CTX-SLPR Posted April 15, 2018 Share Posted April 15, 2018 Been working on fixing the floors around the front seats in my '64 and installing some 97-99 Acura CL buckets. They're mixed together since I don't want to repair the floors only to cut things out or restore complicated features that aren't used anymore. Here's how bad it was when I started with it: First thing I did was get a spot weld cutter and start drilling out the spot welds on the passengers side between the under floor braces and the floor itself. Other than some large concentrations of welds near the seat mounts that went pretty smoothly as long as I didn't get too aggressive too quickly with the cutter and have it skip out of the center punch on the weld. Got both bad sections of the floor out in about 2hrs of work with other guys standing around talking about stupid stuff we've done in cars as part of a guys group that meets in my garage on Thursdays. Interesting that the seat mount on the front is mostly intact but the underfloor brace is completely rusted out on the end while the rear seat brace is basically gone but the brace is pitted but otherwise fine. We suspect the reason the braces rot out is the drain hole is not the low spot and water collected in the end even worse than the debris getting trapped would have. I've been working on mounting the drivers side seat since I need it first to bleed the brakes. Here's some pictures of the seats My first attempt at mounting the seat using the front of the kickup in the floor as a seat mount for those 45ºmounts with a bent bracket in the rear ended up too far forward and too high. I was mostly comfortable but only with the seat all the way back and down. No room to adjust beyond that. After a major screw up where I drilled a full set of mounting holes 1.25in too over and ended up off center from the steering wheel I regrouped and came up with a new mount plan that gets me seated pretty much exactly where I want. I've got maybe 0.75in of rearward travel from comfortable for me and even at full up on the seat my head doesn't hit the headliner unless I put the seat back full upright. Quite happy. Need to get some 0.25 plate to be happy with the mount strength but the basic design is intact and even uses the original mounting points for the front. The rear I'll have to make a new version of that bent metal bracket but it should be more than strong enough. eal26048.bmp 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rapom Posted April 15, 2018 Share Posted April 15, 2018 Those ought to be a lot more comfortable than stock. I did the same thing but I used Chrysler Sebring Conv. seats since they also have seat belts. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RivNut Posted April 15, 2018 Share Posted April 15, 2018 20 minutes ago, rapom said: Those ought to be a lot more comfortable than stock. I did the same thing but I used Chrysler Sebring Conv. seats since they also have seat belts. I had a set of these Sebring seats but decided not to use them because of the complicated electrical restraint system. The seat belts are only allowed to be moved when there's 12V applied to a solenoid. That solenoid is connected to a motion sensor in the console and the door jamb switches. I'm curious as to how you incorporated these features or what you did to eliminate them and still have the belts functional? Ed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CTX-SLPR Posted April 15, 2018 Author Share Posted April 15, 2018 How much of a gap did you end up with between the seats and the center console? Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rapom Posted April 15, 2018 Share Posted April 15, 2018 I have seen on forums were the Sebring seats needed the computer and I have also seen where they didn’t. All I hooked up was the power wire so the seat adjustments worked. I did test my seat belts by slamming on the brakes to see if they held and they did. The article where you needed computer was on a Corvair site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rapom Posted April 15, 2018 Share Posted April 15, 2018 Seats are about 3” from console Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rodneybeauchamp Posted April 17, 2018 Share Posted April 17, 2018 Did I spot a Gear Vendors OD unit in there. Be interested in your experience and opinion with this unit! cheers Rodney ?????? On 16/04/2018 at 6:48 AM, rapom said: Seats are about 3” from console Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rapom Posted April 18, 2018 Share Posted April 18, 2018 (edited) GV installation is not for the faint of heart. Major floor hump and frame surgery is needed to use it. My car is a daily driver rat rod that sees a lot of highway miles so I had to do something. Not sure if I would want to do it to a nice riv. That being said. It's nice to have the extra gear to knock down the 3.07 gear when doing 75 mph. Here's a link with some pics. I solved the shudder on takeoff problem a couple of months ago by lowering the carrier bearing pad inside the x-frame about 1". Edited April 18, 2018 by rapom (see edit history) 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CTX-SLPR Posted May 6, 2018 Author Share Posted May 6, 2018 Continued working on the floor of the car, mainly on the passengers side. Since I paid a fair bit of money for it and there are no good repos, I've very carefully taken apart the passengers side donor section of floor by drilling out the spot welds and the like. This has left me with a lot of good donor sheet metal but it's been time consuming. I finally got the replacement section of inner rocker in the car and spliced in the new section of under floor bracing but when I was cleaning up the welds under the car I managed to get a metal grinder spark/frag in my eye past my safety goggles. I've been recovering from that for almost a week now and it was not fun having them dig a splinter out of my eye with a hypodermic needle! Passengers side under floor structure is 80% done. Need to redo the last spot welds on the underside of the bracing and patch a small section of the second brace that rusted out. I was poking at the inner rocker and had the screwdriver go through so I'll probably end up cutting the end of the support off so I can patch that section with donor material, weld the end up and then weld the support back into the car. Then it's weld the seat mount plate on and then the floor over it. I'm guessing I've got another 4-5hrs left on the passengers side depending on how long it take to stitch weld the floor back in to keep it from warping. Then it's seat mounts and final paint to wrap the passengers side up. The drivers side will be easier since I know what I'm doing better and have already taken the donor apart, but harder since I have no drivers donor so I'll be fabbing the floor out of sections of the passenger side and flat sheet. Have to get done by the end of the month so I can take the car to see my students from the auto maintenance class I taught on the last day of school. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lrlforfun Posted May 6, 2018 Share Posted May 6, 2018 (edited) OK Will: Give me a call because I have what you need. I'll be in Livermore Monday about 2-ish. Mitch Edited May 6, 2018 by lrlforfun (see edit history) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CTX-SLPR Posted May 7, 2018 Author Share Posted May 7, 2018 22 hours ago, lrlforfun said: OK Will: Give me a call because I have what you need. I'll be in Livermore Monday about 2-ish. Mitch Mitch, left you a message. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CTX-SLPR Posted May 7, 2018 Author Share Posted May 7, 2018 Continuing to recover and unfortunately find more rust as I go poking around. There is rust up in the floor pan on the passengers side where the body mount load spreader box under laps the floor pan and seam between the main pan and the toe board. I have a patch panel but finally wore out my spot weld cutter on the larger welds so I’ll need a new one before I can free that section up. Of note I’m going to use Eastwood’s chassis rust encapsulation and frame interior coating to try and keep this from happening again or the existing lingering surface pitting from spreading. I also have Eastwood’s seam sealer and PRE prep spray. I’ve also been using SEM weld through primer but have to say that if you Aren’t lap welding something with spot welds, skip it as it makes getting a good penetrating bead hard to start and has really messed with my heat settings trying to get it to weld properly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CTX-SLPR Posted May 8, 2018 Author Share Posted May 8, 2018 Three Cheers for Mitch, overall "Good Egg and Snappy Dresser" as the Brits put it. We've been bartering some parts back and forth and he hooked me up with a decent donor floor pan that will cover the complex bits of the floor and I'll take it apart for him so he can put it to use patching up his rusty back seat area on one of his. Getting excited to get to work on this stuff over the course of the next few weeks. Hopefully I'll have a solid floor and the seats mounted in the next 2 weeks! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CTX-SLPR Posted May 27, 2018 Author Share Posted May 27, 2018 FINALLY got the passengers floor all rebuilt, primed, and welded in! Need to grind the welds down and apply seam sealer to finish that side out till I go back and build the seat mounts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CTX-SLPR Posted August 4, 2018 Author Share Posted August 4, 2018 Been awhile since I updated this, mainly since as I was taking the drivers side apart on Memorial day weekend I hit my thumb with a hammer so hard that I broke it and after it healed up enough to start considering using it, I went out of town for 3 weeks straight... Fortunately I was back this week and started patching up the damage on the drivers side. Still need to clean up the welds and install the patch piece into the rear underseat brace attachment point. I ended up cutting out most of the bottom of the rear under seat brace to repair it, that'll be next then I'll patch in the donor front under seat brace section. What I'm still unsure about is how to rebuild the rear seat mount plate since I have no more whole donors and I'm not feeling too trusting of patching together the best of the three rusted sections I've pulled out. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Mckenzie Posted August 5, 2018 Share Posted August 5, 2018 I`ve often thought that if they were available , I would have bought aftermarket floor braces ,too bad nobody makes them...they could charge a kings ransom. Quote Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CTX-SLPR Posted February 6, 2019 Author Share Posted February 6, 2019 On 8/5/2018 at 3:59 PM, Scott Mckenzie said: I`ve often thought that if they were available , I would have bought aftermarket floor braces ,too bad nobody makes them...they could charge a kings ransom. I think the front pair would be pretty easy to make as they are nearly flat, I'm kicking around the idea of trying to make patterns once I'm done with the rest of the project and the car is on the road I ended up making one for myself for the drivers side as the rest of the donors were all grossly wrong. Been working on this and despite being gone almost half of July-Nov I managed to complete welding in the drivers side (minus a small patch that is tached in but I ran out of shielding gas before finishing it) and the passengers side pretty much done except for the patch I'll have to grind the paint and primer off of to mount the seat mount bracket to. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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