Rear floor - nearside Part 1

There wasn't much time this weekend to get into the garage, but I did manage to make up a repair panel for the edge of the rear floor, where it meets the inner sill, and weld it in. The central section of the rear floor is sound, however the edge section where it meets the inner sill is shot. Having bought a load of very good sheet metal from a seller on ebay, I made up a repair section which I was pretty pleased with.

At this point I should say that this section is being done at the same time as the rear bulkhead/trailing arm mount areas, so both posts are kind of inter-changeable.

After painting the repair panel in weld-through primer, I drilled some holes to allow for plug welding it to the inner sill and chassis member, then got welding. Today I decided to turn up the amps on the welder and see what happened on this thin sheet metal. Sure, there were some initial blow-throughs but I learned that by going slowly and in very short bursts it could be done. Overall I am happy with the results - next time I just have to grind the welds down and make it all look nice.

Rear bulkhead - nearside - Part 3

After a bit of a break, I got in the garage again today motivated mainly by the arrival of a box of two panels from Rimmer Bros. They were of course the rear trailing arm inner and outer repair panels.

I tackled the outer first, and did a great job of preparing the new and old metal. The panel fitted well, although I had a bit of a conundrum. I had already cut out a large section of the rear floor and didn't know whether the outer trailing arm repair panel should be fitted with the floor in place. I opted to fit it before the floor.

The welding went really well and I turned the mig up in order to get some healthy heat into the panel.

Nicely done, I reckon.

And the view inside the car.

However, when I then offered the floor up, the outer trailing arm panel was somewhat in the wrong place, caused mainly by the floor not fitting properly. Cutting down the floor panel and clamping it in place showed that there was enough "give" in the panel to wrap around the curvature of the trailing arm repair, around the inner sill/floor.

The floor roughly cut to the right size and clamped in place. The inner trailing arm repair panel is show here, to the right of the big hole in the floor.

The inner trailing arm repair panel from Rimmers is basically the compound curve section of the rear bulkhead - the bit that is horrible to make yourself. Its size is a bit random but it fits well, so I guess it is supplied such that you extend it with new flat metal to make the easy bits of the remainder of the repair.

The new floor clamped in place.

Hopefully tomorrow I will get the floor welded in, all being well. I clamped it in place today and all appeared to fit satisfactorily.

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