Father & Son Build - New Floor Pans

One of the biggest rust issues with any old Beetle is commonly the floor pans, more specifically, the passenger side, under the battery. Nate's 1972 Beetle was not an exception and the floor pan was so badly rusted out that when Sam and Nathan first got the car running, they had to set the battery on the driver side. Now with most of the chassis fabrication modifications complete, Sam & Nate can finish up the welding on the rear sub-frame and the 002 Bus transmission nose cone mount. Then they the get the chassis
completely cleaned up, wire wheeled, washed out again and finally they get new floor pans trimmed and welded in place. Enjoy the banter and the joking about Nate's driving from a guest appearance from Grandpa!

Video Transcript

Captain Jack Sparrow over here, we got JBugs bucket hat, ’cause why not? Yeah. Hi guys, I'm Sam. And I'm Nate, and this makes it a little bit easier. Should have done something like this the first time, but I was—I don't know why I was taking it. It's not OSHA-approved, but good thing this is my house, not OSHA’s house. So, we got the bug up there. We'll roll the chassis out, drop the bug back down to our cart, pull the chassis back in. That way, we can weld up the rest of the rear suspension and do more finishing work on the chassis—maybe get the floor pans welded in, hopefully. Got all the measurements off of the old floor pans, point to point, so I'll use those. I actually just had them bolted in. I'm just going to go off measurements, and we're going to trust that my measurements were correct. We'll deal with that without having to put the body on and off repeatedly. Try to get this chassis buttoned up sooner rather than later. Back to it.

Much easier. Yeah, that way from now on, we don’t get cut up eight times. Yeah.

Yeah well, now we can weld all that up. Now that I’ve got the body off, I can come back in, finish welding up the back of that, weld up the rest of that. Same thing over there and there. Box in here, and we can box in the back of our shock towers and also down here. I can double shear like that to hold the outside edge of the shock bolt. We'll box it into the trailing arm.

Yeah, dude. How do you like it? A lot. You like it a lot? Yeah, it looks more professional-type. Well, I guess I can start welding, and if you want to get some long pants on, you can come out and maybe do some welding too. Maybe you want to try? I'm not very good at welding. Well, the nice thing is you can weld on the backside here, and ain't nobody ever going to see it again. Does that sound good? Yep.

All right, take that, and you stick two pieces of metal together. Take one piece of metal, point it in the gap, and—All right, dude. You got your gloves? Yeah. Got the torch? Slap the stuff. You got a ground clamp? Got a ground clamp. Make sure our gas is on. That would probably help. Gas is on. Is it copper wire? No, it’s just brown. Yeah, just copper color. Okay, you're going to need to walk me through it.

Pretty much just point it right at the gap, and then move the wire around. You'll see it start to pool up, and then once you get a puddle, just move that puddle back as far as you can. I would start here and then just drag, and then try to keep going circular, right? Yeah. This one, actually, you don't have to. This one’s got self-setting, so it’s pretty good. Just keep it pointed there, wait till you get a puddle, and then drag the puddle. See how I'm keeping the stick perpendicular to the weld joint? Try to keep that same distance all the way around. Okay.

You can set your hand on the tunnel or on the thing, and that way you can rest the torch against it. As long as you can do that, you can move your hands together. Perfect, yep. Okay, give it a shot.

Not bad, not bad, not bad at all. All right, keep on going around. Get closer. Hey, you are way far out. Hold on. You can stay about a half-inch away. It’s kind of hard to even see. That's why you have to move your body to a place where you can see. You need to keep that gap. So, like here? Yeah. Let me grind that out real quick. Okay, it doesn’t matter. You just get right up on it. You want to stay about that far away. See? I just keep my hand right here, and that way I can move my hand and the stinger and keep going. So I can get all the way down to there, pointing all the way in, and just try to keep that much gap all the way around. Go that way. If you're trying to do it all in one go, I would start maybe even right there, drag it this way, and come across.

Start down here? You just kind of work it back. It’s always good practice to practice your movement before.

Too fast. Too fast. Go back in. I'll help guide you.

That hurt. This shirt is super— I’ll guide you. Go ahead. Change your angle. Like that? Yeah, there you go. See how much better that looks? You’re going too fast. You’ve got to let it build up. Let the heat get in there, build that puddle, and then move the puddle. See? This part is definitely not right, but—

That looks good, buddy. Yeah, not bad. That will pass. Got one more over there. Probably want to start down here. Awkward. Let me get this.

Grab it, go nice and slow. Watch your puddle. Your puddle will tell you when you need to move. So, well, I—I don’t know what it’s about, okay. Just watch. So, like here—why? Right on top of that weld.

All right, good job. That looks good, buddy. See? Like I said, take your time. You see? You can watch that puddle melt out, build out, and then move. Yes, yes. Once it goes like that, then you move. You see how it just pools out and starts to build? There you go.

Yeah, wow. Perfect. Now you got there? Yeah, this puddle looks—like take your time. Come up a little higher on your angle. Here. Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. Good. Boom. That was all the way perfect, buddy.

Yeah. Can get a little bit more right there? Well, boom! That wasn’t even half bad. Told you. Yeah. This welder is nice. Yeah, it does. It really does. You don’t have to do all the circular stuff.

All right, um, we’ve got some joints back here if you want to try them. So, you can leave this here and go that way, down to that one, or you can try and start there and drag up over. Might try to start on this one since I could get more practice in before that. I mean, I should probably start over here, about like that. Yeah, okay.

You’re moving too fast. Pull that edge up. Yeah, I think being over here is going to be the best. I smell gear oil. Remember, take your time. It’s not race. Right up top. Point higher. Right there. You’re way too far. Nathan, you need to never be more than that far out. Basically, you’re starting way out here. You need to be all the way up on. Okay.

You’re not even on the gap. Well, I can’t even see. Okay, well, then you need to move your body so you can. Move your body. Just because you’re sitting back there doesn’t mean that’s where you need to be. You need to move your body to where you can see. Like where I’m sitting, I can see perfectly right here. See? You do put your hands in there and see if you can see it. Start higher up. Tell me when you’re about to start. Okay, ready to start. Take it. Okay, well, you did good with what you did so far, buddy.

I’m missing the top one, that one, that one. Yeah, that one, that one. I already got. Oh, you already got that one? Yeah, we got to box that. Which means we’ve got to make some measurements off that. We’ve got to make some cardboard templates from there. Cardboard templates. Your favorite. So let’s get you some measurements, making some cardboard templates.

Yeah, two inches back from the back there. Mark two inches on the backside of the pipe, right? Sure. All right, so we need to go from here. So basically just do a point—something along those lines. I don’t know what any of that means. And then bring it out to here. So a triangle from here to here, then bring it around there and end over there. So start with a triangle? Yep. Hold on, let me get some template material.

All right. That done. Start about there and here. Hold. So come out to the basically the outside edge. That? Like that? So there’s your mark. Marker? Marking marker. Cut that, because template is mine.

I guess I might as well start wire brushing all this down here. Yeah, perfect. So I can get this welded.

Was that a bit shorter as far as the triangle? Should it be like there? Or should it go like that? But then I would take this line and just go straight from here. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, huh? It’s more triangle. Yeah, perfect, huh.

You might need to bend the middle a bit. Huh, yeah. That looks so good. Yeah, now we just need two of those. The bottom? We need four of those, actually. Oh, yeah. And then we can—yeah, do it on this side too, like box that out extra buff.

Yeah, let’s do a quick clean-up, because it’s already looking messy. If you make a mess of this— Beautiful. Finally looking clean.

Want me to make a couple more? Yep.

Yeah, it looks three-quarters professional. So what we could try and do is put these in and bend those that way. That looks good. That looks good.

So, Nathan, I’d say that’s a pretty darn successful day. Yeah, I mean, I welded a little bit. You did. You did some pretty good jobs, dude. You laid down some pretty good beads. Yeah.

The new yes welder. Yes. Yes, that first DP 200. It’s a nice little unit. Still kind of getting used to its little quirks and whatnots, but I already went through the free spool that it comes with. Doing all the welding back here, we’ve got our shock towers gusseted in. Everything’s fully welded here. Tomorrow, we have the choice of doing floor pans, getting the rear bumper fitted, or cleaning the bottom first. We can try and flip it over. Yeah, it’s got enough subframe now that it actually should sit upside down. So maybe we will flip it upside down. I got the rear axis plate cover, back plate. I got this guy welded back in. Nothing big—just a couple of spot welds up on top. I’ll probably do a half plate on here. We got all the tabs fully welded. This, our brakes, fully welded—I mean, at least on this side, because on the other side, we had to make some custom hardware. Yeah, because otherwise, it wouldn’t fit.

All of our tabs are fully welded in place. Control arms are done, with the exception of the double-shear mount for the lower shock mounts. So, on that note, we’ll see you guys tomorrow.

And we’re back, and we’re going to try to put this thing up on its side and then maybe upside down. Looks like Grandpa came to give us a hand. Boom. Look at that. That looks sweet back there, doesn’t it? Are you going to flip it over or just on its side? Start side. Then we’re probably going to go upside down. Wow. All right.

Gonna grab a bumper? I’m going to try to lift right here. Wait. I wonder if this is the first time that this car has been on its side. Probably. It won’t be the last with you driving. All right. Okay, going to flip it over, then put it on back on there? Yeah, we’re going to go upside down. That enough? Now we clean the bottom. I thought you had your floor on it at one time. Oh, just sitting. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, look at that, Grandpa. After all these years, it still has the original paint under there. It’s still flash under here. Like, shoot. We don’t. Oh, yeah. There we go.

Hey, Dad, look at that! Nice.

Don’t mind us. We’re just cleaning and pressure washing and doing a more thorough job of cleaning. Cleaning.

All right, now that we’ve got the chassis all cleaned—top, bottom—it’s already starting to flash rust, so we definitely need to get some rust converter on all that stuff before we do our final coats of paint and undercoating on the bottom. But before we wrap up the bottom, we’ve got to finish welding up our nose cone mount. Yeah, for the transmission. As strong as possible. Yeah, because it is technically the low point underneath the car. It’s got this nice little ramp on here, so that’ll be helpful. So we should have enough ground clearance. Yeah. Anyway, let’s get that guy boxed in because strong.

All right. All right, I’m working on that, trying to clean this. Oh.

All right, with the bulk of the fabrication on the chassis done, I’m going to flip this bad puppy over and finally weld the floor pans in. Yeah, buddy. Which is going to be nice—finally have some pans for the floors. Boom. All right, you open up that garage, and we’ll grab the floor pans.

Oh, that looks so cool. Mhm. Can’t wait to get the whole chassis painted. Buddy, I mean, that just looks so sick. Hey, we’ve got—wait, what do we need to do?

Bud, we don’t have primer, but I’ll just get some light primer, and then we’ll paint this to get all this rust taken care of. What, the whole chassis? No, just where we’re going to weld because that’s going to be bare metal unless we paint it. So we’re going to paint that, lay the floor pan over, weld that, and then once we seal it—top side and bottom side—that will be good to go.

Okay, guys, we’re back from O’Reilly’s and got a center punch since my old one decided to disappear. Got some hand-duplicating fix. Can’t find any weld-through primer here locally, so I’m just going to use this.

I think it’s bare metal or paint. Looks like there’s paint. It’s fine. Dude.

Eighteen, and you have any here? Bud, thirteen. That was pretty decent. Those guys are in. Can I borrow your recon? Yeah. Nineteen seventy-eight and 18 and seven-eighths? Nineteen and seventy-eight is ideal right now. Is the center—yeah, about an eighth of an inch off, but I can see. Let me put that bolt in right there. A little bit off here. Should be 18 and one-eighth, 18 and a quarter, so that’s about an eighth of an inch off as well. So we just need to cut an eighth of an inch in.

I’m going to start cutting this guy down real quick. We can take the grinder back and finish sanding that one down. Sound good? Yep.

All right. Nineteen and seventy-eight. Eighteen and an eighth. Thirteen. Nineteen and seventy-eight to the middle. Perfecto. Eighteen and an eighth to the middle. Perfecto. Thirteen to the middle. Perfecto. From the back edge to the third hole, 17 and three-quarters. Seventeen and three-quarters. Pretty much spot on. From the back edge, 41 and five-sixteenths. Spot on. Perfect. And then six and seven-eighths. Spot on. Perfect.

This pan is ready to be tacked in. I’m just going to come back in now with our wire wheel and try to clean up just a little bit of the edge right there. So that side’s all good and going to be part of the book. So basically, you just do a whole tack of small tacks.

All right, got to measure this guy. That just looks so sick, though. That one’s about perfectly caught on. Looking for 18 and one-eighth. We got 18 and a quarter. Yeah, the same eighth of an inch off again, off the whole thing? Yep.

Now that I’ve got most of the floor pan tacked in place here, back in the corner all the way down there, there, I’ve got a big open edge right there where it isn’t tacked, but the floor pan sits really well there. I’ve got that entire seam welded there. I’ve got ratchet straps pulling it in, just to make certain that I have a good measurement to the couple spots that I had measured.

You can see this edge right here where it kind of buckles up, and that’s why I tack and then I’ll actually end up working with a chisel and a hammer. I’ll weld the spot and then flatten the metal in between to basically get it to form in place. I’ll have to do the same thing here. You see how that wants to tin can up or basically bundle up? So I’ll hold that down, I’ll weld a little tack in there, and then I’ll come back in and hammer that flat around that area. Tack it, hammer it, tack it, hammer it, until you can get everything to sit flat and then just start going through and welding up a bunch of little spots in between, and we’ll get it done.

Seems like I’m running out of gas ’cause I am.

All right, well, it’s the next weekend. Thanksgiving in between putting up Christmas decorations on the house and everything else. With all that taken care of—oh, most importantly, I got a new bottle of gas for the welder—I can finish welding up this floor pan half.

Then I’m going to take some roof and flashing sealant. Is it the right stuff? No, but it’s what I’ve used on—I can’t tell you how many different restorations over the years past, and it’s done just fine. Figure if it can sit out on a roof in the sun 365 days a year on metal flashing for a roof, I figure it’s probably good underneath the bottom of a car or inside of a car to seal out the weather. So I’m going to get to welding here. First, I’m going to touch up a couple of spots where I noticed I was running out of gas.

That floor pan is fully welded in. That floor pan is fully welded in. Come back and dress up these welds just a touch, but it doesn’t matter. Like I said, it’s all going to get seam-sealed anyway, so most of those are just going to get covered with seam sealer, and the floor is going to get painted.

And how strong is this section of welding? Strong enough where I can come out here and bend the floor pans down on both sides. And that’s just welding in this little edge all the way around. But now that we’ve got that little edge all the way welded in, we need to seal this little edge all the way around.

So we’ll start. Did you poke holes in that? Yeah, you got pokes in the end of it? Yeah, just—if you look on the bottom of this, it’s got a little poker. Handy that way. You figured out how to cook—cut the thing open. But—oh yeah, I’ve used Grandpa’s before. Just—it’s kind of blended in with all the other random junk everywhere on this thing.

This thing needs to get cleaned up. Here we go. And they kind of scam us. We don’t actually get this much. We only get like that much. You get as much as they give you. Get some gloves. Smart. All right, so what do I do? Just hold on. Poked it in here? Yeah, I did one. So yeah, now you just—Come in and make it look all fancy-pants. All right, so just come in and just nice, even bead. Just go like that and keep a nice smooth bead if you can.

So basically rubber welding? Kind of. You want to start at the front, work your way back. Here with this? I’ll keep on with this. Sounds like work. Yeah, it’s hard to squish this thing. Hit the button. You get sort of—you want to try smoothing that out? Yeah, that was pretty quick and easy. Then we just take off the tape before it dries completely. Boom. Perfect. Nice clean edge, sealed edge on the top side anyway.

All right, you ready to slap it down some more, or you want to do that when you start? Should do that. A bit of a pain in the wrist. Pretty snazzy. All right, you good? Almost. Not quite—it should be good. Perfecto, huh? That should work pretty darn well, huh?

Yep. You want to flip her over and do the bottom? Um, no. But yeah. No, but yeah? All right. So, not really. Should we? Definitely yes.

All right, that seals our floor pans. We’ve got our pans installed and sealed, and they aren’t going anywhere. Well, hopefully until the car is driving them around, or until we take it here, there, or anywhere else. With that done, we can do some more buttoning up on the rear end. Things like bump stops and AC condenser, mounting the rear bumper, making sure everything in the back side clears the engine and the exhaust.

We’ve got things to do in the back, but this does it for the floor pans, and that’s a major step because obviously this car used to have big huge holes—not right there, on the other side. Other side, big huge hole right there. So much so that we had to put the battery over here. But now, obviously, you can see we’ve got a solid floor pan.

Yeah, we still have to paint and undercoat the bottom. Are we going to undercoat the bottom? Yeah, we still got to paint and undercoat the bottom, but still have a little bit of fab work to do. Yeah, I can’t wait till we can off-road it. ’Cause, I mean, it was on the road, but we want to go off the road. Yeah, yeah, ’cause then I can drive it. Yeah.

But on that note, thanks for watching. Make sure to like and subscribe. Life’s full of good people. If you can’t find one, be one. Later, guys.