Not a happy discovery- rusted floor pan

[BeMyWay]

On 1/18/2024 at 11:20 PM, TobyB said:

I try not to be little miss doomandgloom on here-

 

but I've seen rust, and I've seen RUST, and what you gots there is R U S T.

 

With a capital RUST.

 

Now, if someone dumped 5 lbs of rock salt into the footwells by accident in 1984*, 

then you might be OK, but what I see there is a lot of salt- accelerated rust.

So before you buy anything, it's time to really start taking the rest of the car apart,

and attack all the usual rust spots with malice.

Because if the floorboards look that bad, the rockers, rear subframe mount structures,

spring perches and so forth may be that bad, or worse.  And when you add all that rust

repair, different shells beckon.  Because there are still lots of shells out there.  

 

As to the specifics,

isn't quite correct.  The 2002 has no frame rails- what you see under the floor is the trailing end of

the bottoms of the front fender structure, which DOES support the subframe.  The trailing boxes that

go into the floor are just for a bit more stability, and control of structure deformation in a crash- basically, they

pull the floor down, so that it doesn't buckle UP and into your feet, and so that the engine and trans will be directed down

under the shell as it crumples.

Had they been for strength, they would have been tied into the sills, and they intentionally avoid that.

The 'inner front fender' is carrying the weight of the car, and attaches to the sills and the a- pillar

(oh, yeah, these structures can rust like hell too, so go at THEM with a pointy hammer, too)

which provide the 'structure' of the shell.  It's pretty soft, partly by intent- it sacrifices itself to reduce peak G's on the 

people inside.

The bottom of the inner front fender's tied into the sills via some pretty heavy sheet metal in one plane,

and then boxed to prevent it moving laterally when it's vertically loaded with the weight of the passenger 

compartment. The 'firewall' structure maintains the relationship between the inner fenders, more or less,

as does the front subframe.

Then there's some triangulation to add stiffness to that front 'fender-firewall-fender' plane, and also to help

transfer the weight of the shell onto the front upper spring perches.

It's pretty neat.  And very intentional.

 

And a sumbitch to fix when it's all rotten out.

 

t

*I own a 1965 Volvo 122 'Amazon'- the driver's floorboard looked almost that bad,

because the heater core leaked into the floor material, and the floor material became

very acidic when combined with the coolant.  The rest of the (Florida) car had almost

no rust anywhere.  So if that's your case, ignore me and replace the floorboards, and motor happily.

 

Much appreciated TobyB. 

[VWScott]

On 2/13/2024 at 10:25 PM, BeMyWay said:

 

VWScott, 

 

How's it going?  Do you have any updates for us...me?

 

I want to perform floor pan surgery on a '75 (which previously had ac) and I am always interested in learning about how you decided to attack.

 

Take care.

I posted follow up in new post-Floor pan repair follow up

[JQ02]

On 1/19/2024 at 1:00 AM, Mike Self said:

after 30 Ohio winters they were nice and sound.  It was just everywhere else!

 

It's hard to believe that a 2002 could survive any Ohio winters. My '75 Camaro had rust repair done before we bought it in '79. By the time I moved to Delaware in '81 it was starting to look like this.