Pulled back old and worn carpet, looked pretty good at first glance. There was a greasy spot in the center of the passenger side floor board. I scraped at it to dig out the grease and grime, but it looks like I am digging into the floor board!

See pic. Any clues?

More pics to come

Wider angle view of greasy spot....

your digging in a spot where theres seam sealer and sound deadener. If you keep digging in that spot you'll be able to lift up a round steel disc thats covering a factory hole.

Yep,

what he said, they all look somewhat like that

Here is a shot where the floorpan meets the side wall. I was planning to POR the seam with POR Patch. But I am worried that someone has put some type of floor covering on top of the original floorboard.

Has anyone seen this before. Is this how it should look?

you could always remove all the paint and gook to see what's really on the floor and then repair and repaint.

What you are seeing is the original factory floor. They covered the bare steel with an asphalt sound deadener, then painted the body. I have used a basic undercoating to replace the original, and painted over it. It worked well, but it needed a few weeks of curing before painting.

The floor is covered with a sound deadener. Take it off before you put por15 on it. As for the edge of the floorboard, it has more seam sealer. You need to take that out as well. From the looks of it, it has started rusting so taking all the seam sealer would be wise.

Thanks all, I was worried I has some kind of non factory mod.

Heat gun and paint scraper... Good luck.. its about 3 hours for all of it.

You got a can of worms now that you looked! To really do right, you need to wire wheel/sand the surface rust away, and a wheel works good at getting deep into the seam. You likely if going this far, might as well remove the tar boards and check out the floors under the tar boards, and treat same way. Check price and avaliablity on replacement tar boards first, as often they get destroyed in removal. heat works very well, along with a putty knive to scrape them off. Use a heat gun, or IR lamps to heat, avoid open flames, tar board can burn!

After loose rust removed, treat with a phosphoric based neutralizer, then top coat with a good paint for more years of fun! Make sure all window and top seals are in good condition to prevent re-occurance. Also, remove the back pad, and check behind it, look at the bottom of the fire wall area, especially on battery side inside the cockpit. Often battery area rust runs down the engine bay, and settles in to eat thru the rear fire wall behind the passenger seat.

If your floor is always wet when washing, or raining, could be that it is coming in thru the engine bay from the rust holes in the fire wall) So remove the interior backpad and check that out (see it really is a can of worms!) Also later cars (maybe 72 on???) had a sound deadening pad in the engine bay on the fire wall, it is a big rubber thing, if you have one, consider removing it to see if rust is forming on the out side (engine side) of the firewall. The second mode of rust failure here is to have leaves, and other moist junk collect between this pad, and the fire wall, sometimes the pad gets pulled away at the top, to rain falls right on in, thus rust goes thru the lower firewall because of the sound pad.

How is your battery area, the battery tray, and more important, the well under the try? If you have a bottomless well under that tray, you got problems, as rust eats thru the area under the engine brain box, and gets into the inner rockers. Engine and suspension mounts on the battery side of car are also rust spots, typically rusting from the inside out from battery acid above.

Have you removed the outer rocker covers? Just unbolt the bottoms, the tops of the covers are riveted to the door sill (unless you care to replace the rivets) You can bend back the outer rocker cover from the bottom, and usually you find dirt all jammed up in there. This can be a rust problem area if dirt is moist. jee whiz, kind of like a can of snakes now!

Dare you now lift the rubber seal for the front trunk?

We assume you have no rust bubbles in the outer paintwork??? windshield area, targa upright panel, body near door handle, fender near taillights, trunk edges are all good places to look for rust coming thru from the backside (double walled panels, often foam filled)

may be a bit of work, but do it right, and you won't ever have to do it again on this car.

And oh yeah, on later cars, rust under the sound pad on the rear of the rear trunk floor is possible.


That is about all I can think of now, I am sure I will come up with other typical 914 love spots.



good luck dave

ok, so this job will be a little bigger than I thought (what isn't)

I used an razor to cut the floor covering. Starting at the front along the side panel, I cut a 2 in strip out all the way back and then sideways along the horizontal support beam (where the seat goes). Good news is that I found some bare metal. So the rust had not creeped too far inward. The bad news was that I found a few pen head size holes through the floor board right along the side panel.

Heat gun sounds like a good idea.

How much sound deadening will I be giving up by taking up the entire passenger side material?

you start by scraping the tar-mats off. use a heatgun to goo them up then a paint-scraper to get it off ...

then spray with metal-ready, let that cure, wash off with *water*, let that dry, then paint with POR-15 ...


before:


clean:


finished:



Andy

Are you guys suggesting that the tar mats will come off in once piece to be re-attached once done? Or are you replacing them with new ones or are you leaving them off all together?

If leaving them off, are you cars noticably louder now? This is my weekend driver, not a race car.

thx

I forget who told me, but ain air chisel is magic on this stuff. I tried it, and sure enough, it chipped it all out in about an hour and a half. I did have to turn the pressure down to about 30 PSI to not make dents Also, the angle is important. It will also take out seam sealer, but it works a little more slowly. As for how water is getting in, you might also want to check your rear window seal, they often come loose at the bottom and let water in.

My car doesn't have an engine bay firewall pad, and is also stripped of sound deadening tar from the floor boards. Can't really carry on a meaningful conversation while driving, but who needs to do that while they're driving anyway?

BTW, mine is a daily driver. When it behaves. <_<

Jen

If your going to POR 15 the floor DON'T remove the surface rust, just remove any rust thats flaking Then de-grease, POR 15 will adhere best to the rust and should NEVER rust again.
Have Fun..

Thanks Jenny..

And thanks Dave for the long message although I want to slit my wrist now!! I moved the battery along time ago (sorry to you stock-nuts but it is just too hot here). At the same time I had the associated ear professionally re-welded. So I am good to go there.

As far as the interior stuff goes, yea all my weather stripping is shot. Fortunately this car hasn't seen a rainy day in about 10 years. But hopefully all that is going to change.

Seeing all of ya'lls great looking cars has inspired me. Hope my marriage and wallet can take it.

hey check it out!! I am not a newbie anymore (now i am really screwed)

thanks everyone