FRONT AND REAR FLOORBOARD

35-40 FORD

(PHOTO 1) Measure forward from the rear seat riser. This is where you will make your cut, left to right. The back 1.25" of the new floor will rest under the old floor.

Approx. 30.5" 37-40 ALL
Approx. 36" 35-36 SED
Approx. 40" 35-36 CPE

(PHOTO 2) With a magic marker, draw your line where you will be cutting. Mark along the inside of the rocker (where the floor tucks under the rocker, about 1.5"). NOTE: If you are putting in new rockers, do so before installing the new floor). Cut out the floor with a die grinder, plasma cutter or with whatever you have! NO HATCHETS PLEASE!!

(PHOTO 3) Punch 5/16" holes 1/2" in from the edge about 3"-4" apart. This is where you will weld, it is called a rosette weld. (See F.A.Q. on home page). You will be putting the holes in all the parts that overlap another. So, punch them on the left and right side of the main floorboard pieces the bottom 1" flange of the left and right toeboard and along the top part of the toeboard. You may have to trim the top of the toeboards to get a good fit.

(PHOTO 4) This is how the floor should be installed before you do any welding. Use the set-up screws provided in the kit to hold and pull everything in place.

THE SEQUENCE TO INSTALL IS:

1. Left and right floorboard
2. Main tunnel
3. Rear tunnel extension
4. Left and right toeboard
5. Tranny extension (front)

(PHOTO 5) Before you weld the tunnel in place, use a body hammer to tap the flange up on the rear tunnel extension. There should be no gap. The tunnels overlap each other. This includes the flange that is turned back on the firewall.

(PHOTO 6) Mark where to place your cuts to remove the rear floorboard (37-40 shown in photo). Leave 1.5" of the old floor in front of the stock seat riser. If the floor is bad, use the 1.5" to x 1.5" angles provided in the kit to repair the bottom edge.

(PHOTO 7) Cut and remove the rear floor.

(PHOTO 8) Grind all the rough edges and remove any paint, rust, or black stuff to get a good weld.

(PHOTO 9) Install the rear tunnel. It should overlap the back of the front tunnel about 1.25". Punch your 5/16" holes and screw the tunnel in place.

(PHOTOS 10 & 11) Punch and screw the left and right floor in place.

(PHOTOS 12 & 13) With the floor screwed in place, you can start to weld through the holes with no screws in them. (Makes sense!?)

(PHOTO 14) Remove the screws and weld the remaining holes. This is all the welding you need to do!

NOW LET’S DO THE TRUNK!

TRUNK FLOORBOARD

35-40 FORD

(PHOTO 1) Your new trunk floor will replace everything from the seat riser back to the tool box area.

(PHOTO 2) Cut and remove the floor. Leave 1.5" of the old floor along the left and right side.

(PHOTO 3) Your new floor will go to the front edge of the tool box. If you are replacing the tool box and rear body panel, you should install it before you install the trunk floorboard.

(PHOTO 4) Cut and remove the X-brace from the stock floor. If the floor is good around the back, you can notch the new floor to go around the brace if you like.

(PHOTO 5, 6 & 7) The floor support is installed to the body. The taller side of the brace is the back side.

(PHOTO 8) Lay your new floor in place and do any trimming that is required. Start at the seat riser and work back.

(PHOTO 9) This shows how the new brace should look under the floor. You will have to hole-saw a 1.25" hole through the floor to get to your body bolt.

(PHOTO 10, 11, & 12) Punch or drill your 5/16" holes and use the set-up screws to hold the new floor in place.

(PHOTO 13) Weld the floor in place, then grind and prime the new metal.

WHEEL TUBS

35-40 FORD

(PHOTO 1) Lay your new tub next to the stock one to get a feel on where you will be cutting. Mark your trim line about 1.5" in from the outside body line. You will leave the stock fender bolt holes.

(PHOTOS 2, 3 & 4) Mark and cut the fender braces from the stock wheel tub.

(PHOTO 5) On the sedans, you will have to remove the window channel from the tub. Trim approx. 1/2" above the flange that is spot welded to the tub.

(PHOTO 6) This is where the stock window channel is welded to the stock tub.

(PHOTO 7) Cut and remove the stock tub. You can leave a little extra material on the back side so you can get an exact fit to your new tub. If you cut too much, we can always fill and back in. NO BIG DEAL!!!

(PHOTO 8) Slide the new tub in place.

(PHOTO 9) Put a few (3) tack welds on the inside (put them where you can cut them back off later). Use a square to make sure the new tubs are straight up off the floor. Mark your trim line around the outside edge of the tub. Slide the tub back in place and re-weld the (3) set-up tack-welds.

(PHOTO 10) Weld the new tub in from the outside (tire side). Remember to skip around as you weld so you do not get too much heat in one spot. Grind and sand your welds.

(PHOTO 11) Put some 1" long welds about 4" apart where the new tub attaches to the floorboard.

(PHOTO 12) This is how everything should look. Prime and seal all of the new steel.

FIREWALL

37-40 FORD

(PHOTO 1) Take a body grinder and remove the little flange on the cowl that overlaps the firewall. When you are done, you should see both the firewall and the cowl edge. his will, make it easier to install the new firewall. We will show you how to finish this edge later. NOTE: The car MUST BE on a chassis to install a firewall.

(PHOTOS 2 & 3) Take a 1/8" drill bit and drill through all the spot welds around the cowl. (If you are lucky, there will be only 40 or 50. If not, you may have about 100 to drill out.) Then, take a 5/16" drill bit and drill through the 1/8" holes. This will leave you a big enough hole to weld through when you install the new firewall.

(PHOTO 3) Also shows you how the edge of the firewall should look after you completed step 1.

(PHOTOS 4 & 5) Take a cut-off wheel and cut through the welds on the front left and right corner of the firewall. You will also have to cut the weld where the firewall attaches to the toeboard flange.

(PHOTO 6) Remove the firewall by pushing it from the back (towards the motor). You can remove the lower extension at this time. Every firewall we have installed in our shop, the lower extension was either cracked or completely broken from where it bolted to the frame. Direct Sheetmetal supplies new lower extensions in the firewall kit.

(PHOTOS 7 & 8) Take a hammer and dolly to get the shape back into the cowl edge. You only have to get it close. It will be pulled to the new firewall in the next step.

(PHOTO 9) Install the new firewall from the inside out. Pull the firewall into place, as close as you can. (Although, it does not have to be perfect yet). Use as many clamps as possible, ten to twelve clamps work the best.

(PHOTO 10) With the firewall clamped in place, use a block of wood and a hammer to push the firewall into place. NOTE: DO NOT REMOVE the clamps while you are doing this procedure. Push (hammer) the firewall forward until it matches the edge of the cowl.

(PHOTO 11) Take a tape measure and be sure the new firewall is the same on both sides, and look good in the car. If it looks nice and straight, use some self tapping screws to hold the firewall in place. Put one in every other hole.

(PHOTO 12) This is how the firewall should look before you do any welding. (The firewall in this picture has a custom bead pattern, yours may look different.)

(PHOTO 13) Mark and trim the lower firewall extensions. The 3/4" flange goes on the inside edge and is turned back towards the inside of the car.

(PHOTO 14) Weld through the 5/16" holes and weld the edge where the cowl and firewall meet. When you weld the firewall edge, be sure to skip around as you weld, go from side and only weld about 1" at a time. The face of the firewall should never become too hot to touch. Taking your time welding now will save you a lot of work later. Too much heat will cause the firewall to warp.

(PHOTO 15) This is how the firewall should look. Now let’s go to the floor. NOTE: This photo has custom lower extensions.

56 LIMO PROJECT

The following pictures show how a custom project is fabricated from start to finish.

(PHOTOS 1 & 2) After cleaning the floor the best you can, (this floor was covered with roofing tar-paper that was nailed to the floor with approximately 500 roofing nails and then melted with a torch to seal it!) about eight hours later, we had the floor clean enough to determine how much floor was needed. We decided the front floor (firewall to under the seat) was good and everything from the rear seat riser back would be ok.

(PHOTOS 3 & 4) With a plasma cutter and die grinder, we started cutting out the old floor. The rockers were ok, so we came in about 1.5" in to leave a flange for the new floor to weld to. (Note how we left the stock body mounts in place).

(PHOTOS 5 & 6) In these photos, you can see that the floor is actually welded to the body brace (no bolts) and the body brace is welded to the rocker box. We decided to leave this in and build our new floor over them, and weld to the factory floor brace. When fabricating a new floor, you may have to make new floor braces. Keep in mind that if you make new braces, they do not have to look like the stock braces. Make sure you use heavy enough material (at least 14 gauge). Also, remember things like tail pipes, muffler, master cylinder, etc. Do all of your repairs to the inside of the rockers before you weld the new braces to them. Here’s something to remember even if your floor DOES NOT need a tunnel. It’s a good thing to use a tunnel. A tunnel that runs from the firewall back to a seat riser acts like a backbone for your new floor which gives it strength. It’s like trying to bend half a pipe. Your tunnel can be made in several pieces. Overlap each piece about 2". A 3" to 4" tall tunnel is ideal for most cars. Tunnels do not have to be round. You can make tops any shape you like. Take a look at some picture in our parts section to see different tunnels (Ford-Chevy).

(PHOTOS 7, 8, 9) We found more rust behind the lower door kick panels. So, we cut them off to repair the floor (upper rocker) and we will repair the panels with new ones after we install the new floor.

(PHOTO 10) Once the floor is removed, it is time to clean again. We filled a trash can with dirt after everything was clean. By the way, we tried to talk the owner of this car into a new firewall while he was in the shop, but he declined. (He will be back).

(PHOTO 11) Start in the front and work back. We fabricated the new floor in sections of about 30"-36" long or from one brace to the next. We punched 5/16" holes along the outside edges of our new floor approximately 4" apart. We used a #10 x 3/4 self tapping screw to hold the floor and tunnel in place. Put one in every third hole. We did not put any bead rolls into the floor until we had the whole floor built. Keep building sections of floor until you reach the back. Remember to overlap about 2".

(PHOTO 12) Once the floor is made, we layed out our bead and joggle lines, removed the floors, and did any trimming that was required. We reinstalled the floor with the set-up screws and welded through the other holes. NOTE: See how we welded the floor to the body mount before we installed the next section.

(PHOTO 13) We continued to weld through the 5/16 holes until all of the floor was in. This is all the welding you need. It is not necessary to weld the entire edge of the floor. This will cause severe warpage if you do.
(PHOTOS 14 & 15) This is how the job looked after we were done. It took us about 30 hours to complete the whole project. Remember it took us eight hours just to clean and prep the car before we could get started.

(PHOTO 16) Now, what about the roof?