Restoration: 1978 Honda Civic (1200) Part 2

[Randy]

Had to cut off the bottom of the door pillar on the inside before I can weld in the partial floor panel. The bottom of the pillar will be accessible from the back when I pull the outer rocker panel off.
I won’t be spot welding it or trimming the bottom until then.

[Randy]

Took some time to get things in order to attach the new piece of floor. The floor on the left side has dropped and it’s hard to really know what the correct placement is in relationship to the rocker.
I think it is 5” +- from the upper edge.

[Randy]

A few more pictures.

[Randy]

Late start last night after a cold run in the dark. Prepared the area with weld through primer. Prepped the areas and cleaned up with acid tone. It was a tight squeeze scraping the under coating off from the bottom of the floor. I used 20guage for the patch as the floor is probably 22 or 24, I am almost positive it is 24 as I compared it to some small repair panels I purchased directly from H Paulin.

My son will be dropping off the roof he cut off an 1992 EG Civic he just stripped for parts. I can re-cycle it for exterior repairs.

[Randy]

A lot of work has been done since my last post, I got the bead roller setup to run the floor edge that is over 30” long and too big for my sheet metal brake. So I am making two pieces and then welding them together. The floor is not flat from front to the back either. The floor tips down after the front mount for the seat rail.

I tacked it in place and then hammered the seams flat in the front and in the back it slopes towards the middle of that rear area. Not there is a C clamp holding it up under the back seat as that area is full of rot too that needs to be cut out.

I have to keep in mind a steel plate is going under the floor to bolt the roll cage to.

I have uploaded videos and will be adding them to the Vlog soon.

[Randy]

Here are the two videos covering the 1" wide section being welded into the floor along the length of the inside rocker channel.

https://youtu.be/rFelZzo-hws

https://youtu.be/Cg76xcLeaFg

[Randy]

Out comes the inner rocker panel. Marked the spot welds with a permanent marker to make it easier where to drill. I am not really worried about the size of the holes as I will be replacing the outer rocker and plug welding the inner holes closed.

Had to also drill out the four heavy duty welds that hold in the forward jacking point and the rear seat belt anchor. I had to get my helper the Dewalt air chisel to take out a couple of small rotten sections along the bottom that were hanging on.

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I will be cutting the bottom half off to weld hopefully a one piece section along the bottom, it will be trimmed off on the car once the outer rocker is installed.

I will be leaving the weld marks and the end drilled out holes to line the panel back up during installation.

[Randy]

Patched the corner where the forward jacking point goes to first as it was rotten a lot further up. I am considering a different method of jacking as the method has been a flop as most garages put the jack in the wrong place anyway.

Then I can do a cut and butt weld the rest of the length of the inner rocker.

The cut and butt allows a matching line to mig weld the two panels together without any worries as there will be a perfect match. I find using an ultra thin cut off disc make ms the space between the panels about perfect. The idea is to use the edge of the new metal as a guide to cut through the old clamped below on a 45dgree angle making the gap even closer.

https://youtu.be/XB1HUQbeu7Q

[Randy]

Did mostly grinding and fitting the inner rocker tonight. I have to find a way the pull the outer rocker in so I can tack weld the seat rail back in. There should only be a 1/16” of an inch gap due to the thickness of the cut off disc. It’s out by 1/8”, not much.

Im am going to put fresh 1/4 plate in for the jacking point and I have to cut out the bottom of the rear pillar where it goes below the floor and also fix the floor and the back corner. This is going to get messy with so many panels coming together in one pace and feeds through to the underneath.

[Randy]

Did an evacuation of rust tonight, a lot of grinding sanding and grinding.

Still Have to cut out a section to the right that is hanging by a thread, just coated the mess with weld through primer until I get some small patches ready to go back in.

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