Thursday, November 22, 2007

Removing the Flinstonian Locomotion Option

As part of stabilizing the car from further deteriorating I thought it a good idea to inspect the floor pans for rust. I'd seem some corrsion...what would lie beneath the rubber mats under the seats?
The extent of the rust was not fully evident until I removed the sound-deadener material . The easiest way to do this is to use dry ice to cool it, then break it with a hammer. It was cool out so the material was somewhat hard, plus the nearest dry ice was 20 minutes away and I wanted to get busy now! Most of it came off easily to reveal - more rust. Here is the driver side pan with one patch section already welded in place (upper part of picture) and the second, larger, and more tricky bit below. The replacement piece is shown already for spot welding into place. After welding it in I refit the seat to mark the location of the captured nut (saved intact) for the seat bolt , then drilled a hole and spot welded the nut from the bottom.
That's the actual seat bolt holding the electrode in the pic below. Here we are all cleaned up and two coats of POR-15 rust paint on the driver side. I tried Eastwood Rust Encapsulator on the passenger side. Silver was on sale and I'd never tried it before. Prep work was much less than POR-15. I did not neutralize the rust first with something like Ospho, so I'm not sure how that will turn out.
Next was two coats of truck bed liner to provide a scratch resistant surface. I used 1 Qt. of Duplicolor bed liner brushed on with a disposable brush. 1 Qt was more than enough for two coats on the pans and inner sills. The bed liner went on quite smooth with a brush.

[pic to be added later]

Now its decision time. I expect I will moth-ball the GT until spring and get back to the LE because the weather is turning colder.

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