Here are some pics of the old floorpans, the new, and with the drivers side installed, pass side cut out. Still some welding and grinding to go.


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Looks like fun....Not.

I put full floors in my 69' Firebird along with new seat pans and subrframe braces that go under the seat pans....PITA

Whats even worse is if you have to put new rockers in the car.....

Its all done now and been about 3-4 years...I even got dumb enough to do another car...a 74' Monte...But its cake to put floorpans in compared to a camaro/firebird. Lots more room and no messing with a subframe or seat pans really. I am buying a new plasma cutter next week. I will never do another floorpan without it!

 

Did you do butt-joints, or did you lapthe new pans?

 

Butt joints, and lots of welding. After lots of trimming I was down to 1/8 in a couple of spots, most were around 1/16th or less, easy to weld in with my gasless welder. As a helpful tip I had much better success welding with the .30 wire than the .35, virtually no spatter, and when careful I had no burn thru.

 

Gasless welding is OK for floorpans but becareful of using it on the external body that gets nice paint.....Flux can leach out of the welds later on ruining paint jobs.

I lap welded mine in....I never intended my car to turn out so nice or be a keeper....It was supposed to be a throw down quick and take somebody's money car......Well it ended up taking mine since I decided I like the car tooo much to sell.
I lapped mine over about 1/4 to 1/2 and totally welded the entire perimeter of the new pans... They fit really good and the new seat pans were EXCELLENT.

Now I need to crawl under my car with the duraglass and a hammer....I gotta tap the sheetmetal together for a tight fit and finish it out with duraglass under neath one of these days....
When I am through it will not be visible that any work was done.

I just did floorpans in my 74' Montecarlo and it was very much easier than a subframe car. I cut them out easily and the new floors were the best re-creation of a original I have ever seen. I laid it out and drilled through both panels and plug welded every 1/2" all the way around and used seam sealer and paint to finish it....looks great. I also left about 1/2" lap on the joint for it too. Be sure if you lap-weld it to use 3M weld thru primer in between the panels and seal it up after your done.

Butt welds are the best way....but also the hardest to accomplish. I went for strength since both of my cars are semi-race cars, Not looks. I have seen the worst hack job floorpan repairs in the world....Mine are beautiful compared to all but a Pro-Restoration shop. Isnt it great when people use old stop signs and license plates riveted in? LOL....I cant believe people even put effort into hack job floor repairs...You gotta stop or remove the rust or it will come right back...I have seen too many times people just lay the new floor pan right over the rust and tack it in the corners and call it done....No Way...

I have also seen people lap weld stuff with like a 2" lap....tsk tsk tsk. My Dad bought a 60' Chevy Convertible this way. And how about those folks that use 15 gallons of under coating to hide the bad floors in a camaro for sale for $18,000+ dollars!!! I seen that toooooooo mnay times...rather have my solid repair over that anyday.

 

I agree, spending the extra time and effort for solid, rust free floorpansis worth it. My drivers side that I did first will need some more welding after I grind away, but the passenger side turned out so much better after all the welding practice.
I can't even imaging just tacking the pans in, mine are good and solid, I figure I am going to be laying/crouching on them doing a buch of work, and most of all I want my ride to hold together when I punch it. All that HP is more fun when it hits the road instead of being wasted on twisting the frame... errr unibody.

 

Right you are! Nothing worse than seeing cracked B-pillars on low horsepower cars....from frame flex...

 

patch panels? how are the other sections?