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REPLACE FULL FLOOR PAN WITHOUT REPLACING CAB MOUNT?
Hello
I want to replace my passenger side floor pan on my 1971 F250 Camper Special. I have major cancer at the lowest part of the pan and some definite holes higher up the pan towards the firewall seam. Looking through the holes higher up the pan it appeared there was another layer of metal underneath. I went under the truck to survey what I may cut through. There is a whole other sheet metal piece welded to the underside of the floor pan and attached to the frame. Is this the Front Cab Mount? (I'm pretty new at this if you couldn't tell). My Cab Mounts seem to be in pretty solid shape so I guess my question is...
Can I somehow separate the rusted floor pan from the existing Cab Mounts and weld in a new floor pan ? It looks like I could break the factory spot welds and peal back the top floor pan skin? Just don't see the point in changing the Cab Mounts if they're still good.
Take the bolts off that mount the body to the frame and inspect the lower contact surface where the top of the rubber pads are. If the metal is good at that point you are very lucky. My body mounts looked good until I raised the cab, the under side of the passenger body mount was rotted away.
Yeah I had "this is too good to be true thoughts myself". I like the Unicorn reference. My Truck came stock with the rubber mat and there it stayed for 48 years. I think the moisture fed down to the low point and settled between the rubber mat and the pan. I'll snap some pics.
When I worked on mine I had the front cap off. I used 2 jacks with some wood under the front area of the door sill. You cannot go too high with the bed still in place. Cutting out those spot welds was a real PITA. I went through about 6 of those bits. My floor was in good shape, I should have cut the body mounts just below the floor with a right angle grinder. And spot welded the replacement panels over the originals. Look under the cowling for some bad spots, I had to patch panel some metal in the right upper area. There never was much paint inside the vent/ cowling.
gordy71 you need to go to you-tube and type in autorestomod. they show how to do this on a 71 Ford f-100. they are only replacing the pans, but the steps should be about the same. the episode that you need to look for is episode 344.
Thanks for the youtube advice. I watched the video and it was really good. He looks to be only replacing the lowest part of the pan and even mentions that he’s not going near the cab mounts so he doesn’t have to “do the whole truck”. I assume he inspected the mounts on his project (both driver and passenger side) and deemed them solid (he mentions he replaced the driver side pan and never mentions the mounts)
So having bad pans and solid mounts is possible I guess. I have bad metal a bit higher than the truck in the video but still feel my mounts are good. I’m still going to further inspect the mounts based on the advice from an earlier comment but hope to air chisel the factory welds away from the factory cab mount until I can cut a nice line leaving good metal. I will then cut my new pan to fit and weld it in.