Finally have some progress to show..
Before I pull the cab off the frame I wanted to make sure it has a solid foundation. When I built the truck the first time when I was 17, just cut out some sheet metal that I found in Dad's scrap metal pile by hand with tin snips. I bent it over a wooden post, my knee, whatever I could find to get it the shape I needed. I then proceeded to screw the patches down with sheet metal screws. At the time, the finished product looked pretty good.
Too good in fact, because I forgot how horrible things were under my crudely constructed patches.
Drivers, side:
Passenger side:
I attacked the driver's side first. Replacing the floor pan snowballed into the floor pan, lip that the floor pan butts up against, cab brace, front of the step where the cab brace is welded to, inner and outer hinge pocket.
Then I moved on to the passenger side. I thought the driver's side would be the worst of it since the driver's door hinge was wore out and the passenger side wasn't at all. I deduced that this old farm truck probably didn't have a passenger most of the time and since the door hinges were not worn out there wouldn't be a passenger's wet boots rusting out the floor board on the passenger side all the time like the driver's side. As has happened a few times in this project I was completely wrong!! The passenger side was way worse than the driver's side. I now remember that I had to fix a leaky heater core, when I first put it on the road and that was likely the culprit. Passenger side needed everything the driver's side needed plus I ended up fabbing a patch for the kick panel. It rusted from the inside due to a plugged cowl drain.. I ended up using alot more of the patch panel as the metal was paper thin. My criteria was stabbing at the metal with my awl, if it went through I started cutting until I found good metal.
Only 38,698 tack welds later, here is the completed floor pans. My process was to overlap the old metal with the new patch, then cut through both pieces of metal with a thin cut off wheel. I used sheet metal screws in the cut between the two pieces of metal as low buck clecos to hold everything flush. Then I butt welded it all in with my 110 flux core wire feed welder. Gas Mig would be better but I figured since most of this will be hidden on the firewall side under the inner fenders it will be good enough. A copper backer was used to prevent burning through. While I was at it, I plan on moving the battery under the floor. I copied the 47-54 chevy battery door idea that a few others have used.
