Bodged floorplan repair

[g2k]

So, I discovered several holes in my floorpan today and set about investigating. After some wire brushing, it seems that the interior sills are also rotten in the front foot wells. The driver's side is much worse. After some more wire brushing, I've discovered a previous "repair" where that the floorpan has been cut in a straight line about 3/4 cm back from where it's supposed to flange with the inner and outer sills. The gap has been filled with goo/seam sealer. This is all the way down the car on both sides. Monstrous pita. The flanges on the inner and outer sills are in a horrid state, meaning that they're probably not weldable and will need rebuilding. How egregious a bodge is this, how common is it for garages to do this kind of thing? At the minute, I'm thinking of letting go, but I've got a welder, plenty of metal and plenty of time, so I'm leaning btowards trying to save it.

 

[zinc2000]

I would say if the floor is that bad the chances are high that the rest of the car is as bad or worse, scrap it, let it die in peace for your own and everybody else's safety

 

[tuonokid]

I would tend to agree with Zinc on this one but the acid test is the structure around the rear beam. Anything which is corroded within 300mm of the 4 bolts on each side that hold the rear beam on is a potential MOT failure. There are a lot of panels that suffer from corrosion in that location on a Puma eg Chassis rail, inner sill, membrane sill, outer sill inner wheel arch and outer wheel arch. I also weld my own cars but any Puma with significant rot in these areas is just not worth repairing.

 

[g2k]

I welded that exact spot up last year and the inner rear wheel arch the year before. It's just the floorpan which is bad, though I'll obviously have a proper look round. Nevertheless, that's a lot of welding. I'll post some photos tomorrow.

 

[tuonokid]

Good, the photos will show the extent of the damage. Now for the good news, the front end doesn't rot apart from the bottom of the front wings!

 

[g2k]

OK, good news: The back end is fine, the front wings are fine and the wheel arches and outer sills are ok-ish. The passenger side isn't anywhere near as bad, but still needs welding.

Bad news: it looks like someone has done a terrible repair in the past, cutting out the rusted floorpan back to good metal and filling in the gap with strips of steel sandwiched between sealant. This has now disintegrated. The sealant was bubbling and the bubbles, when popped, were full of water. The inner sills,as you can see, are bad and the lips/flanges on the outer sills are intact but probably not weldable. They look like puff pastry from below.

I'll get rid of all the interior and spend today cutting and grinding and post again this evening.

 

[g2k]

Update: the outer sills are in surprisingly good condition; weldable. The inner sills are bad, there's three holes in the floorpan on the driver's side and one on the passenger's (including the giant one near the foot well). The rot is pretty much continuous along the seem, broken only where theres strenghening plates. I've got about 50bar of mig gas, might need to buy some more.

 

[tuonokid]

I'm surprised the rear end's ok if the floor is as bad as that. I've stripped a couple of Pumas for spares now and both had a little rot in the floors but the areas I mentioned last night were knackered on both cars.

 

[RoadWarrior]

If I saw that and intended to keep the car, I'd remove all the seats and carefully lift the carpet out the car and the sound wadding, and see the full extent of the damage, and find a good trustworthy welder to patch it up.

A bodyshop will cost a lot more than a little welder that know's what he's doing. They're far and between, though. You really have to do your homework to find a decent one. I've seen cars go into body shops and come out with terrible welds.

Literally all my rusty Ford's have gone to a friend of my dad's that has his own shop and welds. I literally get him to do the metal work, then do the filling, painting etc myself.

Some welders will bodge it, or do unnecessary work. Like my mothers Fiesta a few years back, both back ends of the sills were rotten, the welders solution? Buy one sill, cut it in half and do both rear arches. It saved money, and the car passed every MOT on the sills for the next 2-3 years, then the rear arches went.

 

[g2k]

Update. I've attacked the floorpan and welded up some of the most of the difficult shapes. The front driver's side wing is rotten at the base though which I didn't think was the case. Not sure if it's weldable. I think it's about a 50-50 chance. So far I've spent £30 on some mig gas which would make this a very cheap repair, if my time was worthless I'm really starting to get fed up with this though and am starting to think again about letting go. What are the supplies of front wings like and, if the worst comes to the worst, what are the options for breaking?

 

[g2k]

This is a bit rough, but an improvement on what was there before

 

[tuonokid]

Ian G the parts guy on here should be able to sort you out with a good wing but if you want to do it yourself it's not too bad if the rust is only on the bottom horizontal bit of the wing. If it goes any further up into the curved or vertical parts you could be into 2 dimensional curves which are a lot harder to produce patches for.

 

[althepal101]

Holy thread resurrection.
Have had a Puma Black sitting for a while now- have had a look to see how bad it is underneath after getting some initial repairs done a coupla years ago..
Can I take it these are terminal then?

 

[althepal101]

 

[red]

Depends how badly you want to keep the car I'd have said.

It'll probably be a reasonable amount of work and it would be worth getting it fully checked over before starting repairs piecemeal.

 

[mihalyn90]

mine in romania went around 200 gbp check my build in signature