Rear Floor Death.... Need advice..

Hi all, am finally getting the rear floor done... But... Its VERY corroded worse than I thought.. and has rusted through to the crossmembers and rusted them some quite badly (why could'nt LR underseal them..??)

Have been quoted a ball park figure of £550 - £600 ...!!

So questions;

1. What are the regulations on the MOT for the crossmembers..??
2. Anyone else replaced a floor and what are the pitfalls..??
3. Does it need to be welded, or could I rivet/self tap screw it in place..??

Any other help greatfully recived..!!!

The longest part of the job is drilling the spot welds out. Its laborious and boring. The new cross members should be welded in but the floor can be rivetted. I welded mine so I don't know how long the rivetting will take. It was certainly worth £500-£600 of my money to do it myself. The floor and crossmembers cost about £100, the welder about £220 and the angle grinder was £20 from Halfrauds. Two days work saved me £250. Bargain.

agreed. weld the crossmembers. but you can replace/rivet the floor yourself.
buy the parts and get a welder just to weld the crossmembers.
do all the stripping out etc... yourself.

save a small fortune.

Although the cross member will need to be sound as it bolts the chasis to the body. You may choose not to replace the floor on a like for like basis, you could replace it with a chequer plate sheet bolted through into the outer sections that tend to remain sound.

There is a page on here somewhere of someone who did their rear floor, and photo'd it all as they went along. Excellent walk through.

If no-oner else can find it i will as soon as im out of bath, its a link to a site of someone who is a Disco fan and the jobs they've done on it.

try this

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stage1v8/TechnicalBootFloor.htm

I bought the new floor for mine on ebay. Cost me £65.00 and I got a local garage to fit it for me for £120.00. Made a big difference and saved hundreds doing that way.

i havent used my tools (hammers) for yrs, (professionally). but id get them out again to do disco floors for 600 quid, all day long.

150k per annum! better than fixing puters, ffs.

Hi all,

First a BIG THANKS for the suggestions comments pointers etc.. VERY helpful, have removed the old floor now, lots of drilling..!! will be posting a picture of it soon, be prepared for a shock on just how bad the floor can get....

There was surface rust on the chassis so have treated that and undersealed it, the amount of dirt/straw stuck in the recesses in the tank was quite funny, also showed what it has been used for... (should save a few pence on diesel now though with the extra weight gone...) Am probably going to rivet the new floor in, if a friend cant sort the welding out.

Has anyone tried the scratch plate floor, what sort of price is it..??

Thanks again..

Make sure if you are riveting you get steel rivets as the ally ones will react with the steel, I believe any way.

And only use a good quality glue, no cheap stuff.

Lenny1969 said:

And only use a good quality glue, no cheap stuff.

Click to expand...

Butyl mastic is better than the silicone stuff - plus the chemicals won't eat aluminium.

I was thinking along the lines of my mums superglue to be honest.

I was thinking of sealing where the new panel goes in - better to seal it now rather than try squeezing some along the joins afterwards.

Job done, used mastic for guttering, to place a bead and to seal gaps afterwards.

Made sure all rivets where grinded down and strightened the lip that the panel sits on (needed some help to remove the old panel )...

Painted the underside first with underseal, bit of fun to get it in but managed.

Rivetted the panel inplace, and covered the top of each rivet with a dab of mastic, (seemed very similar to the underseal) and finally undersealed the exposed rivets/paintwork on the underside and filled any gaps also...

COst £58.00 for the panel had the original as was all that was in stock, rivets/mastic/underseal £30 rust treatment £15.00 (4 lots bostik very good stuff) £103.00..!!!! better than £550/£600..!!!!!

Seems a lot quieter with out the ventilation holes..

Next jobs, diff/engine oil change...

Also found WD40 is great at cleaning alloys...!!!!

Thanks all..!!!

great job sir. well done.
wheres the photos then?

Thx..

Only got pics of the removed floor, the phone camera is the only one working in the house hence the not so great quality...



Close up of a nasty bit....



Bad or what......

Great for air conditioning though

Found the roof windows where the problem after noticing puddles appearing around the wheel arches, with all the mats etc out.

They had slightly split on both, removed the inner trim, and found the foam spacers where acting like a sponge..!! So I filled the gaps with gutter sealant cleaned and burned the foam spacers.. Dry as the proverbial bone now....

Cheerz...

Not much left of the old floor then!

I got £100 off the asking price because of it, luckily I looked on sites like this before buying, otherwise I would'nt have looked...