Floor Pan Quarter Replacement

I am preparing to replace a floor pan right rear quarter on my 1970 Type I Beetle. All of the information I have gathered still leaves me uncertain as to whether I can remove the old rear quarter by unbolting it and perhaps making a cut perpendicular to the ceterline of the car, across the point where the quarters divide. It is not clear from looking at the floor of the car, just where these quarters divide, as it appears that the original pan was installed as a half-pan unit.

Does the rear quater pan include the seat tracks?

Reply to
Randall Brink
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Floor pans a installed half at a time. A quarter panel would require a cut as you suggest. They are bolted around the outside and spot welded to the center tunnel.

How much rot do you need to replace ? Do you still have the original pans in place ?

Aftermarket pans are usualy much less in quality to the originals.

Do you need to replace the seat rails/tracks ?

Without seeing it an your reply, I would suggest you buy a panel that covers the area you want to replace (they come in varying sizes). Cut the rot out. treat the area with rust eater and primer. cut your new panel down to fit (a bit bigger than the hole you have made) and weld it in. use a seam sealer top and bottom around all cut edges. then finish to match the rest of the car.

If you have a potential show car, ignore the above. Find a GOOD quality floor half and replace the lot. - no cut marks !

Bug me video show this procedure well.

Rich

Reply to
Tricky

Thank you very much for the information.

The rust is aft of the area of the seat rails. The seat rails themselves are fine, as is all of the floor forward of that area.

Aircooled.net sells pans in quarters, and has advised that I replace the rear right quarter. I do not know how much cutting this will require. At present, I cannot find any bolts for the pan, but I am still cleaning to get out a shoddy repair and finding the method of removing that portion of the floor pan.

Thanks again for the help!

Reply to
Randall Brink

At the risk of turning this into Remco.and.Tricky.vw.idlechat, I went through this quite recently:

If you mean you can't find them, you should have bolts in a channel running along the edge of the pan. They are a bee-aaatch to get out so be sure to get some good penetrating oil (kroil) and let it soak for a while. Don't be tempted to use your impact hammer on high because they tend to snap and break pretty easily. Nurse them out carefully because they thread into a plate within the heater channel. It would suck if you had one snap and couldn't get it out to put a new one in.

If you mean you can't find anyone that sells them, these guys can help: bolts:

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Another option apparently is to "just forget about it", according to a new school of thought. :)

Remco

Reply to
Remco

I meant "impact wrench" -- duh -- had "impact hammer" on the brain as I was just fixing mine just now..

Reply to
Remco

guess you didn't understand either....dude, you weren't replying to your buddy this time....are you just looking for attention now?

Reply to
Joey Tribiani

Here is a pic of the panel you are talking about.

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you can see the fixing holes along the closest edge to us . There are also two more holes you cant make out in the picture. They are on the rightmost edge of the panel as we see it. The sloping bit under the back seat.

BTW - I just googled for the picture - I have no idea of the quality of this part advertised.

If you are still stuck I can take a pic of mine before I put the body back on

Rich

Reply to
Tricky

Nope, guess not but I didn't get a reply when mentioned that I didn't get it the first time.

I was just replying to the guy as I just went through this so thought that the reply might be useful. That's often what Rich does when I ask a question, which is just fairly frequent as my bug is being worked on about 2-3 hours a day. There are many questions that come up so it sometimes it turns into a back and forth. We get along and, if we were closer in proximity, Rich and I would probably be good friends. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Perhaps I just felt ignored by you, Chris - my other buddy. Thanks for the attention. :)

Remco

Reply to
Remco

no one said anything was wrong with that.

hmm.... 'whatever' (is that correct Trickmeister?)

Reply to
Joey Tribiani

Spot on.

You'll get there in the end ;-)

Rich

Reply to
Tricky

Thanks. I now know where to look and how to proceed. Were it not for your post, I might have gone into removing the bolts (if I could find them) with my usual zeal, breaking off one or more and creating a bigger job out of it!

Reply to
Randall Brink

Rich:

Pic turned out excellent, and I got a good idea of both the location and quantity of bolts to look for. Also, I was pleased to note that the pan quarter appears to stop at the location behind the seat rails, which happens to coincide with the rusted portion that needs to be replaced.

Many thanks again!

Reply to
Randall Brink

Hi Randall.

Thinking about it some more there is another welded area on the outer edge of the rear slope. It is welded to a sort of arm that comes out from the rear beam/shock mount casting. its roughly abve the innermost part of the jacking point.

If you have no rust around the edges I really think you would save yourself alot of trouble by leaving the bolts in and cutting just in from the floorpan edge, leaving 1/2 and inch or so lip to drop the (cut) new quarter pan into.

What ever you decide, I would recommend waiting til you have your new panel before cutting the old one, it will be much clearer that way. Rich

Reply to
Tricky

Yes, I intend to hold off on all removal until the new pan arrives, then size up the situation from there, pan in hand.

Reply to
Randall Brink

My bad - musta misread/misunderstood what you said.

Reply to
Remco

i can hardly wait.....

Reply to
Joey Tribiani

I hear ya -- that's usually me too: a bull in a mall full of china shops. My enthusiasm sometimes gets the better of me :)

They also say to not put a bead down when welding the pan in as that will most likely crack. Just pot/edge welds every inch or 1.5" is what is suggested (I think in the bugme tape).

You don't have a lot of welds to cut so could use an old crap wood chisel. If you have one, you'll also find that an air chisel can be your new best friend.

If you're looking for a way to drill out spot welds neatly without doing damage (bending, etc) to the lip, this is working really well for me:

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have a 3/8 and 1/2 " bit - I got both, but am really only usingthe 3/8".

Remco

Reply to
Remco

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