Rotted out under my accel pedal and would like some input.

[Funship32]

Here is the story: Pulled the bench seat out of my '69 Beeper to have new springs put in it (they were too soft) and figured I'd pull the wiper pivots out to reseal them (they leaked) and would replace the rug since it was sun bleached.

Once I got it all out, I found that the floor pan right where the accelerator pedal mounts is pretty much rusted out. The rest of the panel is solid, believe it or not, with only surface rust but where the pedal mounts through the floor is pretty much toast and has been for some time. The PO did some sort of JB weld/duct tape fix which of course I didn't see until now. :angry9:

Would like to know if I can just get away with welding a patch in that small section or not. While replacing the entire panel would be 'ideal' doing such would be beyond the scope of the work I would like to do (I'm a bit intimidated by it all) and honestly I believe unnecessary since the rest of the pan is solid. Plus I would like to keep most of the OE sheet metal if possible.

So....what say you? Plus if any of you have any tips or recommendations on sheet metal providers I'd like to hear it too. I'm planning on getting a floor pan and cutting out what I need. I know of AMD but there is also Classic 2 Current and Columbia Parts Co which I know little about. Perhaps even getting some metal from an auto body supplier may be an option.

Thanks in advance.

 

[hamtramck]

If it were me I'd spot blast the area to get a true idea of how bad the
Rust truly is. Patch as necessary , treat, seal paint.

 

[Propwash]

How big of area are we talking here? A grinder with a wire wheel and a bit of elbow grease will open up any rot really well too. If it's pretty isolated, there's no reason why you can just patch it..and honestly it wouldn't be that hard to do. If the patch doesn't comprise of a lot of different angles, shapes and divots's, I'd go to a local metal supply shop and just get a chunk of 20 gauge steel. You're talking maybe $2-3 dollars vs. $100+ on a pan (just to hack up and use a small area).

Which ever route you go (pan vs. blank 20 Gauge steel), an easy method to patch is to cut out the bad area (be it die grinder, air saw, plasma cutter...ect..ect..) and take the bad piece that you cut out, lay in on a thin cardboard/paper (like a soda/beer 12 pack carton paper) and trace around it. Now cut that out with a scissors, lay that on the pan or blank sheetmetal and trace it out again. Cut that out of the steel. You're gonna want to trim in about 1/16" from the marked edge, because of the offset the marker/pen will have when tracing around. Test fit the patch, trim where needed and weld in. Grind welds flat, seal if need be, prime then paint. Like butta!

Good luck

 

[Meep-Meep]

Yeah, I'm for evaluating the integrity of the existing rusted panel, and if it's strong in the area around the rust hole, then patch it. You can fab a patch and weld it in like Prop and Hamtramck says but be sure the surrounding metal is clean and rust free. When welding remember that if you start with crap you will end up with crap. Clean and proper fit are the key! There is nothing really critical in that area so as long as you get the gas pedal mounting holes as they were you are good.

 

[BigBlock61]

X2 Cause there's nothing more I can add that hasn't been already said.

 

[Funship32]

Thank you to all who helped answer my question. Mind you I want to do a good job so that whoever ends up with the car upon my passing doesn't find a 'gotcha' like I did. However I have a question for you all which may seem obvious but to a lay individual such as myself isn't: At what point does one consider replacing the entire pan. Obviously swiss cheese pans are a given but is there a percentage where it if rotted beyond such point it should be replaced?

 

[Propwash]

Well, I guess that's a balance between your skill set, amount of work you want to do and what kind of integrity you pan has left to it. Putting in a floor patch would be definitely easier than changing the pan. For the pan you need to drill out the spot welds to the rear pan, torsion bar X-Member, seat reinforcements, firewall, rocker, at the hinge pillar, and if not doing a full pan, make a cut down the tranny cave. If your engine, tranny, dash and associated linkage, lines and wiring are in, it's just going to make it that much harder to rip out and weld back in. Hard to make a determination until you get in there and clean it up good, but it sounds like an isolated area, and I would guess it is being your wiper pivot seals were leaking on to the floor and around that gas pedal would be a low spot on the pan. Unless the pan is rotted to the point of making the whole pan weak, IMO..I would patch it.

 

[moparsteve636]

I wouldn't remove any more metal than necessary getting to solid metal! If it's just surface rust on the rest of the floor why worry about it? clean and treat it and paint!

 

[Funship32]

Hard to make a determination until you get in there and clean it up good, but it sounds like an isolated area, and I would guess it is being your wiper pivot seals were leaking on to the floor and around that gas pedal would be a low spot on the pan. Unless the pan is rotted to the point of making the whole pan weak, IMO..I would patch it.

Hey Prop, thanks for your input. I honestly suspect exactly what you stated- leaky pivots/low spot on the floor. Wasn't fixed right to begin with so now I get the cleanup. The rest of the driver floorboard while rusty and pitted isn't beyond use once cleaned and sealed up. Pretty? No. But solid. So basically your answer(s) hit my question on the head. Not going for a 100% resto here, just a patch (the proper way) to get rid of the hole and give my go pedal something to mount onto. Hence, an entire pan is not in order, a patch WILL work and I'll be okay if I do patch it w/o fear of the car buckling in two due to a patched floor pan. So thank you, your comments are fantastic and I appreciate you wading into my rookie questions.

 

[krowbar]

Just be careful when grinding and welding in the patch. Have a wet rag and bucket of water and preferably an extinguisher. That old undercoating can catch fire and ruin your day.

 

[Funship32]

Just be careful when grinding and welding in the patch. Have a wet rag and bucket of water and preferably an extinguisher. That old undercoating can catch fire and ruin your day.

Already planned on just such a circumstance happening so i've both- a bucket for water and an extinguisher. However thank you for making mention of that regardless.

 

[Meep-Meep]

One way to look at when to draw the line at full panel replacement is how much do you want to alter the car? My 68 RR has a pretty rusty trunk floor, and I was going to cut it out and replace it with a better factory one that I got years ago, but then did some thinking. My existing pan is peppered with a few holes but it is structurally sound. I can (and have) jumped up and down in it - and not fallen through. So with that bit of info I decided to use the POR15 stuff to treat the rust and fill the pits. A lot less work than drilling spot welds and taking the chance of getting something wrong. Plus the car is more factory original that way. Same goes for my lower rear quarters. Just a few pepper holes that need filled.

 

[Propwash]

Hey Prop, thanks for your input. I honestly suspect exactly what you stated- leaky pivots/low spot on the floor. Wasn't fixed right to begin with so now I get the cleanup. The rest of the driver floorboard while rusty and pitted isn't beyond use once cleaned and sealed up. Pretty? No. But solid. So basically your answer(s) hit my question on the head. Not going for a 100% resto here, just a patch (the proper way) to get rid of the hole and give my go pedal something to mount onto. Hence, an entire pan is not in order, a patch WILL work and I'll be okay if I do patch it w/o fear of the car buckling in two due to a patched floor pan. So thank you, your comments are fantastic and I appreciate you wading into my rookie questions.

:icon_thumright: No sweat. Best of luck on your project amigo.

 

[451Mopar]

Really depends on how bad the rust is. My Convertible will need a new floor pan when I get around to restoring the body. The gas pedal stud holes had rusted around the holes, but I was able to just use large washer between the body and nuts for now. If you have the time and skills to make a patch and weld it in, then that would be a better solution as long as you don't start finding more hidden rust, and the small patch grows into an entire floor pan.

 

[Funship32]

So with that bit of info I decided to use the POR15 stuff to treat the rust and fill the pits.

Thanks for your input! I actually ended up doing the same thing on my Jeep CJ's floor pan with the POR-15 and probably will on this too. After some digging and wire wheeling I found a couple of pin holes (3 total) and a hole the size of pencil eraser by the inner(?) frame rail...basically an area to the left of the clutch. Outside the pan looks 100% so this was all due to the PO's non-dealing with leaky wiper pivots..oy..but I'm fortunately that it isn't worse than it is. So with that, I'll just do a minimal cutting, see if I can tack the pin holes and then hit it with either POR-15 or Rust Bullet. I've got an email into one of the members to see what he thinks of Rust Bullet. However I still want to thank all of you guys for your input. I really do appreciate it and will share pictures as I start to proceed with the work to perhaps help others.

 

[Propwash]

I'd vote Rust bullet.......Used a lot of it. Thicker, lays out better, UV resistant (if relevant), don't need to have it sandblasted, use a three stage kit w/metal prep, or have surface rust as a bonding agent (who wants to leave rust on?). My 2 cents..

POR 15 Surface preparation: Rusted surfaces are best; seasoned metal and sandblasted surfaces are also good.

 

[Funship32]

I'd vote Rust bullet.......Used a lot of it. Thicker, lays out better, UV resistant (if relevant), don't need to have it sandblasted, use a three stage kit w/metal prep, or have surface rust as a bonding agent (who wants to leave rust on?). My 2 cents..

Hey Propwash let me ask you since you've used it: How much prep work is needed to use Rust Bullet? With that being said let me clairfy: I know one needs to get rid of surface scale but other than say, hitting the rust with a wire wheel to get rid of the scale and sanding the already applied (and still good) paint with a sander, is there anything else? I've used POR-15 and done all of the above (sanding, wire wheel) along with their cleaner and metal prep (had good results too) but if I can bypass some of the work, why not, right?

 

[Meep-Meep]

I have used POR 15 a few times and liked it, but I really just used the name in a generic fashion. You can probably use any of the top rust sealers and be good. Although I'd tend to take the advice of 'ol Cap'n Rust (Prop) as he lives in a rust factory.

Regarding welding up rusted pin holes. I say don't bother if you have strength in that area (no flexing, etc...). Just fill it with some really good putty or use the screen stuff over the top as a reinforcement. It's on the floor under the carpet, right? Then no one will know (and I won't tell). Once you put the MIG to that tiny hole you will have a bigger hole in 2 seconds. Reason is the surrounding metal is very thin. If you decide to weld plan on cutting an area out until you get to solid clean metal.

 

[Propwash]

LOL...Capt'n Rust.....Thanks Meep.


As far as prep for the rust bullet Funship, they say to just fee any loose rust and remove any grease or dirt and then coat. We'll, being Capt'N Rust and all, I can honestly that I'm a bit of a hypocrite, because I do not enjoy the byproduct or corrosion that decorate's my name. lol I remove all rust as much as possible before applying Rust Bullet. Now the product is an encapsulator as well as a converter. It takes the rust and converts it to a dormant iron oxide, rendering the rust dead. The encapsulating feature seals the tomb. I take the rusty surface and bring it down to shiny metal and then coat. With that being said, there has been instances where getting to the surface to bring back down to fresh metal isn't possible. In those instances, I followed suite to their directions...Clean off any loose rust, dirt or grease, wiped quick with a solvent or wax/grease remover (just to be safe), let dry and then coat (2 Coats min). The stuff sticks very well to surface rust and scuffed old paint, just coat it and go. It works like it should. Just be sure there is no grease, oil or loose dirt/debris. No paint likes that. You should scuff any shiny/gloss paint till it's dull. Some 320 grit or a Scotch pad will do that just fine.

My line of thinking on cleaning everything to shiny metal comes from too many years of living in The Rust Factory. It's more like Willy Wonka's Factory, everything is deceiving and the rust hides everywhere. Take off one rusty panel, it's rusted underneath. Remove some seam sealer, rust underneath. Sand down the paint, rust hiding between the metal and the paint above. Undercoating, well..flip a coin. It never ends...lol

A couple words of advice on the stuff...If it get's on you, you will be wearing it for a week or two. Obviously if on your cloths, their permanently stained...but even on your skin, gasoline, solvents, bleach, gojo, Pine Sol........nothing seems to touch the stuff. So don't get too nutz with it or you'll end up looking like the Tin Man's cousin. Another concern is ventilation. Make sure you have real good ventilation where you plan on painting it on. If not, you will be higher than half of Woodstock. Applying, it rolls or brushes on real nice and levels very well. On large areas I use a small trim/touch up roller to apply it. Tights spots I'll use a brush. Lastly, use the silver stuff, not the black. Even if you end up going the POR15 route, the silver stuff has a lot more aluminum in it. Obviously when it comes to corrosion, we all know the benefit with that.

Hope it helps!

 

[Funship32]

@ Meep-Meep: Thank you for the info about spot welding the pinholes. The metal is strong enough to support someone standing on it so I'm not worried about the strength. Just don't want to leave holes open. Then again, either product, POR-15 or Rust Bullet sounds like it fills in the tiny holes w/o issue so I'll just leave them and let the product do its work. And thanks for keeping my secret safe as the work is under the rug and thanks for all your input.

@ Capt'n Rus..uh...Propwash: What? I can fix my car, get a new look AND get high as a kite as the same time?? Freaking awesome!! Why didn't I do this earlier? :icon_thumright:

Just kidding but thanks for the ventilation tips and I love your analogy about the dead rust and the tomb. :rolling: And thanks for your input about Rust Bullet as well as the other questions I have asked. I ordered some up just to try it out at your recommendation along with others who waded with positive comments. Always like trying new things plus the idea of getting the floor pan wet with the converter used on the POR-15 just didn't sound all that appealing to me. However Rust Bullet sounds the same as the POR...get it on you and you wear it for a week. And I hear you about the string that leads down the rabbit hole. Seems like my projects go the same way, car, house, doesn't matter. Go to replace a rug and I find floor rot. Go to replace a piece of siding on the house and I find the subsiding rotted. I swear.

In closing I cannot thank you all enough. Your help and opinions and the time you have taken to address my problem with the pool of wealth that this site offers is greatly appreciated.