I'd like to jab a hot soldering iron into the eyes of all the hackers of the world. And I'm not talking the computer kind. I'm talking the kind of people that do shoddy ass work on cars and should be shot.
I wanted to finish up my cage this weekend, and I started to prep the pass side floor to weld in the floor plate for the pass side bars. As I started stripping the paint off with the abrasive wheel, I came across an old familiar smell.... body filler. That's right. The entire pass front floor had about a 1/2" thick slathering of bondo across th entire floor surface, and then some cheezy fiberglass work up the footwell. It had been painted top and bottom, so you couldn't tell it was ever done. After I got through getting all that crap out of there, it was apparent the whole front floor was rotted out. I had to cut most of the floor and footwell out and will be welding in some fresh heavy gauge metal to attach the roll cage too. Just pissed me the hell off.
I will say one thing, for those of you with factory T-top cars, the factory added in torque boxes are some impressive pieces. Very heavy gauge metal, well attached to the car and very structural. Every II should have come with them. The nice thing about them is I can use them now as a template for where the new floor needs to sit
.
One other thing worth mentioning, when I cut the old floor section out, I found that from years of driving, the subframe had about 2" of dirt/sand/crap inside it. No wonder the subframes rot out.
I wanted to finish up my cage this weekend, and I started to prep the pass side floor to weld in the floor plate for the pass side bars. As I started stripping the paint off with the abrasive wheel, I came across an old familiar smell.... body filler. That's right. The entire pass front floor had about a 1/2" thick slathering of bondo across th entire floor surface, and then some cheezy fiberglass work up the footwell. It had been painted top and bottom, so you couldn't tell it was ever done. After I got through getting all that crap out of there, it was apparent the whole front floor was rotted out. I had to cut most of the floor and footwell out and will be welding in some fresh heavy gauge metal to attach the roll cage too. Just pissed me the hell off.
I will say one thing, for those of you with factory T-top cars, the factory added in torque boxes are some impressive pieces. Very heavy gauge metal, well attached to the car and very structural. Every II should have come with them. The nice thing about them is I can use them now as a template for where the new floor needs to sit
. One other thing worth mentioning, when I cut the old floor section out, I found that from years of driving, the subframe had about 2" of dirt/sand/crap inside it. No wonder the subframes rot out.
