Near-side floor

Folks, I forgot to say that I have also been working on the nearside floor.

When the car was originally tarted-up in 1994 for the "MOT & escape" trip to Greece, my local garage just plated over the MOT failures. I was happy with that at the time but 18 years later I am older and wiser. The plates had to come out, so I spent an age "unwelding" them. Is there a more soul-destroying task (other than scraping off underseal)?

Front floor.

Both the front and rear floors are shot - they are full of holes and made of wafer thin metal. It is the kind of metal that just ends up being polished a sort of semi-shiny brown when you attack it with a flap disc or wire cup in your drill. Somehow the metal is infused with dampness. Anyone else come across this?

Rear floor

I decided to tackle the front floor first. As a good third of it was ok, it seemed like a good idea to leave as much (decent) original metal in place as possible. So, I ended up with this:

You can see that I cut out the worst of the rot, but left a large section of the ribbed floor in situ.

This meant butt-welding again and I shuddered at the thought of Dot Cotton re-appearing. So, I decided enough was enough, I had to blame the tools and buy a new MIG welder. After a lot of research I took delivery of a Portamig 185 and goodness me I am glad I did. It is just fabulous and a joy to use, with a wire feed that is as silky smooth as a Mercedes Benz auto box. In comparison, the Sealey was like welding with a packet of sparklers and a fag lighter. The Portamig 185 is British made, costs about £550 (and worth very penny) and has a very low 25 amp minimum power setting. It likes thin BL metal very much.

No, it is not normally kept in the house.

So, after a lot of fidding to get the ribbed parts to line up, I secured the panel and zipped it in. I am pretty happy with the results.

New panel butt-welded in. You can also see the plug welds I made.

One problem was that the front floor repair panel I bought from Robsport, whilst being very well made, did not cover the adjoining areawhere the gearbox tunnel had rotted out. So, I had to make a section and weld it in. The Portamig did a great job and now I feel like I don't have to make so many excuses about my welding. Sure, my technique has a long way to go but it has given me confidence that I can learn and improve now that I have decent kit. The moral of the story kids is "buy the best tools you can".

Gearbox tunnel to front floor repair

This repair has been a long time coming, in that it all went well and I am genuinely proud of the results. It made me feel like a proper car restorer.

The finished article.

NEXT STOP - completing the whole front end.