An appropriate name for this car would be the TruckStang, only because its a Mustang body on a truck frame. Anyway, when we left off we were "modifying" an extra front firewall to floor pan to "fit" in place on the section of floor between that pan and the front seat floor pan. I had to cut everything up to bend things in order to fit the pan as best as possible, which also involved some light tack welds to hold the pan where it needed to be so I can further manipulate the pan in order to fit as best as possible. Of course in the process I had to add pieces of metal in spots to fill little gaps and holes that were created in the process of making something fit that didn't belong in this application. Once the necessary tacks were made and the final fitment of the pan was satisfactory, I started making fuller welds in different spots to hold the pan in place. As stated before, I did have to cut little pieces of metal to fit in spots where there were larger gaps, such as the inner rear corner on the pan, or along the outer edge, on the inner rocker panel area. Once the pan was fully welded all around, I took a peek under the car to see if there was any possibility of maybe welding the rear subframe rail to the bottom of the floor pan for added strength. The front subframe at the absolute rear of the section was too rotted out to even be able to weld anything to the bottom of the floor pan. I would have to almost rebuild the subframe rail in order to accomplish this goal. Since none of this is load bearing the way it used to be, any future efforts at reinforcement will be geared more towards strengthening the mounting of the body to the truck frame. Our concern now is to ensure that the body will stay attached to the truck frame through thick and thin. With that, we moved on to the right side. I took a scrap piece of sheet metal and eyeballed how much I'd have to cut off in order to make the pan fit on the front floor section. At the same time I started grinding the front seat floor pan to prep it for welding. In the process, I found that this old pan was even more rotted than I was comfortable with. Since we did have a spare front seat floor pan, I decided to just use the new unit, cutting out the notch for the Ranger frame rail. I'll leave the rest of the floor pan that holds the extra metal where the seat mounts pass through for added strength. I cut out the old floor pan, which was rather easy as there really wasn't much left of the pan on either side. After cutting out the floor pan I used the grinder to grind out the spot welded edges from the old pan and ground down the surfaces to bare metal to prepare it all for welding. I fitted the new pan in place after cutting out the Ranger frame notch, then staged the front floor pan in front of the seat pan as well. With that, we'll be ready to start welding everything in on the right side. As on the left side, the right side subframe rail is rotted out too. We won't be able to weld the subframe to the floor pans so this isn't going to be worried about. We will continue to focus on getting the floors closed in and worry about adding extra metal later if any of the pans flex too much. I have a small concern that this mix/match of sheet metal on a unibody that was hacked up might have an issue with a resonation from the vibrating sheet metal, much like a speaker cone, causing excessive noise in the cab. I may have to weld some flat stock metal across the open sections of flooring to stiffen the floor pans to prevent this vibration effect later. We'll see.
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