Mini Ecoboost Project

So I cut out the door step and now I'm trying to figure out what sequence to do the repairs.....I'm also trying to decide if it's a better strategy to remove the entire floor panel or only the parts towards the outside that are really rusted. It would be nice to have complete clean non rusty floors but I can't decide if the outcome is worth the extra effort as the panels I have won't do the entire floor, I will have to patch in a few of the missing pieces.



When I did the back panel, it was only after I had removed the old one that I found I could have bought a repair panel for just the bottom couple of inches - that would have been FAR less work than changing the whole panel and I'm pretty sure the results would have been just as good, maybe better.

Like Binky, I could have bought an entire new floor and welded it all in one piece, but when the car was sold to me I was told the floors and sills were ok......and they might have been when he first started on the car 8 years before I bought it, who knows (but I doubt it!)

 

My project is continuing, slowly......in the meantime my buddy Don and I trekked south about an hour from KC to the private Hedge Hollow race track to watch some friends run their vintage American cars. My buddy says this track is one of the fastest he's ever raced on but it's completely miserable for spectating. The track was never intended to be open to the public, so there are no access roads or spectator areas.....he may add those as he's now running NASA race weekends as well as lot of club dates for the Mustang, Corvette, BMW and Porsche club events. Right now the only place you can watch from is on the balcony in front of the garages, and all you can see from there is the banked turn one and the short front straightaway. Too many trees in the way for the rest of the track.

We also had a huge storm blow thru which did some major damage to the trees in my neighborhood. Spent a day helping neighbors clean up the mess.....most all the trees in my 'hood are 50-60 years old or more and are pretty huge - even the branches are a foot or more in diameter. Gave me a chance to fire up the chainsaw which hadn't been used in several years. Some fresh gas, a quick sharpen of the chain and some bar oil and it was good to go.



I've also been helping a couple of guys with their new classics. One fellow has now rebuilt his engine, transmichigan, whole front end and brakes all around. He also added a Weber carb and has been trying to get it tuned out properly. He's almost there with the carb and we have an appointment in 10 days to go to the dyno to get it finally sorted, in the meantime he's been adding break in miles as quickly as he can. The second car is a recent BaT purchase and it's a really nice car with just a few needs.....it's a Canadian 998 with drum brakes, some terrible oil leaks and a non op clutch. He's ordered a 4 pot brake kit and we'll see about the rest when it gets here.



On my hot rod, I've added a 1/4" spacer at the front attachment point of the rear subframe, to move the wheels back into the centers of the wheel openings, they were a bit too far forward to my taste. That required redoing all the other attachment points and remeasuring for length the replacement floor parts.

I've also been practicing with my bender tool, and made a filler panel for the floor where the companion bins sit - the new floors had a cutout in the shape of the companion bins.....next up - more welding!

 

More work on the Mini Hot rod, I needed to remove the sound deadening (like dynamat) that was really stuck down on the floor. I had tried to use my heat gun and that did work, but it left a layer of black bitumin that was difficult to scrape off. I need to get it off so I can see what the floor looks like especially next to the tunnel - whether there are any spots rusted thru, and sure enough there was one on the passenger side. I'm trying to decide whether to replace the entire floor pan or just patch the bad spots.....I'm leaning towards replacing the whole panel as I don't think it will be any more welding involved than in replacing the long edge by the sills and the same on the inside near the tunnel.

So, today I tried ye olde dry ice trick and I have to say it worked pretty well. It evaporated before I got all of it off, so I will have to go buy another bag - another $12 worth. The stuff I got from our local grocery store was in small bits, rather than the one big chunk like I used to buy, so that def made it easier, however I haven't figured out how to do the tunnel as it won't stay in place. I thought of using a thin grocery store plastic bag and just do a small section at a time....we'll see whether that will transfer enough cold to get it to break loose or not. But.....in one hour's work I got 2/3 of it off, where with the heat gun it would have taken many hours of heating and scraping and it would have left a residue to clean off .

For those who haven't tried this before you simply spread out the dry ice, let it sit a bit, then smack the panel with a dead blow or hard plastic hammer. It pops off, sometimes in pretty good sized chunks. Top left section in the first pic shows what I have left to do.