The Stovebolt Site Forums Project Journals Project Journals 1952 Chevrolet 3100 Project

1/12/23: With my patch panels coming in early this week,
I needed to get the gas tank out so I can start cutting and welding. Removal went easy aside from having to drain the tank of gas. Not knowing how much gas was in the tank (it showed a little over half a tank), I figured a 5 and 2-1/2 gallon cans I had would take most of it. I attached a hose at the bottom petcock and added another filter so none of the rust particles from the old tank would get into the gas cans. No issues until I filled up the two gas cans, my lawn tractor, snowblower, 4 wheeler and finally my wife’s VW Eos, spilling a bit of gas on myself along the way. I stunk so bad, my wife refused to let me stay in the house until I showered. I can’t say I blame her, I really did stink. Anyway, the tank is out and I test fitted my new Spectrum made tank, the old fill pipe and it fits perfectly.

11/27/23 My patch panels arrived last night so today I started cutting out the passenger side floor. Boy, what did I get myself into? I feel like I’m opening Pandoras box. No turning back now.

The new floor patch panels do not come with any of the floor supports, so saving them is a top priority. I needed to remove the panels by cutting out the spot welds. Any panel that didn’t have rust was easy to spot the welds and remove with a spot weld cutter made easy removal. Some areas over the supports were rusted so bad , seeing where the spot welds were was impossible. Sliding a thin cold chisel between the support and floor pan was the only was to find them. Once found, I used the spot weld cutter, ground them out from the top or just powered thru them with a sharpened cold chisel.

I managed to get the most if the rusty sections removed and ground out the remainder of the spot welds. The supports look good so I’ll be able to reuse them.

I left the back section until I decided how I want to do it. I posted in the “Paint and Body” forum here for advice on how others accomplished it.

It looks like I’ll need to remove the front clip or at least the fender as I need to repair a small hole on the lower cowl. OMG “What did I get myself into”?