At long last, we come to the much-anticipated chapter of the Impala restoration.  This is it, folks.  This is the one you've all been waiting for.  Because I don't like to be too cliché, I refrained from quoting Willie Nelson's hit song in the title and instead turned my attention to a more traditional tune to represent the latest installment of returning the Impala to roadworthiness.  So where do I start?  The last time you heard from me was over my Winter break.  I'd just taken delivery of the floor pans and had been robbed by the state.  The plan was to get the floors banged out when I was home during March break, and then have the car ready to go for the Summer when I got home late May.  Well, things didn't quite work out that way.  While I did manage to acquire an old Century 100 wire-feed welder (and a sick Hobart auto-darkening helmet with flames) before coming home in the Spring, I also unwillingly received an annoying lack-of-sleep-sore-throat-goes-away-one-week-and-back-the-next cold.  That thing was a pain.  Just when I thought it was gone, it would pop back up again, forcing me to take time out of my already busy schedule to do nothing but sit, rest, and watch movies.  6pm Boba Tea?  Have fun not being able to sleep till 3 am!  Want an apple?  Guess what, now your throat is sore again (both of these things actually happened.  I have no idea why the apple gave me a sore throat.)!  Well anyways, all I wanted to do when I got home in the Spring was sit on the couch and watch Law and Order reruns, with the occasional episode of ER mixed in.  Needless to say, all I managed to accomplish over break was take the seats out and cut out one of the floor pans.  I didn't actually get to weld anything until May.  Oh, and that refund check I wasn't expecting till May didn't come until May.  When I called during March, the tax assessor told me the form was still in the pile on his desk, but that he'd file it by the end of the week.  I guess he felt bad for me.  When it finally showed up mid-May, I got an extra $50 from the state.  Hey, I can't complain.  Anyways, I immediately set to work removing the old floor and welding the new one in.  

All in all, the process went smoothly.  The only mishap was when I went to stand up after finishing the driver's front pan and my leg went through the passenger rear and caught in the hole.  Help!  My car is trying to eat me!  Fortunately, it didn't take too long to untangle myself from its grip.  Surprisingly, the worst of the rust in the passenger front floor pan, went smoothly as well, even though I had to move the gas line from under it to avoid spontaneous combustion if the angle grinder slipped.  I had to make up a piece of the toe board because the rot extended beyond the floor pan stampings.  This, like the hole under the back seat, wasn't too hard to make out of a leftover flat piece of the new floor pan.  

Ok, I lied a bit.  The passenger front wasn't exactly easygoing.  The outer seam was impossible to scribe because it was above the frame rail in an area my sharpie couldn't reach.  Thus, I was forced to cut, re-fit, cut, re-fit, and cut again until I had a rough edge that matched the contour of the old pan I'd cut out.  This, coupled with the differences in shape between the original floors and the new stampings, resulted in about a half inch gap between the floor and the transmission tunnel that I had to fill in with mini patch panels.  Hey, it's not pretty, but it works, and nobody's going to see it underneath the carpet unless they decide to crawl under my car and get hosed by the leaky powerglide.  

Above is a rough timeline of the progress made on the floor pans.   There were two months between the first two photos and only a day between the second shot and the last two.  Once the pans had been welded in (and a few pinholes patched), I wire brushed the floor and chipped out all the old factory seam sealer, some of which had already chipped off ages ago.  I gave the floors a healthy dose of Rustoleum rusty metal primer (second photo from left) and let the car air out overnight.  This stuff worked wonders, and the floors were already looking brand new before the paint had even dried!  The Impala looked like an entirely different car (well, not really, but much better than what I started with).  The next day, I sealed all the factory seams and my weld joints, including a few pinholes I'd missed, and installed the floor plugs.  When the seam sealer had dried an hour later, I came back and painted the floor with Rustoleum black enamel.  This stuff went on well, but I don't think it ever fully cured since I had to tarp the car due to rain as I was painting the last section of the floor.  Oh well, I have some left over in the can that I can use for touch-up later on.  Plus, nobody's going to see it, anyways.  That, and the bristles kept coming off the cheap brush I used to lay down the primer, so there's a few of them embedded in the floor, too.