my father's ttops leak in his 1980 camaro z28. it's a beautiful car, and seems like the only rust is in the floor pans. we bought some complete new floor pans online. i will be putting these in over the next few days/ weeks maybe. i have experience doing body work and welding and cutting but i have never done floor pans before. my dad's camaro is priceless to him, and i cant fvck this up. is it basically just carefully cut out the old floor and install new? i plan to -remove all fuel and brake lines ect that may be attached to the floor -trace out where the new floor pans line up -cut out old floor leaving a 1-1.5" lip to put new floor pans on (rather than butt-weld) -be as careful as possible. is there anything i need to look out for?

any1?

Those are always fun. If you can do a fender you can do a floor!

I have never done a camaro that old, but my '76 Malibu was from the same era, so this is what I expect you'll encounter:

The design on my Malibu was like this... rocker panels... floor pan on top, then seat supports on top of that.

So, if you're set on installing the whole floor pan, you're gonna have to drill out all the spot welds for the seat support, remove that, then lay your new floor pans down over the old ones and trace them, then drill out the spot welds on the rocker panel (or grind the metal off) and finally cut along your trace line.

What's the trace line for? Unless you found a full one piece floor pan, the transmission tunnel will need to be saved. So you're gonna have to weld the edge of your new floor pans to the transmission tunnel. That's why I recommend laying your new panels down first and tracing them.

On my Malibu I could only get the floor pans in 1/4's.. front driver's, front passenger's, rear driver's, rear passenger's. I could have welded the front and back together I suppose, but I didn't. And it was a good thing because there was a 1" gap between them. What I ended up doing was I cut the rusted sections out of my floor pans, laid the new floor pans down and just traced what I needed for a patch. I still retained all the factory lines that way, but I didn't have to mess with installing a whole floor out of patches.

Some things to watch out for?

Fuel line was never an issue on my Malibu, but interior wires ARE. I nearly melted my wires running along the rocker panels. Be careful and if you're worried about it, disconnect them or wrap them in leather. Harbor Freight has cheap welding blankets. Those would work. Keep in mind though I ran the fuel lines myself up through the frame, so you may have to worry about them.

If you're set on doing a lap joint, make sure you weld completely along the seam or else use seam sealer. If air or water can get between the two panels rust will form inside your lap. I would also recommend you get a can of weld thru primer and spray the edges of your pans where you're gonna weld. Over spray them just to be sure. Go back 2" beyond where you're gonna weld. That way the area inside is primered, so if air CAN get in there ( like you missed a small spot ), at least you have a little protection. Personally I butt welded my panels.

When you cut your panels, cut them a little bit long and test fit them. It's easier to trim a little more than it is to span a big gap in your floor panels when you're welding. Since you're lapping them this won't be so much of an issue, but its still good advice.

One thing I always suggest to people when they're doing a floor pan is make sure you're POSITIVE you want it to be a stock floor. Why wouldn't you? I spent three days and $400 in panels replacing my floor pans on the Malibu, and that didn't include the cost of the POR-15 I laid down on them top and bottom. When I went to run my dual side exit exhaust the summer afterwards? No room for the mufflers unless I put them in the stock location which is too far back on the car to do what I want.

So I spent all that time and money on a floor that I'm gonna end up cutting out later. My plan is to run my exhaust the way I want it, put in a crossover pipe, and a driveshaft loop, and THEN run my floors over top of that.

Mathius

o i c

One more tip, although it might be hard to describe in text.. I'll try though.

You're not gonna be able to use clamps on the tranny tunnel side of your pans unless you have cleco's or something. They don't make c-grips 3 foot long

If you find gaps opening up as you weld, you can obviously have someone hold a dolley under the panel and try to hammer it down, but here's a trick we used to use in industrial fab when working on our own....

I was contracted by Lincoln Electric for a job where we had to weld doors onto their flux containers. The containers steel wall had warped, so the panels wouldn't sit flush against the door frames we were welding into the side of the containers. There happened to be two of us on the job, and one of us DID climb in with a ladder and try to push the panel out with a hammer, but the steel was pretty thick.

So here's what we do in a situation like that... Take a cheap c-clamp... you're gonna want something fairly small because your floor pans are made of thin wall material. Cut the c-clamp in half. Take the end that has the screw clamp on it, and tack weld the cut end to the low panel that you can't get to "suck in" and come together. Put a good solid tack on ONE SIDE of the c-clamp. Preferrably the side away from where your clamp is going to screw down. Tighten the clamp... It should pull the two panels together.

Then you can weld the panels in place and since you only tacked the c-clamp on one side to your tranny tunnel or floor pan, which ever side you needed to pull up, you should be able to just snap the c-clamp right off.

Did I describe that trick ok?

Mathius

yep, makes sense.