Sunday, September 5, 2010

Dash Component Removal & Floorboard Inspection

I stripped the remaining components from the dash this morning leaving only the metal shell. The next step involves stripping the surface of the dash panels. Before moving to this step, I removed the carpet and seats so they would not be covered in debries.

I decided to stop for the day and went inside for much of the afternoon. I then decided there was no reason to refinish the entire dash only to possibly damage it when replacing the toe boards and floorpans. This caused me to return to the garage to work on the floorpans.

The previous owner cut out pieces of sheet metal and riveted them over the original floorpan from the inside. I drilled the rivets out easily and removed the replacement pieces. The date was written on one of the pieces an I believe it was May 2004 or 2007.

There was caulk around the replacement sheetmetal. This only helped to seal in the moisture between the two panels. This caused a great deal of rust to form on the floorpans. There was much more rust than was detectable from the bottom of the car. I knew there was enough rust to need an entire new floorpan so this really was more surprising than depressing.

The riveted sheetmetal was not the first repair to the floorpans. I could tell the driver floorpan had been repaired previously. It had an 1/8 to 1/4 inch of fiberglass on the metal. This was fairly easy to remove. I then started removing a bit more of the rusted metal just to see the extent of the damage.

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