[ShadoZ]

I bought my 73 as is with a cracked frame rail behind the front left wheel. actually it appears that a whole chunk of frame peices (vertical and harizontal) were graphed in from another car. You can tell because of the poor welding job that shows through the thick layer of tar. The frame rail cracked on the bottom and the front piece slipped down about 1/4 inch and is kinda just hanging there.
This needs to be fixed before it will pass a safety inspection, obviously.
I was wondering if there are any tricks to taking undercoating off, or if you just use normal hand scraping tools. The person who had the car before me 'bolted' on new floorpans as well. Does this work? Shouldnt they be welded? If I do go and weld them, will this start the metal rusting faster there? It seems to be fairly heavy tin that he used, but it looks like sh** with the bolts. The thick layer of tar hides what I cant see. I dont know if it is normal, but there is a carpet, then a crappy undercarpet underneath that and the crappy carpet is tarred to the floor!

Does anyone have any suggestions on where I should start?
Thanks a lot.

 

[TommyW]

I recently did the floors and fraim rails on my 80 280zx, which were also rusted and repaired. I started by cutting off all the rusted rails and floors, and fabricated new rails, boxing in the remaining good portion of the old rails, basically making a complete new frame rail over top of the old one (only the good part of it, I cut the rusted part off remember). The easiest way I found to get the old Nissan undercoating off was with a torch. I needed it underneath to get rid of the old rails anyway, and I just heated the old undercoating and softened it up and then just scraped it off. Just be careful of catching anything on fire, especially since the fuel lines go up along side of the right frame rail. As for your floors, I would have them welded, will be a much neater and stronger job. They shouldnt rust any faster than the bolted in part, just remember to give them a good coating of primer & paint & undercoating both on the outside and on the inside.

 

[ShadoZ]

Thanks a lot

I guess Ill have to rip the carpet out and redo it. oh well, its kinda rough anyway.
Thanks again.

 

[Chuckz Z]

Re: Thanks a lot

i just did the nder neath of my 71. I found that it was a little "soft" under the under coating. I used a real stiff wire brush, and a drill (put the wire brush on the weel) and got it off that way. By doing this, you still leave the undercoating on, but you smooth it out. It also leaves it looking pretty cool, kinda like the desin on the dash


CHUCK