Intro to Car Floor Installation

Hi welcome CHP videos. I'm Craig Hopkins. And what we're going to do is we're going to install a full floor in a Dodge Challenger. Now I'll tell you the full floor install will work well on most other cars also. So what I want to do is make you aware of a few things because if you're going to do this in your home environment, the car should be properly supported. And we have it on the floor, but we have it on a set of jack stands and the car is level. Now underneath the rear end, I'm carrying it right in the center of the rear and just to duplicate where the wheels would sit and the front also under the ball joints. And what this will do is keep the car from drooping on either end or bagging in the middle. If the jack stands are on the frame rails at the front of the back, the car is going to want to collapse a little in the middle. If they're too far up on the rails, it's going run droopy either end. So that's the starting point for how to get this car together. Now, when we look in at the floor of this car probably you're thinking to yourself right away, gee it doesn't look that bad, it probably could just use a patch, you know, right there underneath the passenger seat. That would be true if it weren't for the fact that someone has decided to re-engineer the car and cut the torsion bar cross member in half. That would be like having a bridge and knocking the supports out. I'm here to tell you that's not going to work. So, to get the torsion bar cross member in the car we're going to have to cut the floor to smithereens anyways. Now I told you the car has a little extra problem in it that I want you to avoid when you're doing your own floor at home. Because what's happened is they've cut the side off the car in preparation for a patch panel. Now, I don't like a patch panel and I especially don't like it stuffed into the car. Sometimes I will but, weld the panel if you can't get a full panel in the car. But, what's really happening here and what I wanted to make you aware of is the structure all has to carry to keep the car level, to put the floor in. The beauty for us is, the wheel house is still tied to the rocker. The roof rail is still tied to the wheel house and I believe the car is strong enough to remove the floor without letting the car bag down on me. The point being it's very simple. If you're going to put a floor in at home, don't take the side panels off first. Put the floor in first, then build back the other way. So, it looks a little dangerous follow along we'll record a couple of measurements from the rockers to the floor and write them down. That way when we get ready to put the floor and weld it in we'll know if we've moved or not. Now thanks to companies like Automotive Direct they've really made our life a lot easier than it used to be; with little bitty pans and welding them in and grinding all the wells down. With a floor like this you can put it in just the way the factory did which is how I'm going to show you how to do that. That's the object to DVD, right? Put a full floor in the car, walk away from it. Feel really good about it. There are a few tips on any aftermarket part to getting it in, but I'm going to tell you I really like this part. What I want you to be aware of is when you pull your parts out of the box make sure number one, it's the correct part for the car. They make a couple of different ones I've compared it. This is the correct floor to go on this car. So there's also a few tips on how to prepare it to get it ready to weld. As we come to the welding segment we will take care of that. But we have done what's necessary. Parts out of the box. We've looked at it as a complete unit. We've compared it to the car. This is what we're going to do is install this into that car and wind up with a winner. Now, when you get underneath the car it's easy to orient yourself to think about how the floor is attached. It's welded to the torsion bar cross member and the frame rail. And that brace up ahead on the frame rail to the floor again. We'll look at all this from the top but looking from the bottom gives you a better visual idea of what to be aware of. Now look at the way the firewall and the floor are flanged together. So when we're cutting the floor out of the car we're going to cut into the interior side just behind the flange. That'll allow us to get the floor off of the firewall for the new floor to go in. At the AMD installation center we see a lot of crazy stuff and this is crazy. You can't cut the torsion bar cross member in half and actually hope to get away with it. What do you think the shift linkage would fit through there? This will have to be replaced also. I like to spend the time underneath the car it helps me get a good visual for what will and what won't be replaced. The two braces here, carry the main floor. They are made and you can replace them. They're good in this car. The two other braces that came on the new floor carry the bucket seat. If you have a bucket seat car and they're not in your floor, you'll have to put these in. Now the last thing to be aware of is the rear foot wall lays on top of the main floor. And it's almost impossible to replace a main floor and not replace the rear foot wall area. This one's worn out anyways. So let's just spin around here and have a good look at everything we saw. There's the rear foot wall and the rocker has to stay, main floor braces have to stay, torsion bar, cross member and front frame rail. And there's a flange for the firewall.