Time to give it up

Today began with removing the tar from the inboard section of the driver's side floor. As I went along and  exposed more of the damaged areas I realized that the second floor removed last week was the original floor. BMW used two layers here. What looked like good floor was the lower, external portion. Also alarming was the extent of rust along the top of the U-channel that runs under the floor. The damage was so bad I could see how it could contribute any strength.


While I worked I began to plan how I would repair those large holes. Obviously these would require welding. Then I spotted something along the lower edge of the smalled hole roughly in line with the gear shift. I lifted the car and looked underneath, and to my dismay I could see that this was the rear transmission mounting bracket, a U-channel welded to the floor. With so much rust damage this mount has lost its integrity, and repairing it would require some advanced sheet metal shaping and skilled welding. All this while retaining the alignment of the mounting point. Not easy.

Then I spotted more trouble. A big rust-through on the underneath floor in the area of the rear seat floor. And the tell-tale pattern of pop-rivets, indicating another cheap patch job on the rear floor. I could just make out that the floor here was also a double section, and that it served as the mounting point for the rubber drive shaft bushing. In other words, a second structural area, a load bearing point.

Already these discoveries were serious, but then I added up what I had found in recent weeks. Recall that after finishing the nose I thought the only big deal remaining were the door skins. While preparing the doors for re-skinning I found damage along the top edges, tricky to repair. Extensive rust in the kink panels, enough to make me question their ability to hold up the doors. Poorly done repairs to both fender wells. Heavy rust around the heater mount. Several poor quality repairs to the floors. Even when the body is done, I will need to redo the interior, including all of the wood. Add it all up and it comes to more than I want to take on, given how long it has taken me to get to this point. To top it off, the Lotus needs a lot of work, and has been ignored while I concentrated on the E9.

For all these reasons I have decided to abandon this project. This car has had a hard life, made worse by poor quality repairs that concealed the damage rather than repair it. Enough is enough. Time to move on.

Driver's side (rotten) floor(s)

The passenger's side floor was bad, but to me the left side seems even worse. Last week I almost got the left floor out. By that I mean the pop-riveted in repair panel. Today I got it out.

I saw that it would be easier to get the floor out if I removed the rubber (?) transmission tunnel cover. The bottom edge overlapped the floor, and the whole thing looked like it was ready to fall apart. Found a layer of foam rubber under the heavy rubber. Under that, in some places, was a layer of really stiff mystery muck. I decided to leave that alone.






Much to my surprise there was another rotten mess underneath. Where the right side had a thick layer of tar, the outer half of the left floor was rubble. When I removed that I found original floor, which doesn't look all that bad.

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Driver's seat out, floor almost out

Having ascertained the condition of the passengers side floor -- not good -- I decided today was the day to explore the other side. The work went much faster, a natural result of having done it once. I found the same shoddy floor repair panel and was trying to get it removed, but ran out of time.





Found $3.96 is loose change under the rear carpet, and a Honolulu newspaper from 1999 under the front carpet. What was that for?




The funny part was how the original gas pedal mount was accommodated. After pop-riveting in the new floor, having cut out the original mount, they riveted what used to be the old floor to another piece of sheet metal, then riveted that to the new floor. No sign of rust prevention. The original piece is all but disintegrated. I'll need to get creative to repair this.

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Removed the tar, found a lost eco-system

This was one of those days when I felt like an archaeologist on a dig in ancient ruins. I set out to experiment using my Craftsman Multi-Tool to remove the thick layer of tar covering the passenger's floor. Worked well. A bit slow at first, but after the scraper blade warmed up from the friction the tar would melt and progress was much more rapid. After that the only problem was tar build-up on the blade. I made a video of the tool at work, at the bottom of this post. It works a lot better than a held held putty knife.



Not long after starting I dug up a rubber plug. There was another just like it under the first. Eventually I pulled it out and could see the shop floor through the neat hole. Must have been a factory drain hole.

A little later I found a seam. As the sheet metal was exposed I could make out the outline of yet another patch. This was was professionally welded in, unlike the entire floor already removed, and the patches I can see at the rear side of the front wheel well. Obviously this coupe sat out in the rain a lot, leaky rubber window seal and all. That, or a PO enjoyed driving around with the windows down regardless of the weather, something I can sympathize with having driven this car on Hawaiian rainy days. That is when you really miss air conditioning.

There is still a thin layer of tar which will take a lot of elbow grease to remove. Along with a pile of rags and a large bottle of acetone. Next time. I did spray the entire area with POR-15 Metal Ready, to stop the rust from spreading.