With the roof well in place, the next piece is the back seat support. Included with it is the side mounting points for the roof top and power pistons. Before I did that though, I needed to seam seal the areas I wont have access to later. While it was out, I also filled some holes left as part of the removal.
The back seat support is going to cover the seam for the inner wheel well, so I needed to seal that first. I ordered some brushable seam sealer, but it was taking a while, so I picked up a tube of the 3M brand from the local Napa. This is the tube style, so it went on with clean lines.
I had some holes where I drilled through the back support and the pump tray behind it. In trying to remove the assembly, at one point I tried to detach it from the pump tray, but later found a better way. That left some holes to fill. I found a copper plate on Amazon to use as a backing plate while I weld the holes. I can’t really access the interior holes well, but the visible side is now flush again.
I didn’t get any pictures of the process, but I cleaned up the side support “wings” and welded them in first. They needed a bit of cleaning as a previous owner did some hackery on them. It’s thick steel though, so they cleaned up well enough.
With those welded in, I placed the back support and started clamping. The first point was the sides by the quarter windows. There are a couple radius that line up with the quarter window plate for a reference. With those secured, I clamped to the wing support extensions. That put the back in the right place, leaving very little wiggle room. I centered it left to right as it had a minor amount of gap. With it where it needed to be, I started filling holes.
Several hours later, holes are all filled and ground down. As I go, I am covering bare metal with primer as a habit. It helps to see when I miss things in welding or grinding as well as protecting it.
Looking at the remnants of the original body, I noticed the back seat base clips were on the floor, but the new floor didn’t have them. I need to move these over.
I put the seat frame on them to confirm how they work, noting which bar they touch. This gave me an idea how precise I need to be. The answer is not very. The wire it attaches to looks like its already bent, so it can be tweaked if adjusting is required.
The clip sits in a nice little box of raised edges on the floor. Measuring isn’t even required since it sits in the box.
I used the plasma cutter to remove them, leaving the clean up to be done on the work bench. I find this makes it so much easier to cut and grind off extra metal when recovering parts.
One more detail done.
The last little detail from the back of the car is the spare tire tie down point. On a 67, it looks like this.
The new floor is a 65-68 so it came with the 65-66 style tie down. I considered just leaving it, but I have the right piece, so I couldn’t help myself.
The pinch welds on the new part were easy to see, so easy to drill out. A little touch up and it’s back to new. I spent some time on the bench cleaning up the original bracket. With a few spot weld holed drilled in the trunk, it was where it belongs.
At this point, I think everything behind the A pillar in the original body is trash. I am leaving it sit until I get the quarter panels installed as it is a good reference for the tail panel and trunk dimensions. But at this point, it’s time to start thinking about recovering the front of the car.