I’ve been chopping the old boot floor to bits over the last fews weeks as I’ve replaced other bits around it, so I thought I’d collect a few photos together into a single post for reference. I deliberated a little bit about actually replacing the floor, it was mostly sound, but was rusting out at the edges and around some of the fuel tank mounting bolts, and was also wearing some spectacularly ugly patches from last time I repaired it.
I went ahead and bought the new panel, and I’m very glad I did. Since it’s turned out that I’m having to replace most of the panels attached to it, it’s been super convenient to just chop it out without having to worry about carefully preserving it, and the space it creates is also very useful.
One bit that does need to be preserved is this panel that sits behind the rear seat and is spot welded to the boot floor. I believe it was originally the optional rear seatbelt mounting point (pretty pointless given the pointlessness of the rear seat itself), but it’s not part of the replacement panel, so it’s easiest to get it out of the way for now. I just drilled out the spot welds and put it to one side.
I cut the main sections of the floor out first with a cutting disc, leaving the edges still attached, it was a lot easier to work my way around afterwards removing the rest.
One of the trickiest areas is these front corners. The axle rebound strap hangers are part of the replacement Heritage floor panel, and although they were not particularly rusty on my car, I figured it was easier to drill the old ones out and replace them, than to cut them off the new panel and work around them. Nonetheless, they are sandwiched between two bits of metal that are staying in place, so having drilled out the spot welds, the hangers still had to be “gently persuaded” out.
Over on the back left hand side corner I was trying to keep the load cover support panel intact and in place to help with positioning the new rear valance later on, but since its bottom edge is lapped over the edge of the boot floor I needed to trim it to get the floor out. Fortunately, as you can see, it was pretty rusty on that edge, so a bit of hammer and chisel work quickly got it out of the way. There is a bit of rust on the edge of the chassis leg here too, but it’s only on the surface and has not rusted through like the right hand side one, so I think I will get away with needing to replace this one thankfully.
On the back edge where the floor meets the rear valance, I just cleanly cut the whole thing off above the spot welded join – no point at all in drilling out all those welds when I’m replacing both panels. And that’s the boot floor out, now I need to decide whether the new valance or floor goes on next – may well do them both at the same time to make sure they fit together perfectly.
