I pulled the interior out of my car and am basically down to the tar paper type sheeting that was installed under the carpet. It looks to be in decent shape with very very slight surface corrosion in a few places from what I can see. I was thinking of leaving it undisturbed and putting new carpet in over the factory tar paper. Any compelling reason why I should replace it? It looks rather thick and I don't believe replacement material is made. Here's a few pics. Excuse the mold on the black vinyl.
Wow, you have a huge hole in the transmission tunnel and some funny looking brake pedals. Are those two brake pedals for two feet braking? :laugh: Hmmm, if I were you, since you have the car this far apart, I would suggest removing the sound deadener and inspecting the floor pans. If you have any and I mean any rust, discard the sound deadner. Wire brush any rust areas and apply phosphoric acid to the rusted areas. You can get new sound deadner from any A-body aftermarket shop such as OPG or PPI. What I usually do here in FL (due to high humidity)is the following: Remove all carpet, sound deadner, insulation from floors. Wire brush and vacuum an loose material. Apply phosphoric acid to any surface rust areas. Let acid dry and plastic brush and white chalky residue. Wipe entire floor with RM Pre-Kleano or Dupont Prep-Sol. Spray entire floor with rubberized undercoating to prevent any rust from ever occuring again. Here is a car that the owner redid with new carpet and sound deadener here in FL and see what happend in 1 year. http://www.buickperformance.com/RMats.htm You can then install new sound deadener over the undercoating. Up to you what you want to do. You can get phosphoric acid at Home Depot. It is called Behr's concrete driveway cleaner and rust remover. :TU:
Hey George- My car came with the rare proportioning valve delete. The right brake is for the front brakes and the left is for the rear. Once you master it, it really helps in autocross. OK, so not only do you rain on my less-work parade, you gotta go and post pictures to scare me too! Alrighty, my motto has been do it once, do it right... Sigh... Seriously, thanks. Do you have a favorite source for sound deadener?
You may be able to save the original, I never have been able to get that stuff to come out in a complete piece. You can get the deadener from any A-body shop since the Chevelle shares the same floor pan, you may get a better deal getting it from www.natioanlpartsdepot.com Compare their prices to PPI, OPG. Nice to hear of the ultra-rare, non-factory original brake proportioning valve delete option! Wow, learn something new everyday.
Ken, I would leave it alone. In our area I think it would be fine. Think about it, if your floor pans look that good after 34 years, how much worse will they look decades later, when the car is stored in a nice garage. Duane
Duane, Don't think it would hurt to do an inspection. I looked closely at his driver's floor pan pic and I "think" I see some surface rust already, directly infront of the driver's side left front bucket seat anchor point. The car I have pictured in the article did not look like it had rust but since I am in FL, I always check. Notice the rust was hidden/covered by the sound deadener and even had the pattern of the material. Just an idea! I am not twisting his arm to do an inspection.
IF it were my car, I might just take a quick peek at the driver footwell, and see if you can see any rust under the sound deadener. The channel where the wiring harness is will be typically where you see it first. I would not remove the deadener, but might do a little "exploritory surgury" with and exacto knife, to see if there is anything that needs to be addressed. From the look of those pics, the milage on the car, and it's history, I doubt you have anything to worry about. And it's unlikely that you would catch me spraying undercoat anywhere on a GS, besides the rear wheel wells and trunk drops. JW
Must be an echo here, just a long delayed one???? Reason I use undercoat here in FL is I have seen probably more cars than JW will ever see with floor pan rust. All it takes is some moisture due to our high humidity or one of our quick downpours to dampen the carpet. From my point, the floors were never painted to prevent rust, seems to be only overspray. Once you have reinstalled everything, who can tell if you have treated the floors?
I'm gonna split the difference. Texas, near the coast, but not like Florida. I pulled the stuff up untill it started to crack. Did a good inspection where it came up. Looked good. Left it folded up while I re-painted what I could get to and laid it back down.
Ken Remove the kick panels as you will need to redye them. I did mine and they look new. At the same time you will need to derust the air doors,respray and lube the cables. Carefully inspect the area in which they are installed for rust with a mirror and treat as needed. I agee ith what JW said about the base of the footwell. Also the corners behind the rear side panels. Also ours needed the old seam sealer removed and replaced all the way around. While redoing the dash I removed and replaced the firewall and the dash pads.
Rob- The 'tar paper' is used as a sound deadener, and to a lesser extent, heat insulation. It's actually more 'tar' than paper.....It's about 1/8" thick with a paper backing. Len....I like JW's idea.....check a small section. Otherwise leave it alone, it looks to be in good shape! Replacements???......Most 'repo's' are rubber mats, not like the original material.... Ames Performance (amesperf.com) offers the correct, paper backed, tar-like material for GTO's. $55 for the set. A few bucks (and pounds) more than the rubber ones, but it's 'correct'. One vendor even told me the car will SMELL 'more correct' with this material!! The factory actually baked the car body after installing these mats so they would 'melt' onto the floor.....Duane posted this awesome link about the assembly line process for a '69 Camaro. http://www.camaros.org/assemblyprocess.shtml
No wonder they don't come up! I left mine in too. They looked as good as yours, Ken. I kinda thought along the same lines as Duane on this one. But I kinda had a desire to peek underneath, though, just too be sure. I didn't cause I figured it would crumble, but JW and Jim offer good advice on how to handle that delema. :TU:
On speed channel (2 guys garage) they were redoing a camero and they used a light green material they applied (to the floor pan interior) with a brush.This stuff was supposed to be a sound and thermo barrer as well as a rust inhibitor. They did not reference a name and the web site(www.speedtv.com) wasn't any help. Does anyone know what this material is?
