Anyway, each job I do on my Spider is a first, but I’m learning and gaining confidence with each task, so I thought I’d share my lesions with the other non-experienced owners and maybe I can save you a little pain along the way.
I had a rusted through seam, about 4 inches long on the pass side floor along the bottom of the sill. I’ll do a separate post that repair.
My Spider was a permanent California resident until I brought her back East 2 years ago. They is no visible rust anywhere on the car, top, bottom, doors, trunk suspension and so forth. I did know there was some surface rust on the driver’s floor as I’d peeked under the carpet one time, but I was surprised at the amount of heavy surface rust I found once I stripped out the carpet and original padding.
Here’s what it looked like although it isn’t as bad as it looks in the picture:
The original tar coating was in place but on the passenger side the CC baked it dry and cracked. The rear and driver’s side were sounder and seemingly flexible. So much so that I considered leaving it down on these areas.
I had a HF electric scrapper which worked ok on the hard stuff but the softer stuff didn’t respond as well. Here’s my big tip. The easiest way to get up the tar, where ever it is, is with a big hammer. Really. I took my hammer and pounded on the tar. As the metal floor bounced and vibrated the bond was broken. Then I took my hammer and a cold chisel and chipped it away in big chunks. Very easy and neat. That stuff is heavy. I’ll bet it all combined was nearly 50 lbs.
Good thing I decided to remove all the tar. I found plenty of rust underneath. Particularly where the internal braces for the underside trailing arms are welded into the rear floor/seat bottom area. So, get rid of the tar, you can’t be sure what lingers underneath.
My plan was to remove all the insulation, wire brush all the rust, wash and clean the area, then POR it. Nothing is said to stick to POR so they recommend a primer (their own of course) on top if it before anything else.
Here it is POR’ed but already with the primer on top. Just a dusting really.
I saw the black rubberized spray pain in Home Depot. Like the guy on TV selling the stuff he sprays on a screen door then paddles down the river. Seemed like it couldn’t hurt so I bought two cans of the stuff. Seemed to work fine but you’d need 6 or more cans to really make a difference. The can recommends four coats I think.
But I didn’t think I needed it even though it looked pretty good. Here’s the floor after the two coats:
Here’s the supplies I used:
Then the padded, adhesive backed aluminum insulation.
Great stuff here’s the link:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/HEAT-SOUND-Shie ... 3a734f948b
I used all 38 or whatever S.F. and would have used more if I’d had some. You can put it anywhere as you can just cut up small pieces and stick it on up and under. I was going to aluminum tape the seams but the stuff just kind of sticks together. No need to tape. Here it is all done:
And finally, all put back together and finished:
