Slipstream - November 2004

Upon removing the belly pan from the front of the car I notice some
holes close to the brake master cylinder. This could not be spotted on an
inspection because it required removal of a lot of components on the car
to see. Here comes the big wake-up call. So as I lie under the car I wonder
how to deal with these holes. I vacillate back and forth whether to fiberglass
over them or to patch with metal. Then I get the bright idea to scrape away
some of the undercoating around the damage. Lying under the car on a
nice fall day I found myself getting carried away and scraping more and
more. I have read about different techniques to remove undercoating.
I tried a grinder with knotted wire brush. It works great but I was
completely covered in little hairy fragments of undercoating. I was not
using a respirator doing this so a lot of it was in my ear, nose and
mouth…what fun! I then had the bright idea of using heat. So I got a
propane torch and went to town. I found the best technique was to move
the torch around in about a 6 inch square area until the undercoating had
a reddish glow and starting to smolder I could easily scrape it away with a
steel spatula. Again my enthusiasm got the best of me and I wasn’t using a
respirator. I paid for that mistake every night with a lot of coughing. You
would think being a chemist I would know better, huh? Let me just add
that this is highly dangerous and I removed all of the flammable materials
from my proximity while I was doing this. I worked at this for about 2
months on the floorpan. I then took the grinder and wire brush and
cleaned up the floorpan even more. It came out looking great but exposed
several problems I hadn’t detected in my inspection. Apparently water was
trapped around the pedal cluster area and was repaired by screwing a metal
patch in the area and applying body filler. Also, the damage around the
brake master cylinder was quite extensive and was in close proximity to the
rear mounting point for the front torsion bar cross-tube.
So now I am left with the prospect of what to do. I have found
replacement floorpans available in the aftermarket. Those of you who have
looked for these know that they are available in a L/R side or front/back
depending upon manufacturer. Unfortunately, none of these have the section
into the footwell area that I need.
Come back next time and find out what I decided to do.
Photo by Charles Freeman
Photo by Charles Freeman
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