Slipstream - January 2005

Early 911 Restoration: No. 5
Photo by Charles Freeman
by Charles Freeman
Let me start this month’s update with a disclaimer, “Don’t
Try This At Home”. After about a year into this project I
am becoming quite discouraged. It seems every time I go
to work on the car I end up taking parts off but never putting
anything on. I will also add the words of wisdom, “don’t
purchase a non-running car because it is cheap thinking you
will restore it” those words I should have heeded. Anyway the
drudgery continues.
Photo by Charles Freeman
As you saw last time I had removed the floorpan by drilling
out some spot welds and using an air hammer to separate body
panels. Because I used the air hammer there was a lot of distortion
of the panel flanges so I had to straighten these out. Also, it left
a lot of excess metal on the flange so I needed to grind this off.
Up to this point of the project my angle grinder has become one
of my most valuable tools. I can put sanding disks on it to
remove paint, cutting wheels to cut metal, and grinding wheels
to smooth rough surfaces. I bought a high quality Dewalt and it
has yet to fail me. One note of caution, beware of loose clothing
when using the grinder. The “on” button locks in place so you
don’t have to fatigue your thumb by holding it down.
One time I had on a Tyvek jacket (like the white suits you
see people wearing when making silicon wafer chips) which I
thought I had tucked back. I was using the grinder and a knotted
wire wheel and I guess I was “zoning out” while grinding away
at the undercoating when I felt a powerful “whack” in my ribs.
I looked down and could see the Tyvek coat had gotten caught
in the wire wheel and the grinder had pulled itself up the jacket.
It was inches away from my face buzzing violently as it was
fully energized. I lucked out because it could have gone right to
my face and shredded my cheek. Instead, I ended up with a
painful bruise and a good lesson. Never let boredom set in when
working with power tools! Once the weld flange surfaces were
ground smooth I used a hammer and dolly to straighten the
flanges. I would find out how critical this was later. This also
gave me an opportunity to check the quality of the emergency
brake, accelerator, and clutch cable as these are completely
exposed from underneath the center tunnel.
The floorpan I bought was painted with a green primer
coat to prevent it from rusting. Welding through this primer
would reduce the quality of the weld. So I removed the paint
along the welding flange areas and painted it with a weldthrough
primer. That is why in some areas of my floorpan are
green and others are silver. I took this opportunity to spray
Eastwood’s Rust Encapsulator on the exposed underside of the
car. In order to blend the new floorpan into the car I had to
make a template of where I cut the old floorpan out of the car
and transfer to the new pan.
Well, I made a template, checked, re-checked, and checked
again. This was done by taking measurements from fixed points
as a reference around the body. The scenario goes like this: crawl
on your back under the car, stretch your arms as far as you can
to reach a bolt hole, stretch the tape measure out, watch it snap
back into your face, place it on the hole again, snap back into
your face, cuss a little, and so on. This was repeated countless
times because I knew I would only have one chance to cut the
new floorpan. Anyway, I figured I would err on the positive side
and cut away a little less than my template showed, place the
new piece onto the car and check the fit. I started to use the
grinder with a cutting wheel to cut the floorpan but found it
took way too long for my patience so I resorted to a Sawzall
(big industrial jig-saw). Now I finally had the new floorpan
ready to place on the car. Hmm, one person lifting a 4 foot by 6
foot sheet of metal and holding it on the car body, upside down,
would be challenging. I laid several sets of vise grips around the
outer panel flange of the car on the garage floor. I lifted up the
floorpan then laid down on my back with this on top of me.
I shuffled my body on the floor, kind of like a worm I guess,
until I was under the car. Well then I had to lift it off my chest
and hold it in place while I clamped it.
So envision this, I use my knees, head and one hand to push
the floorpan into position on the car. Did I mention this was
heavy? With the free arm I stretched out, felt around and found
a vise grip, then clamped the floorpan and car body flange
together. I then took one foot to kick another vise group close
to my hand and I clamped it to the car on the opposite side.
These two vise grips are not strong enough to hold the heavy
floorpan so I had to get about 10 vise grips positioned all
around the car. With the floorpan finally in place I extracted
myself from the car. My wife happened to be in the garage at the
time and she thought I looked pretty funny with the indention
of the floorpan in my forehead. After a few choice words she
decided to go into the house. After all the work of measuring
the template and being careful to leave sufficient overlap in the
front of the floorpan I realized I must not know how to read a
ruler. Most of the length where the old floorpan joins the new
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