The Floor

A major component of the body is without a doubt, the floor. It is made of up 5 major pieces, those being: 2 sills, 2 mid-body cross members, and 1 rear cross member. The out lying pieces are the main floor board, the middle floor (under the gas tank), gas tank shut off board and the rear floor board. The rear floor is made of two boards for the passenger side and a battery access for the driver's side.

Here we see the main sills and the placement for the front cross member. This piece, according to the remaining original sill section, should be 4.5 inches in width. The piece that was recreated was not the correct size, so a replacement was made. The 4.5 dimension was determined by the mortise hole on the original remaining sill piece. The sills in this picture were fabricated by a previous owner and had to be fixed in order to fit the frame and maintain a 2 3/4 inch distance from the frame rails. The PILLAR COUPE notch also had to be adjusted because it was cut too long.

Here, we can see the placement of the reproduction floorboard by John Anderson. The current mortise hole in this piece is too short to allow for the 4.5 placement of the cross member. You can also see the inlet for the HINGE PILLAR upright bracket in the driver's side sill, but there isn't one in the passenger side. That will be corrected once it's placement is finalized. The blue tape denotes the addition of a piece of wood to compensate for the incorrect notching for the PILLAR COUPE.

We can see here that there are wooden dowel sections placed in bolt holes. This will be to hide additional holes that were drilled in the wrong place. The original sill's holes do not line up exactly with the holes currently drilled in the sills, so some adjustment/acceptance of the holes will be necessary. I am under the assumption that the sills are NOT mirror images of each other in the original build like I assumed they would be. The mounting angle brackets should be fixed in such a way as the body can be lifted off the frame in one single piece. or the boards attached to them can be removed if necessary.

This photo shows the placement of the PILLAR COUPE mounting bracket. It should be mounted with the bolt head up, but I elected to bolt it up this way instead. I might change it later, I haven't decided yet. The floorboard riser has a cutout to access this bolt for body removal. The PILLAR COUPE must be assembled first, and then the riser, because you cannot access the screws to the bracket otherwise.

This photo shows the placement of the gas shutoff board and the relationship to the remaining rear floorboards. The cutout for the gas shutoff is covered by the gas tank surround 20 inches from the front of the forward cross member. The center piece of wood is screwed to the metal bracket that is attached to the heel board of the rear seat box. On this particular 22, the board extends to the middle cross member. On earlier cars, the board extends to the front cross member. The seat box angle pieces need to be shaved just a hair to allow the heel board to sit flush on the sill.

To finish up this flooring, the entire floor assembly will need to be removed from the frame. I will then add the second cross member and bolt it up. At that point, I will add the cowl wooden framework and cowl, attach the firewall to the cowl and then attach the floor to the frame. After that, I can attach each singular board to the sills in their permanent locations with slotted screws. Remember: I am using Phillips head screws in areas that cannot be seen.