New floor!

Sorry for the radio silence. It's been a while since I've had the chance to do anything significant to the dear old Chevy, but now I finally have something to write home (or here) about.Namely, the new floor is finally in place.

I've been clearing out all the bits and pieces of the old floor over the past weeks and welded in place some new metal to the toeboard, so that the new floor can be attached. I also put in some new braces to the doorways, just in case.

Finally today we (I had help from a friend who has built a total of four (4) '55 Chevys in the past) we got the new floor in place. I'm glad Janne R was around for the operation, since I couldn't have accomplished it alone.

We did the replacement by traditional methods. First we lifted the body off the frame using the pulley and the garage lift, rolled the frame out and placed the new body mounts and floor on the frame. Roll frame back under the body, lower the body back on the frame and the new floor, and presto! New floor seemingly in place. Well, we actually only welded the floor in place from the transmission hump and the inner quarter braces. Reason: we're missing the body mounting bolts. Getting them soon.

Next step is to get the mounting bolts in place to secure the floor to the frame, weld the toeboard-new floor seam and start working on the rocker panels. The car is getting new inner quarters and a new trunk floor in the future, so we're working our way from front to end, so to speak.

Anyway, a few pics, if you please!

The frame ready for the new floor pan.

The toeboard needed some cleaning and welding in order to prepare it for the new floor. This pic is somewhere from the middle of the process, I think.

Yeah, sits nicely in place.

It's a bit surreal feeling to have some new metal in the car, that's just been sitting with a rotten floor for the past 4 years.

The new floor and the body ready to meet up. It was carefull going, like trying to cure a dhiarrea by farting.

Cleaning up.

So, got more rotten metal removed from the car and also I managed to get the first "officially" new piece of metal into the car. Namely the toeboard edge got one patch. I'll be repairing it more once the floor gets aligned in place, so that there won't be nasty suprises (Look! There's a two inch gap between the floor and the toeboard!).

Yay! The first piece of new metal that the car has seen in decades! Havent' welded it in place at this point.

The picture isn't that good, but the floor is now 95% gone. There's still the small bit of the original pan in the trunk, which has the frame supports. Gonna remove that just before we start fitting the new floor.

This is what's left on the driver's side

And this is what's left on the passenger side.

And here's where we're at today.

This pile of rust used to be my Chevy's floor. It's pretty obvious that the entire floor really, REALLY needs to be replaced.

Floor is underway!

So, after a few days of removing patches attached by rivets, shoddy inner rocker patches and other rusty bits I've finally been able to remove most of the old floor from my '55 Chevy. The old floor was practically gone, there was no salvable sheet metal whatsover left.


In this stage the front of the floor is gone. Also, the drivers side rocker panel was already gone when I bought the car.

It's good to see the old, rotten floor gone. There's still a lot of cleaning up to do, since the old rockers were left inside the new patch panels. So, there's rusty metal with rusty metal inside it (so that you can grind while you grind). Next up is the patching of the toeboard and more cleaning up. I'll post better pictures later on.

I'm just happy to have this project underway!

A new beginning.

So, let's keep this short. Here's the starting point:

I bought myself a 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air Sport Coupe in 2007. Back then, I didn't have much experience with American cars (not that I have now), and the project clearly requires some pretty decent restoration skills. So, as you can see from the pictures that I was way in over my head.

The starting point: rotten floor, rotten trunk, the left side has collisidion damage camouflaged by a thick layer of bondo. Carefully estimated about 50% of the car's sheet metal needs to be replaced.

So I collected some skills for a few years with different cars, mainly Chevrolets and Pontiacs from the year 1989 (Caprice Classic STW and Grand Prix). Former had some sheet metal work to be done, the latter needed an engine swap and a bunch of other stuff.

Anyway, now that I finally have time and a decent workspace to build my '55, the project is finally going to get underway during June 2011. The first stop (also, the biggest one when it comes to bodywork): getting a new floor. More on that in the next posting.

Also, a friendly reminder to whoever might be reading this: this blog is mainly my own diary on the process of the '55. There are going to months when I'm not gonna post anything, since I will run out of money by September 2011. The main goal for 2011 is to get the new floor in, and possibly rocker panels. A new floor trunk is something I dare not to dream of during this summer, since there's already a lot of work on my plate.

Here's the beginning of the journey: my Caprice hauling the '55 Chevy to the new workshop.