Floor Pans

polaratherapy

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Happy New Year all you C buddies!
Started cutting out the franken floors out of my 1970 Polara vert and I am just wondering if I have to buy pans for it or can I just cut up a new 45 Gal. barrel and use that metal?
From what I measure the existing floor thickness is 1mm and the barrel I have is 2mm thick.
Not sure if that is 18 gage ( 1mm) and 16 gage (2mm).
Shipping to Canada costs more than the pans themselves.
Any info would be helpful, Thanks. PT
 
Buy some 18 g sheet and a cheep bead roller and make them yourself. I can't imagine the time you'd spend just cutting and flattening out 16 g barrels, that's a little overkill for floors. If you don't want to spend money on a bead roller, there is a decent hack that uses round steel stock welded to the end of an air chisel.
 
The other problem with barrel metal is that most barrels have at least two good sized ridges on the sides to facilitate rolling them. Those are going to be all but impossible to remove with hand tools.

Dave
 
BEFORE you start cutting the floor, you might put the car on jackstands on a LEVEL floor and secure it there. Then remove the doors and tack-in a support piece between the cowl and door latch pillars. With no roof on the car, the fllorpan is the main support item in a unibody car, I suspect. NOTHING like a body/frame GM or Ford car in that respect. Got to keep everything "square" for best resuilts.

The other thing is that the floors are far from flat, so that means a good bit of contouring of the metal to fit. Unless you might desire to make it like a wheel-tubbed/roll caged drag race only car, with a full frame under it. Check out some of the YouTube videos on such. Those Saturday morning cable car shows (with a shop full of fabrication equipment) make it look SO easy! Only showing about 10% of what actually happens, from what I've seen in the real world.

If you are just wanting to replace the footwells, that's one thing (which can probably be patched rather than fully replaced), but if you want to do the whole floorpan, that's a much different thing.

Just some thoughts,
CBODY67
 
BEFORE you start cutting the floor, you might put the car on jackstands on a LEVEL floor and secure it there. Then remove the doors and tack-in a support piece between the cowl and door latch pillars. With no roof on the car, the fllorpan is the main support item in a unibody car, I suspect. NOTHING like a body/frame GM or Ford car in that respect. Got to keep everything "square" for best resuilts.

The other thing is that the floors are far from flat, so that means a good bit of contouring of the metal to fit. Unless you might desire to make it like a wheel-tubbed/roll caged drag race only car, with a full frame under it. Check out some of the YouTube videos on such. Those Saturday morning cable car shows (with a shop full of fabrication equipment) make it look SO easy! Only showing about 10% of what actually happens, from what I've seen in the real world.

If you are just wanting to replace the footwells, that's one thing (which can probably be patched rather than fully replaced), but if you want to do the whole floor pan, that's a much different thing.

Just some thoughts,
CBODY67

Mopar C-Body 'verts have most of the support incorporated into a very heavy (5/8") structural member inside of the rocker panel. You can safely remove a foot well without support for patching. The drive line hump provides the rest of the support, so it is a good idea to cut out one foot well at a time and weld in the appropriate patch before attacking any of the other foot wells to avoid possible distortion. Keeping the doors closed as much as possible is also a good idea. All of this assumes that the frame rails and the rest of the under body support is still solid.

Dave
 
Buy some 18 g sheet and a cheep bead roller and make them yourself. I can't imagine the time you'd spend just cutting and flattening out 16 g barrels, that's a little overkill for floors. If you don't want to spend money on a bead roller, there is a decent hack that uses round steel stock welded to the end of an air chisel.
Thanks Sam, barrel is cut, flattened and just needs to be cut to size, I'm ready to go, thanks for your input.
 
BEFORE you start cutting the floor, you might put the car on jackstands on a LEVEL floor and secure it there. Then remove the doors and tack-in a support piece between the cowl and door latch pillars. With no roof on the car, the fllorpan is the main support item in a unibody car, I suspect. NOTHING like a body/frame GM or Ford car in that respect. Got to keep everything "square" for best resuilts.

The other thing is that the floors are far from flat, so that means a good bit of contouring of the metal to fit. Unless you might desire to make it like a wheel-tubbed/roll caged drag race only car, with a full frame under it. Check out some of the YouTube videos on such. Those Saturday morning cable car shows (with a shop full of fabrication equipment) make it look SO easy! Only showing about 10% of what actually happens, from what I've seen in the real world.

If you are just wanting to replace the footwells, that's one thing (which can probably be patched rather than fully replaced), but if you want to do the whole floorpan, that's a much different thing.

Just some thoughts,
CBODY67
 
Oh, just doing the foot wells, but had to remove a few bad repair jobs, some welded patches covered on riveted patches hence the term Franken Floors. The floor repairs were not even tack welded to the supports. I plan on putting the bench seat back in as the fella that owned it before just drilled through the floor missing the supports/ anchor pts. with buckets held in with 1 mm of rusted out metal. Safety was not his main priority.
Thanks for your input.
 
Oh, just doing the foot wells, but had to remove a few bad repair jobs, some welded patches covered on riveted patches hence the term Franken Floors. The floor repairs were not even tack welded to the supports. I plan on putting the bench seat back in as the fella that owned it before just drilled through the floor missing the supports/ anchor pts. with buckets held in with 1 mm of rusted out metal. Safety was not his main priority.
Thanks for your input.
BEFORE you start cutting the floor, you might put the car on jackstands on a LEVEL floor and secure it there. Then remove the doors and tack-in a support piece between the cowl and door latch pillars. With no roof on the car, the fllorpan is the main support item in a unibody car, I suspect. NOTHING like a body/frame GM or Ford car in that respect. Got to keep everything "square" for best resuilts.

The other thing is that the floors are far from flat, so that means a good bit of contouring of the metal to fit. Unless you might desire to make it like a wheel-tubbed/roll caged drag race only car, with a full frame under it. Check out some of the YouTube videos on such. Those Saturday morning cable car shows (with a shop full of fabrication equipment) make it look SO easy! Only showing about 10% of what actually happens, from what I've seen in the real world.

If you are just wanting to replace the footwells, that's one thing (which can probably be patched rather than fully replaced), but if you want to do the whole floorpan, that's a much different thing.

Just some thoughts,
CBODY67
 
Thanks Bud, she's on jack stands already, just need to do the driver, and the rear foot wells. Surprisingly the front passenger has a small patch and the rest is really good.
Cheers
 
Mopar C-Body 'verts have most of the support incorporated into a very heavy (5/8") structural member inside of the rocker panel. You can safely remove a foot well without support for patching. The drive line hump provides the rest of the support, so it is a good idea to cut out one foot well at a time and weld in the appropriate patch before attacking any of the other foot wells to avoid possible distortion. Keeping the doors closed as much as possible is also a good idea. All of this assumes that the frame rails and the rest of the under body support is still solid.

Dave
D
 
Dave we think alike, on that path already, one at a time man, nice and easy with Ellie May!
Happy New Year!
 
I want to see pics of the repairs done with the barrel so please post them up as you do it.
 
Thanks Sarg. I think I will attempt the barrel method, your pans may be cut a certain way that may not match my cut and then I might end up with Franken Floors all over again.
I will keep you in mind, I see you sell a lot of stuff.....looking for front right fender extension and both front fender extension moldings, 70 Polara
 
I've seen floors "rebuilt" using flattened 55 gallon drums and while it is your car, I'd find another way. The results were sketchy at best, horrible at worst. Let's put it this way, if I came upon a car I wanted with a floor made of 55 gallon drums, I'd walk away... In fact, I did once already.

There are lots of YouTube videos on how to make floor pans with and without a bead roller.

But, it is your car.
 
I've seen floors "rebuilt" using flattened 55 gallon drums and while it is your car, I'd find another way. The results were sketchy at best, horrible at worst. Let's put it this way, if I came upon a car I wanted with a floor made of 55 gallon drums, I'd walk away... In fact, I did once already.

There are lots of YouTube videos on how to make floor pans with and without a bead roller.

But, it is your car.
 
Thanks there Big John, I think I will still go ahead with the drum, double the thickness and compared as to what it is now it will be an upgrade by 10 fold. Half as..d welds and tin patches randomly placed with pop rivets with some goop applied looking a lot like roof patch and then newspaper topping it just doesn't cut it for me. For all I know I will be the last owner and for all we know the next person may even think that it was a great idea to replace the metal with something twice as thick, but thank for pointing out a " what if" I will be posting before and after pics at some point.

Happy New Year
 
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