were a little rusty so I cleaned them up with a wire wheel brush and painted them with a chassis saver paint. As you can see from the picture, I also painted the floorboard area where the seat support would cover so that it doesn’t rust in the future.

Once the paint was dry, I lined up the seat support onto the floorboard and welded it in place. Then just clean up the metal and paint.

Removing OverLapping Metal

Obviously the bottom side of the Firebird’s new floorboards had to be painted as well, but before I did that, I cut off the overlapping excess sheet metal with a air powered cut off wheel. This is key to rust prevention because the layers are hard to paint completely inside and water can get caught in between them.