Trunk Floor - Spacing Strip

You might remember this big hole in the rear boot/trunk of the car...it gave me nightmares!

I have a replacement floor to put in. It's largely cut to fit already and nearly ready to install. But because I have made repairs to the rear-most panel of the car the fit of the floor along the back edge is inconsistent - at worst, there's about a 2mm gap.

So I decided to make a strip to fill this gap and weld the floor to that... I used a strip 2mm thick (made sense!)

I cut a strip to size and drilled the holes for the plug-welds every 30mm...

I haven't done plug-welding before..so had a practice to avoid ruining the rear panel. Basically you clamp the drilled piece tightly to the base piece, aim the welder at the middle of the hole and "fire"! Making sure the heat and wire-feed are just right to get a strong 'bond'..

Once I'd got the hang of it..on to fitting the spacer to the rear panel in the car. First though, I dropped in the floor, lined it up and marked the position with a Sharpie. I knew the height of the floor thanks to Kev at DDK. It's 80mm deep if you must know!! You should be able to make out the line in the pic below..

The strip was clamped in place and plug welded in..

Here's the what the back of the panel looked liked as I went along with the plug welds. If you can see the back of the weld you can check you're getting enough 'penetration'! ooer missus..

Here's the strip welded in fully..(at each end of the strip, you can also see the 2mm re-inforcing plates - roughly 40mm x 120mm - that I welded in. These are where the original bumper re-inforcements were and are especially important if I'm going to put the shell on a rotisserie later).

I need the strip flat and smooth ofcourse, so I can weld the lip of the floor onto it. So I ground it down and sprayed it with weld primer; ready for the floor to go in. Done!

OK, I'll come clean! From this post, you may think all went smoothly and was fairly straight-forward. Well no...I achieved the finished result on my second attempt and actually had to weld the strip in 3 separate sections so I could follow the curvature of the rerar panel; each section was roughly 360mm long. The first time I did it, I welded one long piece of about 1080mm. I wasn't watching where I was going and hadn't positioned it properly. In short, I spent the best part of a day grinding out the 30 odd plug welds to remove the first attempt. It is a mistake I will NOT be making again..oh the shame!! Still, onwards and upwards....