Hot Rods Old fashioned floor patching

These days, signs / tags for patching floors has become a ratrod standard item. Especially prevalent in the bed of rat truck thingeys.

 

I reccomend decaf coffee cans for 6cyl cars and for V8 cars the full bodied coffee can.

 

I redid most of the floor in my old Spitfire using an aluminum shipping container.

 

I bought this Model A Trailer just for the bed and there was this cool old sign used for the floor.

 

Wow that sign is real old $1 a night.


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There was a VW shop in my hometown, that used to build a lot of Baja Bugs. They would fiberglass the floor pans, and use expandable foam in the rocker/heat tubes. They were always on the hunt for gasoline fueled heaters for them.

 

The front passenger floor in my 55 sedan was patched with flattened 5 gallon lacquer thinner can. It still had a paper label attached. Ugly but it worked.
Joe

 

I'm thinking thats the rooms are rented by the hour.

I've found plywood screwed into floor pans on '80's truck. Road signs on muscle car. Old cars I have simply lift the original mat to pour out the stale coffee.

 

Back in the early 60's when I was going to electrician school for uncle Sam we had a 50Ford that got passed from class to class. In the winter, below zero weather, we would soak cardboard in water and form it over the holes in the floor and let it freeze. It kept the snow from blowing in and if you didn't drive to far with the heater on it would stay frozen. Best part was when it warmed up we used the holes to get rid of our beer cans.

 

I had a Road Runner that was my pride and joy. When I bought it, the front bumper was bent, and the matching grill piece above the bumper was cracked pretty bad. I looked for a long time for good used parts but couldn't find any. One day I found another Road Runner with a bad clutch and a pretty beat up body, but the front bumper and the grill were like new (probably the only straight parts on the whole car). I took the pieces I needed and swapped in the pieces from my car, and changed the clutch. Before I could send it down the road, it needed some floor patching. My 16 year old son "found" a couple of road signs and was concerned about them being in his possession (no, I didn't ask), so we concluded putting them into the floor of the car was a good way of "loosing" the signs. Those signs were made from thick aluminum and were pretty hard to get to fit where we could attach them to the remains of the Road Runner floor pan, but he old saying goes, where there is a will, there is a way. We got rid of the signs, and the Road Runner. As I remember it, I made something like $400 profit from its sale. Those were the good old days!

Before the road sign adventure, and after it, I had always used sheet metal from an old car hood. The guy at the local junk yard would sell me a hood for $5. Those big GM cars had huge hoods, a lot of patch panels could be cut out of them, and they were pretty easy to work with. Gene

 

Back in '68, going to a trade/vo.tech school on the G.I. bill, very little money, a friend had a 50 Chevy one ton panel. Over the years, the firewall had several modifications. A lot of extra holes and it got pretty cold in North Dakota. We patched it up with beer cans and a tub of roofing tar. Worked well & looked pretty good too.

 

Most of us patched holes in mufflers/tail pipes with beer cans and hose clamps back in the '70s.

 

I know a guy who actually charged someone money to pop rivet metal in her floorpans so she could get new carpet. thought he was doing her a favor.

 

16 years old, patched the floors in the 65 Malibu with aluminum sheet from the local newspaper presses. Free yellow! shag carpet scraps from a new subdivision nearby (crew said we could have them) to cover the newspaper pages

 

On my OT 74 nova hatchback I briefly owned the floors were gone so I used the side covers off of old computer towers and flux welded them in. If anybody were to take a good look under the car they could see a large HP logo stamped in the pans.

 

My Dad's favorite word is solidify. Anything he built , houses, race cars or hot rods was done right and fully welded and usually thicker material than factory. Repairs would outlast the rest of the body. So, I never repaired anything with pop rivets or screws. The only rivets used was for the interior tin on dirt track race cars. I guess that's why when I seen someone else's quick repair jobs I usually scrunched my nose at it and lost interest if I was thinking of buying. I had too be really jonesing for that particular vehicle because I just knew I would have to tear it all out and fix it right. I guess being taught Dad's way and being anal about doing it right and only once was my mindset.

 

I'm going to be careful about criticizing anyone about something like this...chances are my floor is going to look like that too

 

Bought a wagon in Michigan a few years ago. As I was doing floor repairs, I thought I was wowed by how sturdy the spare tire well was. Further cleaning revealed an aluminum patch held in place by a generous amount of duct tape. I have since repaired it and installed the correct size drain hole using part of an inner wheel house that had the curves I needed.

 

I helped a friend “street rod”his newly purchased 36 convertible. It was sold as a fresh complete restoration. He had me help put the battery under the floor pan on the passenger side. When I started to cut out the hole for the drop in battery box. The entire floor on the right side was made with tar paper and chicken wire over rusty sheet metal. they covered it with tar and put the mat in place. There was no place to put the screws to hold the battery box in place. There was more rust than metal. When I got under it, I saw it had shims made of treated wood and painted black to level the body.