When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
We bought my son his first car and underneath is in need of help! If anyone knows any threads on how to replace floorpans and crossmember i would appreciate it!
Driver side pan
That's the frame rail that's rotted out, as in the subframe. You'll need to completely fabricate the part from scratch, or find a solid donor. The rest of the car looks OK from the top side, but with that kind of rust underneath, the car is pretty much totalled.
The subframe is completely rotten. The floor pans are gone. The rocker panels are gone. I'm just going to venture a guess that the inner rockers and kick panels are probably beyond help too. The area behind the driver's side kick panel where the side meets the floor is one of the first places these cars rust, and rust likes to take hold in the seams. Judging from the rust you can see, the rust you can't see is likely extensive.
You're pretty much looking at rebuilding structural parts of the car completely from scratch. Completely eliminating rust is going to require work so extensive, it'll cost far more than the value of the car to rebuild. It'd be easier to find a donor in better shape and transfer the mechanical parts.
I hope you got that thing for free. It prob needs 5-10K$ of work. Drew is going easy on you. I hate to be harsh but that rust is the worst I have ever seen on any car.
That car is not safe as it sits. If you care for your son's life you will not let him drive it.
As said, that car is structurally unsafe and will cost more to pay someone to fix than to buy a low mileage Camaro. Part out that car in the classifieds section on here and try and make some money back. Junk yards wont give you close to what you can make parting it out. Just parting a car out can be a good learning experience. Leave just the body and wheels and call a junk yard to tow it away.
Unless you have experience welding, or you really really want to learn, listen to the other people and find him a new car before he gets to attached to this one. This is coming from a highschool kid who replaced his floor and learned how to weld. Unless your son is very mechanically inclined, patient, smart, and pays close attention to detail, that car is the wrong car. Which is a shame, since the exterior does look so good.
I hate rust and have worked at acquiring all my 3rd gens basically rust free other than one i had to have... ie i found my first car, a 1988 Camaro i bought new and then traded in 1990 on my 91 z28, in a junk yard after many years of searching...
it was much, much worse, than yours so if you and your son really want a project to work on together it can certainly be done, but it will take effort and time but you will get skills and time together... however going in to it make sure you have a reasonable idea of what is within your skill, schedule, and budget... as others have mentioned buying another example in better shape would be easier and since this is your son's car he probably wants to drive it and it really can't be driven right now the way it is
Thanks for the help!! The only parts rusted badly is that crossmember and the floorpan. We just went through it yesterday with a mech and he agreed about finding a donor for the crossmember but said the floor pan can be replaced and it costs 350.00. Those are the only 2 bad spots as of now. Will take interior out next. Thanks for the direction, we are trying to prepare my son but this was him this morning...
Not driving it till next year, he is 15 and has to give me 300hrs of drive time in my 99 tahoe we restored. He turns 16 in Sept. I'm a dick on drive time, made my daughter do 350.
I took so long trying to type a diplomatic reply to inform you that you're mechanic is insane politely that the forum told me the "token expired" before I had a chance to post the reply. In other words, it'd take an excruciating length of time to sugar coat what we've already told you.
With all due respect to your mechanic, folks on this forum are intimately familiar and knowledgeable on this topic. If we are telling you it's bad, it's really BAD.
You're going to need a lot more than a floor pan, because your photos show more than just a rusty floor pan. The rust is into adjacent parts. When you strip away that rust to get clean metal you can weld to, you'll find that the rust extends so far into joining panels that you won't have anything to weld a new pan to.
The only way you're going to "fix" that car, is to throw a piece of steel over the hole so the milk crate doesn't fall through the floor. Don't waste $350 on a repro floor pan, not when there are good strong stop signs on every corner.
Thank you for honesty, we unfortunately have no other options. Taking it to body shop this week. We don't have further funds to buy another one. If they find out that the cost exceeds the value then i guess we will part it out which is sad due to the motor and tranny have 94k and "nothing" is leaking. We bought this with the insurance money from his real first car 02 impreza RS. Owned it 6 days and was stolen off the lot.
Just for reference, here's a similar shot of the same general area of the $500 Firebird beater I'm playing with. There are still plenty of solid thirdgens in the wild. For not much more than the cost of a repro floor pan, you should be able to find something that won't require nearly as much effort to repair.
i would not let him drive that car at all until the crossmember is repaired/bandaided, or the transmission is likely to fall down, causing all kinds off catostrphic failure and possibly injury.
a bandaid/temporary fix for now would be to have a piece of angle welded from the subframe to the crossmember.
then pull the seats and carpet to inspect the extent of the floor damage. you could probably find a smashed one in the junkyard and have them cut out the sections that you need to replace whats rotten for now.
i'm not saying this is the correct way to restore the car to pristine condition. but at least it will be somewhat safer for him to drive. surely dont want the drivetrain or your son falling out.
that car is toast man. that rot travels a lot further than you can see at the moment. the body shop is going to dig into it and immediately call you back with a higher estimate.
I had a car that I just cut up. From the outside you could only see rust bubbling up at the top of the rear wheel well arch and the front corner of the driver's door. I cut it up because the floor pans were rusted through in multiple spots and rust had gotten into the body seams. When rust gets into the body seams, saving unibody cars become a lost cause. $350 to fix this? Maybe if the dollar were back at 1920's level!
The 350 is for the floor pan, my neighbor is helping with the work. The box for the crossmember will run me 200 for parts n labour and him welding it to the car. Those are the only bad spots on the car. If we see it is beyond repair we will piece it out. 92k on motor n tranny, stock posi, and so on...
As far as Thirdgens go, for a car to be that rusted you would have an absurd amount of luck if the body seams weren't rusted and it was just a single area. Can you post up some more pictures of the underside?
