1947 Chevrolet Fleetline Floorpan Replacement - Floored Out

Even with the floors and the spot welds cut, there'll be some persuasion required in order to actually remove the panels-Jobe chose an air chisel as his persuading device.

This is the first time in 63 years that the inside of these braces have seen the light of day! Fortunately, they're heavier gauge metal and...

with a little TLC, followed by applying some KBS Coatings Rust Seal, they'll be almost as good as new-but more importantly, will not rust any further after being "treated" accordingly. The side braces are available in repop form; the centers and seat braces are not, at least not to my knowledge.

All right, it's finally time to start replacing after all that removing. Here's what we're swapping the old floorpan with: an 18-gauge fabricated (bent, bead-rolled, etc.) panel from Chevs of the 40's.

Despite that the new floor panels already have some "shape" put into them, there will be some further shaping required in order to properly fit them in the car.

The floors in these particular Chevys are by no means "flat"!

Welding small sections at points where sufficient fit is achieved helps fitting the surrounding areas, especially those tougher to fit. Either way, don't attempt welding long seams, at least not unless you want to end up with a wavy, uneven floor.

When it comes to attaching the floors to the doorsill section, there are various ways in which to go about it, depending on the condition of the rockers, for one.

On the driver's side, we'll weld directly to the rather thin sill plate hump, grinding the weld bead later to flush it out even though it will get concealed by the plate.

The floor also gets welded from the underside to the braces left intact (using the preexisting factory spot-weld holes).

Definitely no fear of having to use the (accidental) Fred Flintstone method of braking now with the new, stout-and solid-floorpan in place. Now it's time to address the rear pans.

The rust was so bad in some areas that it literally extended up into portions of the body that aren't typically affected! The worst of which seemed to be the portion where the floor meets the inner rear quarter-panel.

Jobe was forced to fabricate strips to accommodate for the above-mentioned areas and fill the gap between the new floor sections about to be installed.

Even though you probably could have removed the old floor simply by standing on it, the plasma was put back to work, as we had to navigate around another sub-brace.

As with the front panels, there may be some trimming involved with the rears-but in our case, that wasn't so, due to the amount of rust present!

The rear-most underfloor brace needs to be trimmed out from the old floor in order to be used with the new panel.

Save for final welding (we're replacing the seat pan section and blending everything together), the driver side of the floor is complete-now we just need to go back and repeat the process on the passenger side!