<VV> Re: Floorboards

[vairologist@juno.com]

> From: "Ron F Hinz" <ronh@owt.com>
> To: <VirtualVairs@corvair.org>
 
> I know that several responses have shown up indicating that some 
> owners have actually changed floorboards, so tell me, how did you find
and cut 
> the spot-weld on the front floor supports??  
----------------smit-------------
Smitty says:  If you are looking for easy, quit now Ron.  The biggest
asset I found was a pneumatic chisel from one of the cheepo tool places. 
Twenty bucks or so.  Grind a chisel into a shallow "V" so it will feed to
the center rather than trying to skip off what you are cutting.  Care
must be taken to get the proper angle so as not to cut the base metal. 
WEAR SOUND PROTECTION.  Strip off the sheet metal and use an angle
grinder to take down the remaining thickness at the spot welds.  I also
made a chisel with a long sharp shape from an old head stud to slide
between the layers of metal with a hammer in order to separate them
enough to get the pneumatic one in there.  Start by cutting the major
part of the metal away so you are working with only a narrow strip where
the spot welds are.  Use the pneumatic chisel for that too.  WEAR GLOVES.
 It's a ball.  When putting the new boards in, at the overlaps use #6
nuts and bolts to clamp the two together.  The weld the holes up after. 
Use sheet metal screws to pull the flanges at the sides tight and weld
those holes up after.  You will have awful stress warps if you try to
continuous weld.  Do it in 1/2 inch passes from side to side.  Everyone
is not as crazy as me but used a sheet of asbestos (yeah I know, I know)
between two sheets of metal to slide up between the toeboard and the gas
tank when I was welding that part.  Kept moving my insulator from time to
time to make sure I wasn't tacking to it.  I have put floors in four
cars.