I made progress on the "new" floor today, removing large chunks but not quite getting it all out. As mentioned before, the floor is unbelievably thick fiberglass. About an inch thick in most places, some places even thicker. All that, sitting on top of a layer of 18 or 20 gauge steel which, by itself, would have been more than adequate for a floor.
In the shot above you can also see the metal floor is brazed to the framework under the floor. This, combined with the way the disco flares were built makes me think this thing has been sitting around for a few decades.
The back deck had a lot more resin than mat, but it was still about an inch thick.
That's not a hole in plywood, that's all fiberglass. The bottom hunk is steel. The latter day floor of this car is thicker than most ocean going mega yachts.
So, I got a little tired, using a wedge and single jack to bust out brick sized hunks, and decided to let the floor alone for a while, and concentrate on something less physical.
I'd noticed the backglass frame looked "funny" and seemed to have a lot of bondo laid on it. I made a few exploratory whacks with the hammer and chisel and... the bottom window flange was made out of flimsy sheet metal. I knocked all the bodo loose to expose the rivets.
No wonder the backglass fell out during shipping (but didn't break, fortunately). I driled out the rivets and the original flange was underneath, in great shape. What the heck??? I started working all the way around the flange and discovered the B pillar had been hacked and stretched about two inches. The cut was filled with a twisted up hunk of fiberglass cloth and resin, which I removed. Under that, the pieces are held together by a steel plate bolted through the roof.
The passenger side was the same. I'm only about halfway done opening up the cut here. You can see the some of the bolt heads in this shot.
My best guess is that after discovering the car was impossible to sit in, they tried to raise the roofline. This stretch job may have added an inch or two more headroom, but it ruined the sleek low roofline and dramatically raked windshield. Domino effect engineering. I was hoping to find some kind of history on the car, other than, "it was abandoned in the garage of my buddy's house when he bought it." Nobody is ever going to fess up to work like this today, though.
Even though the B pillar is hacked, the puzzle pieces can be easily reassembled (correctly). I'm glad I found this, as had no idea where the roof had been stretched, I just knew it had been.The day's work in timelapse:
