Hi everyone,
I have a 72 914 with a couple of rust holes about the size of a baseball under each seat (both sides). The rest of the floor pan is good shape. Does anyone know of a good body shop in the bay area (California) who can do the work for a good price. Also when thier doing the work should I have then do anything else when they have the seats off, like metal stiffeners?
Thanks for the info
Steve

Sorry, can't help with info, but be patient, 80% of the CA people are at the WCC partying their butts off ......if you can keep your "Q" on the first page long enough, it'll surely be answered.

And welcome to the club!!

Your rust pattern is very weird. Holes that large with no other damage are pretty rare. Do you have any photos?

are you sure that is the only spot it's rusty? usually where the pan meets the longitudinals there is rust from water leaks. you have to scrape up the seam sealer from the edges and the tar off the floor to really see the true picture of your floor pans.

I'm sure you can find someone to fix it, but, you need to confirm that is all that is needed to fix

if you have a free day, a putty knife and a heat gun you can strip the entire floor pan. ask me how i know

if you got rust in the middle i'd bet you got some under the seams too.

Once i stripped the floor pans i used a degreaser/cleaner and treated the area with JASCO rust converter. $6 a bottle at home depot. Then a few coats of POR-15. It's not cheap, but, a little goes a long way. I'm not worried about rust anymore

I had some unusual type of rust on the top of my floor pan around the right side seat mount. I removed the upholstry pad from behind the seats and found out the rear windshield bottom seal was no longer sealed. Rainwater would run down the inside of the rear firewall, behind the upholstry and a water would puddle under the seat. Resoration Design sells a rear half floor pan at a very reasonable price. You will need that sheet metal even if the body shop only chops it up and uses some of it to repair your floor pan. Scrape away the area surrounding the holes on both the top and bottom surfaces of the pan to make sure you know what area needs to be replaced. When I sand blasted the pan to get all the rust off, I found the surrounding sheet metal was perforated. The metal still looked "OK" after I had scraped the sound absorber pad and paint off, but when I wire wheel brushed the top and bottom sides, the damage became apparent. Factory paint and undercoating and those sound absorbing asphault pads can hid perforated sheet metal that is not obvious until you properly cleam the sheet metal. Even if you have someone else repair the metal, you can strip, scape and wire wheel brush the floor pan yourself to make sure you have found all the rust and save yourself some money in the process. The area needing to be replaced is usually larger then you initially think. Be careful about using heat on that floorpan due to the plastic fuel lines inside the tunnel. I can't help you locate a good body person in your area but hopefully someone else will reply on that. Goodluck
Lyle