A cutting wheel works good. Make sure you look under the car and mark where frame extensions, transmission supports, etc. are before you go cutting. Also you will need to drill the factory spot welds. Try to drill just through the top side. You can drill them with a regular drill bit, or you can get a spot weld cutting bit. To find the spot welds, you my have to take a wire wheel to the rusted pans to uncover the tell tale spot weld dimple. When I did mine I cut around the parts that were spot welded to remove most of the pans and then went back and got the rest. Seemed easier to do this because it freed up a lot of space where I could sit on a short stool in the middle of the car while I drilled out all the spot welds.

Hope this helps

 

One more possibly stupid question....but thinking logistics now.

Is it possible to move the car during this process? Nothing radical, just pushing into or out of the garage type thing.

For example, would it be possible one Thursday evening to pull the interior and gas tank out of the car then bright and early Friday morning push it out onto the drive way to start cutting out one side of the pans. Thinking if you worked all day you might could get one side out (hopefully????) and then on Saturday start putting the new one in on that side before starting on the other side. Catch is it would be nice to be able to push it back into the garage when it was time to knock off for the day. Most of the work I have done on the car, I do in the garage but there would be more room and better light on the driveway is my thinking but don't want to leave the car outside all night if it is avoidable.

I have seven or eight vacation days that I can still use this year and we already went on a trip so no big vacation plans for the rest of the year.

Wondering if there is time during a long weekend to do at least one side?

 

plasma[sm=icon_rock.gif] The way I looked at it was this... I could pay someone to do it and it would cost a lot, or I could buy the tools to do it myself and have the tools when I was done. I got a small plasma for $500 and Miller 140 with autoset (which automatically adjusts wire speed and amperage for sheet steel) was like $600. I'm sure the labor on putting in a floor would damn near come to a grand (it's $95 an hour out here if you can even find a shop that will do it). Then you have the tools to do all of the other stuff. Besides shooting sparks is fun

 

Although you could, I wouldn't recommend it.

Ideally the car should be supported on jackstands for the entire evolution. The cars floor is an integral part of the vehicles structure. Rolling the car in and out of the garage would probably not affect anything, but if you don't have to tempt Murphys Law, don't.

An alternate method would be to roll it outside, remove all of the interior items, and then start playing with the new repair panel. How is it going to fit? Where will I need to trim it? Where will my cut lines be on the old floor?

When it comes time to actually get down to business, roll the car back inside and place it level on jackstands. Make all of your cuts removing the old paneland then start tacking the new panel in place. When the new panel is sufficiently installed, you can take her back outside and start the prep work for the other side.

Remember that the less you move the car, the better, but if you're only doing one side at a time, the chances of something geting out of whack are really small.

On a side note, welding flash will give you a nice sunburn in a very short period of time. Where longsleeves or lather yourself up in sunsceen to prevent any exposed skin from becoming burned. Keep a gallon of water standing by as you will burn your fingers/hand. You'll forget that you just welded a certain spot and then rest your hand on a hot weld and in effect "brand" yourself. The water will obviously help soothe the searing pain. Lastly, sparks. Keep clear of the headliner and any glass. The glass will be "burned" by any hot sparks splattering off of your welds. The headliner gets pin-holes very easily from the same sparks. Leave your door panels installed and roll the door windows all of the way down. Place a "sun-shade" or similar piece of cardboard up on the dash to protect the windshield.

Dave

 

The trick is to make sure you take detailed measurements and even some pictures to use as references when putting in the new pans. (Or any other parts for that matter). Alignment is critical when doing a job like this. If the new pans are tilted, lower or higher then the originals, then the seat platforms will be off as well. This means the seats will be off. As far as the MIG welding. The trick is in the setting of the heat selector. The cheaper ones offer fewer heat points. The better ones allow you to almost create a setting. You get what you pay for. Buy a quality welder. You won't be sorry. The money you save in labor will be directly translated into a quality welder. It doesn't have to be new. They sell them all the time on sites like your local craigslist. Anyway, after some practice you'll realize that a babboon can MIG weld. BTW. Make sure the car doesn't sag hen you remove the metal. All the metall has something to do towards supporting the car since its a unibody. It takes patience but its worth it. My motto is "What you lack in expeirence, you make up for in caring".

 

Thanks for the tips Dave. I was planning on doing one side completely then doing the other side. I had heard or read somewhere that this is the prefered way to go about it to avoid warping the car.

Not sure how long it will take to get a side done and don't want to leave the car out at night in the weather. We don't live in a high crime area by any means but I also don't want to leave the car out due to every neighborhood has kids that have the potential to be a vandle and we just had a post the other day where some punk had spray painted one of the other forum member's Stang.

UH60 is right though. It is hard to even find a shop that wants to do the work. Most of the places around here only want to fix your insurance claim type fender bender.

There is a local "restore" or "muscle car" type place but they wanted $65 / hour and told me the total to do front pans only and toe boards on both sides would be around $2,600. That seemed a lot high to me. Another local "custom shop" told me it would be around $1,000 to do the long floor pans on both sides....but the custom type shop spends more time working on these little foreign cars that the kids like to buy and put the huge stereos and annoying megaphone mufflers on so I am not positive they would know much more than I do about replacing floor pans on a classic.

I probably could get away with only the short floor pans in the front but my thinking is if the front is that bad, the back is 42 years old also and if you are going to mess with the head ache of replacing the pans better to replace more instead of less.

by the way, would something like this work for the welding?

http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_1...0580000P?mv=rr

 

It would work, but it's not really one of your ideal choices. Think 135 amps minimum.....

Something like this would be much better...

http://cgi.ebay.com/LINCOLN-SP135T-M...QQcmdZViewItem

Your linked welder is kinda on the small side (24 gauge metal is maximum recommended thickness) and can only use flux core wire.

My linked welder has the ability to weld thicker metal (say, shock tower cracks...) and can be easily adapted to run solid core wire (by connecting an Argon gas bottle).

You don't necessarily have to buy the one I linked, just something with the same capabilities.

Dave

 

this is the one I bought and it works like a champ on sheetmetal and... Well pretty much everything I've tried it on so far.

http://cgi.ebay.com/MILLER-MILLERMAT...QQcmdZViewItem

I wanted to go with a 220V machine, but my house has OLD wiring and wiring the 220 into the garage was going to be $$$$. That said I've been more than pleasantly suprised with how well this thing works. And best of all you can plug it in anywhere.

 

Flux core will do the job, but it's messy and the welds don't look as "perfect" as a welder using gas. I would recommend getting one that at least is capable of using gas, even if you don't use it for this job.

Here is a link to a site I found....it is from some guy in the UK, so all the example cars are british, but there is some pretty good info and I believe some videos too.

http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/

Here is a link to a site where a guy replace the full length floor pan in a '69.

http://home.together.net/~groovygreen/page7/LE600_7.htm

If you poke around on that site there is a lot of good stuff there besides floorpans.

Good luck and post pics for us. I am getting ready to do my pans....I've been getting ready for along time (had surgery and am just nowgetting back on my feet). All the info I can get will help.

 

I think I may be a while getting ready to tackle this as well.

Will for certain check out the links and figure out which welder to buy then start practicing as I read any and all "how to" articles I can find about replacing floor pans. I am a firm believer however that five minutes of planning / thinking something through first can save you hours of grief and pain on the backend. Maybe that is just the over analytical CPA in me

One thing I want to do also is assess things a bit more. I know I need at least the front floor pans and toe boards for certain. Other questions I need to answer is what else do I need? Can my existing seat risers be cleaned up and reused or should I replace those as well? Are there any other parts I will find when the floor pan is removed that might need replacing as well?

The good news is that I have owned the Mustang long enough now that some of this work such as how to remove the interior, gas tank, etc is a no brainer and I already know how to do that off the top of my head. Picked most of that info up just by reading articles and spending some time around the Stang with a wrench in my hand. But I still have a million and one questions about getting the old pans out, getting a good fit / measurements and putting the new ones in. Hence time to do a lot of reading then pick a good date or two for taking a couple of vacation days at work.

I also have a rank exam coming up sometime soon in Aikido that I am not near as ready for as I would like to be at this point so I am busy figuring out how to juggle everything.