Now for some Floor Pans

In a previous post I showed how I was creating the driveshaft tunnel out of 1 x 1 tubing.  This weekend was time for some floor pan action! For the floor pans I’m going with some construction that’s a similar technique to boat construction using plywood and fiberglass.

The floor pans are created out of 1/2 inch plywood that will eventually be sealed by some fiberglass cloth and resin.  This creates a very strong sandwich or “cored” structure.  The plywood was all cut to fit and then glued and screwed together.  After I get all the mock-up done, each of these floor pans will then get their layer of fiberglass cloth.  To finish them off they’ll get a coat of roll on bed liner.

So I need to make sure there’s a little bit of wiggle room for the external layers I’ll be adding.  Once I have all the layers added I’ll be drilling and tapping mounting bolts to secure them in place.

From the picture at the top you can see that I used the two cross braces as hangers.  I made sure that all pieces were overlapped like a puzzle to ensure they are nice and strong.

Then I made sure that my measurements actually met up with reality.  I test fitted the seat making sure there was a little bit of wiggle room on the sides.  The passenger side is 1/2 inch skinnier than the drivers, but everything still fits.

I didn’t finish up the passenger side because I still had all the steel piled under where the passenger floor pan goes.  Next, I’ll be fixing up my seats so that I can measure where my seat mounting holes need to go.

I’ll end up welding two 1 x 1 pieces under both floor pans stretching across the car tying into 1 x 1 pieces dropping down from the driveshaft tunnel and outer frame to box everything together.  These 1 x 1 pieces will create a “basket” that the floor pans sit on, and I’ll welded nuts into them so that the seats can be securely fastened to steel through the floor boards.

I just needed to figure out where the bolt holes needed to be drilled before welding in these pieces.  I’m hoping that they are lined up enough so that I don’t have to go out and get some 1 x 2 tubing 🙂