Floor Pan Repair c3

Posted on August 30th, 2010 by heylanny in Corvette Restoration Tips, Corvette Talk

Corvette Floor Pan Replacement

Corvette Floor Pan Article

Corvette bodies are made of rust free fiberglass and reinforced in some areas with steel floor pans. The floor pans are made of heavy gauge steel and when they reach restoration time you may find that those floor pans need replacing. An after market pan is not as easy to replace as a original because fit may be slightly different. Getting it to fit right before welding is important.

Floor pans for the c3 corvette is the subject of this post, but is applicable to most any other c1 c2 c3 c4 c5 c6 corvette. What I have found is some shops over the years is that repair shops have done some basic floor pan restoration by simply reinforcing the floor pan with a couple layers of fiberglass matting and brushed down with fiberglass resin.

However when you need a complete floor pan replacement you need to remove the old panel and weld in a completely new one in its place. Using a plasma cutter is a way to easily remove the center and then trim the edges. If you do not have a plasma cutter then a air chisel is your next best approach. After removing the largest part of the center you can switch to a wide flat chisel and trim the edges.

The edges need to be ground allowing good metal to metal contact and to remove the old spot welds. A 4 inch grinder works well for this. The pan itself can be turned upside down and an abrasive 40 grit disc can be used to make good contact be fore mig welding.

Self tapping Screws or metal holders can be used to secure and align it. We used self tapping screws for this job then filled the screw hole and ground it down. I will point out that getting the bottom is not easy when mounted on the frame. We removed the body later and finished the bottom side with additional mig tacking, Dolling, and grinding to get a good fit.

We will be adding a finished photo soon of the weld panel with a couple of other photos. Comments welcomed!

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