1958 Chevy Truck LMC Floor Panel Replacement - Tore Up From The Floor Up

This is the whole enchilada, as they say. The rot in the floors of the Chevy are limited to just the corner area, therefore the entire floor will not need replacing. The great part about the LMC floorboards is they are made to replace an entire area of the panel, or they can be trimmed down to suit one's needs. Keep in mind, regardless of how much you decide to replace, the process is the same.

After scoping out the scene and testing the metal, we decided on how much of the floor needed to be removed. Using a straight edge and Sharpie, we marked off the area that will go under the blade.

Using a cutoff wheel, we slayed the rusted area from the floor. Also, even though it might sound obvious: Wear safety glasses and a faceshield when using a cutoff wheel. It's real easy for that wheel to catch a kink or stray piece of metal and cause all sorts of havoc.

Now we did it: We just went and created a Fred Flintstone-styled floor. Here you can see the nearly 12-inch by 20-inch section that we're going to replace.

Next, the edges of the floor were cleaned up...

...Be sure to clean both sides of the cab floor, that way no contaminants creep up into the weld and cause a weak link.

Next, we dropped the full LMC floorboard in place. Be sure that the grooves in the cab floor and LMC panel are lining up.

In order to mark the exact area that needs to be cut from the new panel we traced our cut area from the bottom of the floorboard to the LMC panel. Sort of a photo negative, if you will.

Trimming the new panel down to size takes a fair amount of time to do it right. After the initial cut, it was test fit, trimmed down some more, and test fit again until we were satisfied. It's better to trim smaller amounts at a time than to over cut and ruin the panel, or to create more work for yourself by creating new pieces to make for the metal that was overzealously trimmed away.

Finally, after a few rounds with the cutoff wheel and a pair of tin snips, the panel had taken on a precise shape.

Say hello to my little friend! The Miller Matic 140 is the perfect home-garage welder, due to its versatility and power. Not to mention, you can just plug it into any regular 115 outlet and it's good to go. And yes, the welding cart you see used to be a shopping cart. So we guess a thanks is in order to the bums who regularly leave them in front of a friend's shop.

The lip of the LMC panel is made to rest over the inner step, just like the factory did it. The original setup has the lip spot-welded to the inner step...