Having just recently done this for the third time in my life, I feel that it's time to share a little know-how on the subject. <br><br>Firstly, I can't say that my method is going to work for everyone because it requires you to have a rotisserie and a lift. For all of you cats who have those things, or the ingenuity to substitute for them, you'll be all set. <br><br>The process involves using your frame as a jig so that the floor can be welded together with the braces while it's all bolted to the frame, ensuring a perfect fit. The car is then lowered onto the frame, and the floor welded in. It's a very professional, hassle-free approach to replacing the floors, and the only way that I'd ever suggest doing it.<br><br> Having said that, let's get rock 'n rollin'. <br><br>Here we have your classic 1955 Bel-Air with rotted-out floors. It's usually quite the endeavor to the floors considering that along with the floor; the braces, rockers and inner rockers usually rust away too.<br> Depending on how far gone it all is, and how deep your pockets are, you may be looking at a month or more of fabrication and welding.<br> It can all be a tad overwhelming, but it helps to know where to begin.<br><br> I start by assessing the mounts that will be bolted up to the rotisserie -- The front most and rear most body mounts.<br><br> Luckily, this time around my front mounts were gold, but unfortunately the rear mounts did not fare so well.<br> This will probably be the case for most people. It's really hard to find a '55 these days with an existing tail pan and rear brace. <br>This particular car was so-so -- The brace was trash but the tail pan was savable.<br> This is simply because the design of the trunk pan. The valley in the rear of the trunk holds water, and soon enough everything rots through. Harley Earl was a brilliant man, but in this instance I don't know what the hell he was thinking. <br><br>Because it was virtually non-existent, I bought a new rear brace. As a side note: make sure that whenever you buy this stuff, (that is, anything that you want to fit close to the way it should) that you buy it from America. I realize that all of you know this already, but do not be tempted by lower prices, it's not worth the headache in the end... <br><br>And back to the brace... Before I could put it in I needed to rebuild the section of the tail pan that creates the little, aforementioned, valley of doom. This whole process only took a day and it was worth not paying for the new tail pan, because it's always fun to do things like this. <br> I built these pieces on both sides of the brace and sewed it to what was left of the valley. It's quite an elaborate part of the car, but once you understand how all of the different body panels fit together here, it's not too difficult to work with. <br><br> Naturally, the outside section of the tail pan -- the piece that most of the bumper covers, was in rough shape as well, and you probably want to address this before doing anything with the brace. This is just so you're able to get behind it with a dolly.<br><br> After the entire area that the rear brace mounts to has been restored go ahead and weld on the brace. <br> This is a big moment, because once this brace is in there's no more welding laying your back, and therefore no more dripping molten metal onto your stomach. >< <br><br> But before you go putting the car in the air, you should definitely brace up the inside similar to what I have here. <br>This may be a little overkill, but once the floor is out you want to ensure that nothing is going to tweak on you. It's worth doing, and doing well. If you do end up tweaking something, chances are the body of the car will never be right again. <br><br>Ok, so now that of that is out of the way it's time to mount her up to the rotisserie and give her a turn. <br> If you're like me, you'll finish the rest of the spot welds on the rear brace while the car is sideways. It's too much of a pain in the ass to do it all on the floor. Just make sure that you have enough welds on there so that the brace isn't going to let loose on you when you turn the car on it's side. That would be a major disaster. A disaster that I suggest getting on video if you can. <br><br>Now that the car is sideways, you can begin cutting out the floor. Assess all of your braces, if they're not too terribly bad, it's definitely worth repairing them. New braces can be expensive. Determine where they fall on your personal time to money scale, and make your decision from there. As you know, sometimes it's worth it just to buy something new rather than spending a week trying to recreate a $160 piece that they sell in a catalog. At any rate, cut all of the good braces away from the floor, sandblast them and make your repairs. Make sure that all of the flanges are good and straight, it's not worth ignoring a bent flange then having to put up with it later when it's half welded to the car. Also, you're going to want to weld the short braces to the seat braces and back together with the long straight brace, just like it was when it was on the car before. Make sure that you get all the geometry right between them, having it just a little off will be a huge mess.<br><br> Once the floor is gone you'll probably have a good idea of just how bad your inner rockers are. 9 times out of 10, they're going to have to come out. Grab the spot weld cutter and go to town on them too. <br><br>Now is the time to make all of your repairs to the rear 1/4s and rocker panels. <br><br>You should definitely put everything else on hold until you do this! <br><br>The reason being is that with the inner rockers gone and the floor out you have very easy access to the entire inside of the quarter and inside of the rocker.<br> Don't make the mistake of welding up the new inner rockers and still need to get a dolly in the rocker or inside the quarter. You'll be kicking yourself later if you do.<br> Also, I'd take this opportunity to fix the dog leg braces on the firewall as well. They like to rot away just like everything else. <br> Once all of that is taken care of, fit up your new inner rockers (again, your new high quality, American inner rockers) and make sure that if you were going to, they'd weld up nicely to all the flanges. <br>Especially check the fitment in the front near the firewall. Do whatever shaving, cutting or bending you need to to make sure these would zap on effortlessly. <br>The reason being is that they get welded to the floor first, not to the rockers, and if they need to be adjusted at that point you're going to be having a lot of fun trying to finagle it.<br><br> Also, let me make this point here -- Even after doing this project on two previous occasions, I made the asinine mistake of welding one of the inner rockers onto the actual rocker, without thinking. <br>It was far too late to tear it back off once it occurred to me what I had done, and lowering the body over the frame became a big pain in the ass.<br> For sanity's sake, do not make this mistake. It sucks bad. <br>Just so you know, if you were to weld on both of them, it would probably be impossible to get the floor in properly. So do not weld the inner rockers to the car at this point. <br><br>Now go get your frame and roll her into the shop.<br><br> Luckily, I have a few spares so I didn't have to mess around with my nice clean black one. <br> Especially since the motor is sitting in it.<br><br>It's time to grab your floors from that lonely corner in the back of the shop and tear off the plastic. It's game time. <br><br> I bought my floor in two halves, I believe this is how most of them come and to be honest, I think I prefer it this way.<br> I have actually seen the one piece floors for this car, but I'm not sure how much I would trust the way they fit.<br> Having the freedom to adjust the width of the floor is going to be really important, because you're going to want it to be dead on.<br><br> Having said that, grab your new body mount bushings and throw them on the frame, now grab all your newly sandblasted braces and bolt them up to the bushings. Keep them relatively loose for now. <br>(I like to spray the inside of the braces with a rust encapsulator --Always thinking about the grandkids...) <br><br>Also, make sure that you have the two front braces in their correct places. The right on the right side and the left on the left. The little tab with the hole in it faces toward the rear of the car. <br><br> About the front braces...Notice how there are holes in the front of the floor that line up to the holes in the transmission mounting horns, and also the holes in the front braces? Get yourself two pieces of pipe that fit snuggly in those holes and use them to line up the floor, brace and frame. Now snug up the bolts on both of those braces.<br> <br><br> Now, for a little fun. Take note of where the front braces bolt to the floor. If your floor is like every other after market '55 floor I've ever seen, this is going to be an issue. The round depression in the floor is too large to fit down into the factory brace. Now, it may very well work with an after market brace, (I'm not sure because I've never had to buy a front brace) but they certainly never work with the factory ones. To remedy this you're going to have to cut out the two sides of the circle leaving the center strip, which will fall nicely into place inside of the brace. Then weld in two stepped up half circle pieces to finish it off. You could try to bang out the sides of the circle, if you like, but this way is cleaner and more precise. If you desire a completely factory look, you have more work cut out for you. Keep in mind however, that the dog leg braces in the front completely cover this area of the floor from the top, and the floor braces cover it from the bottom. So, you're dirty little secret will be safe, at least until the floor rusts out again. Now get your floor mounted down to the braces, and the braces to the floor and take measures of the width and the length every few inches, and adjust as needed. Now throw some tacks all down the center of the drive shaft and tranny tunnel, and make your 2- piece floor, one piece. Once you're completely satisfied with where everything is sitting, and all the measurements check out with the inside of the car, slide underneath the frame with a piece of chalk and outline all of the braces onto the floor. Now unbolt everything and get ready for the time of your life: Hours of tedious drilling. You want to drill out holes all along the insides of the lines, spaced about 2 inches from one another. Just the way it was done in the fifties. Except with a hand drill, and a lot of coffee, cutting oil, and patience. I hate drilling holes, especially a lot of them. It's monotonous, and it just plain sucks, but it has to be done. For everything with a flange however, like where the floor gets welded to the trunk, around the firewall on the car, and the bottoms of the inner rockers, I suggest using a pneumatic hole punch, then kissing it in the back while no one's looking. As for where the tops of the inner rockers weld to the floor, I suggest drilling out all of those holes into the floor instead of punching them into the inner rocker. This is just because even though it's more of a bitch to drill the holes, it's a lot easier to weld them up from above, rather than from underneath the car. Once the delight of drilling has ended and all of the paint has been grinded away from the holes, throw the floor back onto the frame and bolt everything back up. Take all your measurements again, and don't start welding until you're satisfied with the way it's all sitting. Finally it's time to grab the welder and start plugging along, welding in all of the holes to the braces. Once your floor is one with the braces, it is time to weld on the inner rockers. Go ahead and fit them up and clamp them on, then mark out where the braces are and drill holes into them accordingly. Now, go ahead and weld them up to the floor and to the braces. What you'll have next is a pretty cool sight. But, don't revel for too long because the best is yet to come. Roll your rotisserie equipped with your '55 Chevy shell out to your rack. I like to brace up the inside of the rockers with a piece of 2x4 so that nothing bends when you lift the car up. I definitely suggest it, especially after all the work you just put into the rockers. I place the front arms of the lift where the bottoms of the front fenders mount - just in front of the rocker panels. Then put the rear arms where you feel most comfortable, and make sure to have a block of wood inside the rocker right above it. Make sure that pads of the lift are completely out of the way and behind the lower flanges of the rocker. Having to adjust them in the middle of the process is a headache. Now, I suggest being very cautious, but there is no need to be neurotic, with all of the bracing on the inside of the car and wood blocks, nothing should move at all. Having done all of that, it is time to take the load off the rotisserie and place it on the lift. Roll the rotisserie out of the way and roll the frame, with the floor bolted to it, underneath the car. Using extreme care, slowly lower the body down over the frame. If you've done your job right, everything should fit up quite nicely. Naturally, a little finagling is going to have to occur, but eventually everything should seat together perfectly. Clamp it all together, weld it all up, and now it is definitely time to bask in your glory. You sir, are the man. The man with a new floor. I hope you found this helpful, and insightful. -Dan
Here's the car with the floors in...<br> <br> And it's always nice to go back and look at your completed chassis every now and then for a morale boost. ^^ <br> Also, I just wanted to show it off. (Even though it is a little dusty now. All this metal work takes time... )
damm i'm outta breath just reading this thread. what did you spend on floorpans and braces? nice job and what a relief to not see a road sign used as a repair.
Very informative and well thought out!!!! I'm gonna be doing this in the upcoming months. I will definately use this info to aid me during the process. Thanks allot for posting this.
Yeah, really the only other significant rust on the car was in the lower rear 1/4s, the tailpan, and the eyebrows on the front fenders. Also, the frame was quite horrifying. It's definitely nice to be able to buy virtually every piece of the car. Especially interior stuff that's either expensive or virtually impossible to restore. As for body panels though, I normally make all my patches by hand. However, it is nice to know that you can buy them if you needed to I didn't need to buy too much as I was able to repair most of the braces. The rear body support brace, and the rear floor brace were too far gone though, so those I had to buy. Those two braces along with the floors halves was probably about $900. ((edit))I forgot about the inner rockers, which were $70 dollars a piece. Thank you. If you need any more info on the finer points of the project, don't hesitate to ask. I always like to help where I can.
3/12/2014: Great article. Am replacing floor sections now. 3 photos you posted on 1/29/2010 showing finished floors... but I can't open them. Why??
I am fixing to start on my floor in my 55 four door wagon and this will be very helpful. Thanks for the great detail...
Look up the '55 Chevy 210 wagon build that's going on here. The build is current with lots of updates, unbelievable craftsmanship level. A must see for any '55 Chevy owner.
The Jalopy Journal
