Restoration of the floor pans on my Boattail.

May 2000 - The floor

During the first year I had the car parked and all the work done in my home garage. As you clearly can se, the space was really limited. Later on I got the opportunity to move the Riviera to a better suited garage, with a lot more space. But for the time being I had to manage with working in this garage space.

As soon as the weather got a little warmer, I began to work with the floor, which I knew was bad from rust.

After removing the interior and lifting the floor mat, I could inspect the floor pans and they weren’t pretty.
I found that the area under the drivers feet had been repaired earlier and although it wasn’t done in one piece of sheet metal, it was solid and therefore I left it untouched.

All other lower parts of the floor, had to be replaced. I had to learn how to work with sheet metal then and that knowledge came handy later on when I started work with the body a couple of years later.

Here you can se just how bad the condition of the floor was.

All bad parts got cut out and the rest of the floor got cleaned from surface rust.

Guess if I was covered with brown rust dust every day for a week or so.  

The back seat area was as bad as the front.

When all pieces were ready, my friend Jan helped me with welding them on place. This was done at his work.

It was an interesting experience to drive the car there, with just the driver’s seat mounted and the road surface flashing by under me, visible through the big holes in the floor. 

After driving back home, with no holes in the floor this time, I painted the whole floor and also covered the underside with a layer of black rust preventing undercoating.  

I later on also installed a complete new exhaust system in original style.

On the next page you can see the completion of the floor restoration with a new floor mat and more.

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The restoration began in February of 2000

Most parts of the car were restored by July 2006, but as many of you know, there is always something to improve on a project like this.

In this section of the site you will be able to follow some of the various restoration steps of my Boattail.

2000-02  The carburetor

2000-05  The floor

2000-07  Vinyl roof & interior

2001-01  Heads and intake

2001-11  Lifting the engine

2002-01  Engine detailing

2005-01  Body restoration