Remedy for severely pushed-up floors

[Gary Schulz]

In another thread I am describing the early stages of the rebuild of an abused 1965 Cooper S. I am still in the process of stripping it out and have been wondering what you guys do to push floors back down again. The foot wells were either used as jacking points or were hit by terrain/rocks etc. It is a little hard to photograph the amount of distortion in the foot well panels but it is pretty pronounced. I would greatly prefer to not replace the panels since the car is really quite rust free which is very uncommon for cars in this area!

How have you gone about pushing the floors back down? I don't think it makes sense to push up against anything above because all those panels are much weaker than the floor pan. Maybe make a former out of thick wood and go through the drain holes down to a heavy external steel frame of some sort?

There are some tremendously talented body men on here so what would you do?

Thanks...

20200927_093131.jpg

[Gary Schulz]

Other foot well...

20200927_093224.jpg

[MiNiKiN]

I would simply use a dead blow hammer and a heavy flat piece of steel (I use a chunk of I-beam) for the flat floor sections.
Standard panel beating hammers and dollies for other areas.


Amazing what such a hammer can do... I used it to knock the pistons out, which had rusted solid into the bores (I have an instruction video on that if required )
https://www.gedore.com/en-de/products/s ... ---8868820

[Fanfaniracing]

In such cases i take a piece of wood (10x10x10cm) and a 2 kilo Hammer and gently hammer it out from the inside.
Finish with the panel beating hammer and piece of adequate heavy steel...

[Polarsilver]

You will possibly find when repositioning the Floor back into position that the steel has stretched which can be enough to cause the pushed back into alignment original floor panel to "bing/bong" when your foot pressure is applied as you are getting in & out of the car .. so it may pay not to push floor fully back into the original position or perhaps get the welder out .

[Dearg1275]

Be sure that the floor hasn’t been pushed up by a front end shunt. It would be a shame to get it looking about right and then find you have a crooked shell. Get the mounting point dimensions right first. It surprising what drops back into place as these get corrected.

Other than that a large flat block of wood and a big hammer does the trick.

D

[jay weinstein]

Just my two cents.....Why not spend some time ,maybe a lot of time and clean up the floors,
top and bottom and the inner toeboard to bare metal to see if they are too thin because of
rust to be used anyway.

[Gary Schulz]

Be sure that the floor hasn’t been pushed up by a front end shunt. It would be a shame to get it looking about right and then find you have a crooked shell. Get the mounting point dimensions right first. It surprising what drops back into place as these get corrected.

Other than that a large flat block of wood and a big hammer does the trick.

D

It has indeed suffered a bit of a right front-end shunt. There is some distortion in the inside of the wheel arch (the vertical part that is adjacent to the foot well on the right side). I suspect that the shell is a bit crooked so I need to come up with a way to verify some of the critical dimensions. I will probably tackle pulling on the right front a bit to see what happens with that.

It is surprisingly difficult to tell exactly what is out of alignment or where exactly it may have been hit though.

Would be nice to make a chassis jig with all the precise hard-points well defined so I could tell where to push or pull. Is that what is commonly done?

[NicholasUpton]

Be sure that the floor hasn’t been pushed up by a front end shunt. It would be a shame to get it looking about right and then find you have a crooked shell. Get the mounting point dimensions right first. It surprising what drops back into place as these get corrected.

Other than that a large flat block of wood and a big hammer does the trick.

D

It has indeed suffered a bit of a right front-end shunt. There is some distortion in the inside of the wheel arch (the vertical part that is adjacent to the foot well on the right side). I suspect that the shell is a bit crooked so I need to come up with a way to verify some of the critical dimensions. I will probably tackle pulling on the right front a bit to see what happens with that.

It is surprisingly difficult to tell exactly what is out of alignment or where exactly it may have been hit though.

Would be nice to make a chassis jig with all the precise hard-points well defined so I could tell where to push or pull. Is that what is commonly done?

That's what I do. But don't know of anyone else in the USA that has one.

[Gary Schulz]

Just my two cents.....Why not spend some time ,maybe a lot of time and clean up the floors,
top and bottom and the inner toeboard to bare metal to see if they are too thin because of
rust to be used anyway.

I will be devoting considerable time to cleaning everything up and I may just have it dipped and then e-coated before work starts in earnest. The chassis really doesn't have any significant rust so I am sure the panels are usable as long as things can be straightened up as necessary...

I like that chassis jig and I could create something along those lines except without the adjustable height jacks. I would probably just use standard steel tubing to create the verticals. I suppose the dimensions as shown in the workshop manual are all I need to create this fixture?

[NicholasUpton]

The mounting posts are not adjustable, they are a fixed set of fixtures that are made for just Mini body shells. It’s amazing how out of shape cars are when we start the restoration process.

[Dearg1275]

I like that chassis jig and I could create something along those lines except without the adjustable height jacks. I would probably just use standard steel tubing to create the verticals. I suppose the dimensions as shown in the workshop manual are all I need to create this fixture?

A lot can be determined with the car held above a level floor. Using straight bars (long spirit levels are excellent) you can check out areas that should be parallel.e.g front cross member and a line between the quarter lights or rear shelf. You can also drop plumblines and mark the floor and mark arcs as in the workshop manual. That gives you a good starting point to see if front and back align. Beyond that you need a very true surface to get anything in the way of reliable measurements.

The only problem with making a jig is how do you check the jig is accurate?

A known straight front subframe is a useful tool. If that doesn’t line up easily with your shell then you can start to know where things have moved. A quick check on a subframe is to screw long studs into the towers and sight along them. If they are not parallel then your subframe is squint.

D

[MiNiKiN]

Re body straightness: these figures (stolen at: http://mk1-performance-conversions.co.uk/) might be helpful. E.g. to make a jig of some sort.

#_Mini-Body_Dimensions.jpg

#_Mini-Subframe_Dimensions.jpg

[Gary Schulz]

A little further investigating shows that the car may have been hit somewhere around the "A pillar"/hinge panel at some time. On the right side you can see that the hinge panel has been pushed in compared to the left side. It is pretty clear when looking at the outside of the door aperture when viewed toward the front. Compare left side-

20200929_073008.jpg

To the right side as you get toward the hinge panel-

20200929_072915.jpg

[Gary Schulz]

Also there is a pinch-point between the inside righthand part of the firewall and the top of the wheel well (not sure of the proper terms for those panels)-

20200929_073841.jpg

[Gary Schulz]

And finally a nice crease on the inside of the lower wheel well-

20200929_073850.jpg

I can buy one of those inexpensive "porta-power" hydraulic ram kits but where do you push against without distorting the side that is undamaged?

[Dearg1275]

Garry,

Your problems are very reminiscent of those on my 997. You may find it useful to look at my thread.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=25822

Check the rim of the door frame for gapping between inner and outer panels. This often opens in a shunt and can be a good tell tale of what has gone on.

D

[Spider]

With the floors, I've done as some of the other guys have suggested - a block of wood, and sometimes you need a few different shapes, and a Lump Hammer. The trick of course is not to attack the highest part of the floor distortion, but where it's 'curved' from the distortion.

I've used porta-powers many times for pushing and shoving assemblies around. One way to get a point to push from within the shell is to set up some hardwood bases, over a large area to spread the load. As I start applying pressure I keep an eye on both ends af the set up. Of course, it needs to be set up so it's not just pushing from the side of the inward distortion, but also the right angle. Sometimes I've done similar with G Clamps (or many of them) to 'pull' a panel assembly back out.

Another approach with a Porta-power, is to anchor the body to the workshop floor and put in other anchor points for the porta-power. This can be a much better arrangement as there's fittings available to slip chain(s) in to. This can be a highly versatile set up as you can put extension tubes on to the Porta-power, with most kits, up to about 5' + the extension of the ram. You can then anchor the chain in to the floor and on to the body with a long length (as required, and then push the chain up and at an angle away from the car, making a pulling arrangement, that you can adjust the pulling angles with over a huge range by way of adding or removing extension pieces. Ideally, when shaping up frame distortions like these, I was shown it's best to apply the 'repair' force in exactly the opposite way to how it was distorted, it, if it was pushed in from the outside, pull it out from the outside, rather than push it from the inside. It sounds the same, but the effect is not and that's where this method comes in to it's own. It's basically an old school version of these modern heavy framed 'Auto-robots'. I'll see if I can dig up a photo.

[Gary Schulz]

Thanks for the feedback, it is helpful...