A Little Saturday Night Time with Bugsy II

[Jim_Gruber]

Colleen was occupied with Christmas Cookie decoration and I got a reprieve to get out of her hair and disappear to the garage for a while. With Angle Grinder, may Hammer Drill, Dremel with Cutting Blade, Wonder Bar, and my Biggest Screwdriver I set out to remove the PS Spring Plate. Tips on this job:

1) Factory Welds at the back of the Spring Plate where plate meets the Spring Box. Angle Grinder with a Cutting Blade took care of this fairly quickly. Go slow as you do not want to cut into the spring box. The back edge of the spring box has a lip and can be used as a guide to keep things in alignment. Plate has one large continuous bead across that needs to be cut through.

2) In the center of the Spring Plate is a 1/2" sized hole, actually a smidgeon bigger than 1/2". I took my 1/2" Hammer drill and a 1/2" bit and used that to slowly grind the weld that goes around the inside of of the Spring plate to the 3/8" hole in the Spring Box. Do not dill all of the way through. You need that lip on the Spring Box to retack weld this bracket back in place.

3) There will be some weld done at the factory from the back side I later learned you will need to start prying from the front of the spring mount and start bending them back and forth to simply pry and break apart.

4) Wonder Bar came in handy and I was able to find some sound places on he floor to pry against. However if your floor back there is as rotten as the pictures show, the Wonder Bar will simply go through the floor.

5) The floor is a single piece from factory and is between the Spring Plate and the Spring Box. All pieces are rusted together. There are not cutouts in a BE like there is on a Repair Panel for the Spring Box. So once you make all of your cuts and have the welds free, your challenge will be separating the Spring Mount from the floorpan and then getting the remaining bit of floorpan off of the Spring Box. The second picture shows the piece of floorpan that is rusted to the Spring Box.

6) Don't try to leverage on the back of the bulkhead. I bent a fairly rotten lower section of the bulkhead which I'll need to repair,


It's now out, Spring Plate likely can be cleaned up and reused. I have not checked to see if it is still flat or not.

Next steps

Attack rear bulkhead brace from the inside. Need to cut welds and remove that piece and not damage the rear bulkhead.
At that point I will be able to see both sides of the Spring Box from above. Spring box has good metal on both sides and repairs were done there when the car was taken apart 35 years ago. Unfortunately the body shop tried to do this one cheap on that side versus new floor pan and Spring Box on the DS. I believe the toughest part from here will be getting the old floor our and the new one in. A good reference "How To" on removing old floor before I start cutting away which I will not go any further on until now floor pan is in hand along with Bulkhead repair stiffener and floor stiffener. So here are the results after attacking with implements of mass destruction.

Comments and advice on those who have gone before will be appreciated along with any "How TO" Reference Links. Porter Repair Manual is behind my desk and I'll dig that out as well. It is pretty ugly under there and glad I'm doing this one the rotisserie and not from underneath. On wards and upwards. Bugsy will rise again. Now where is my MOSS Catalog. Guess a floorpan won't make it under the Christmas Tree before Christmas.

 

[Rut]

Jim,
Good progress! Keep us posted and add more pictures.
Rut

 

[Jim_Gruber]

Hey Rut,

Are those spot welds drilled out from inside the cockpit for the floorpan or from underneath. Sure hope the answer is from underneath. Got lots of grime to clean off before that starts and need to get that bulkhead brace cut out so the repair piece.

 

[Rut]

Jim,
Once you clean everything so you can identify the spot welds you can drill then out for either side. You will be welding from the topside, so make sure the holes are big enough to make good ones. IIRC, I used a 5/16" drill bit I bought from the local welding shop and they worked great. Most of the good welding supply places can offer very good advice and tools that work great.
Rut

 

[Jim_Gruber]

So if you cut holes out from the bottom and ground things flat, Why can't you weld in from the bottom? There must be a good reason and cutting around tranny bracing what are best practices there? I'll assume a need to leave some extra meat there. If I cut out floorplan leave an inch or 1.5 " of the old floorpan? Not sure how close I can get to the old floorpan with new and then punch holes in the old floorpan edges for welding purposes. I'd better get out the Porter Book section on floorpans and do some reading.

 

[Rut]

Jim,
The pan welds to the inner sill along the outside, to the flange along the shut panel in the rear, to the flange along the front, to the"frame" along the inside. It also welds to the crossmember, transmission tunnel and bulkhead. Once you drill out the old pan you will have holes (hopefully) along all these points (except the inner sill). The new pan will drop in, you'll clamp it front, rear, and along the rocker and make sure it fits well. I used self tapping screws to pull it tight and a little bit of angle grinder to knock down any left over welds, etc. to give me a great fit. When you get to the center rear of the pan you want to avoid the brace that goes over the transmission tunnel...it's a pita to remove and reweld!
After you do a preliminary fit you can mark the holes for the welds on the spring hanger and mark where you want to cut out the old floor along the transmission tunnel and the new floor.
I used a HF spot welder to make a lot of welds along the flanges and when installing the rockers, but a mig does a great job.
Rut

 

[Bill H]

Thanks Rut
Excellent Pics and explanations. I am working on floor, sills and bulkhead right now and this is a great reference

Bill H.