I pulled up the crap carpets in my 164. They
were worse than I thought. They were flat pieces
of carpet tacked into place with sheet metal
screws that, you guessed it, were put through the
sheet metal of the floorboards. Ick.

I want to patch these holes so that they don't
get rusty or let water into the floor or anything
like that. I guess a couple holes are okay if I
think of them as drains, but these are not well
positioned for that.

I was thinking of sanding around the holes on
both sides, then painting with POR15, then
globbing jb weld through the holes. Is this a
reasonable approach? The holes are only sheet
metal screw sized, but even so I don't like
them.

chris

Enter the super hero - Resin Fiberglass!!

With fiberglass, you can restore the floor pan - waterproof it, strengthen it, what ever.

I have a 78 242 that was rotting in the trunk, under the rear seat just above the frame, and the left and right rear floor pans were ready to drop out.

I picked up a gallon of resin (The boat type) and some fiberglass matting, at a fiberglass repair/manufacturing shop - their prices were much better than auto parts stores.

Wear latex or plastic or rubber gloves, the resin is nuts to get off your skin and the acetone is crazy on the skin.

Work in a well ventilated area - the fumes will trip you out.

Be sure to wear safety glasses and don't let any resin or catalyst drip near your eyes.

All these warnings - I still am thrilled with the way that the fiberglass repairs converted a drafty, exhaust ridden, dusty car into a clean tight quieter, warmer ride.

I restored: 78 242 - battery shelf, floorpans, interior of trink seams, rebuilt spare tire wells, outside rocker panels (patched holes), patched holes at rear of trunk,

86 245 - rebuilt busted turn signal lens, rebuilt headlight adjusting bracket on rear of euro plastic headlights.

Cost $50 Cdn. - savings $$ hundreds.

Good luck.
Grind surfaces to clean metal - large patches such as the entire floorpan can be attached by building a heavier lip and screwing into the side tubes.

Loaded headers, no data again...hit refresh...data arrived.

As for the holes, no other rust?

POR-15 makes a patch expoxy more suitable for this application, but as long as the holes are small AND you get it from BOTH sides with the POR-15, you should be OK. I say go to bare metal and have the holes filled with weld material, then POR-15 would be your best bet.

Yes, for such small holes filling them is perfectly acceptable in my opinion, unless of course you're doing a concourse restauration. Do take care with the preparation, you wouldn't want rust to start under the filler.

Bram Smits