Mustang 16ga Passenger Side Toe Pan

Purpose:
1)Chasis Strengthening
2)Accident Protection

Before

After

NOTES: The old repairs done to the toe pans are nothing to write home about. I did the worst type of repair you can do: not cutting the old rusted metal out and just sandwiching another pan on top. Do NOT do this, ever. I feel good about laying 16ga metal down since the thickest repro out now is 19ga. As my main concerns are chasis strengthening and protection in case of an accident this little project will get me to my goal. In preparation for the toe pan, I put in a passenger side torque box. Check out that project here: Passenger Side Torque Box

The old toe pan repair. Underneath this is the rusted floor in the before shot above. Not a pretty site.
After cutting out the rusted toe pan.
Making the one piece template for the toe pan. Any old cardboard will do.
Before I cut this piece, I made sure to mark the frame rail edges on the template so I could then drill the holes for the spot welds. On the right hand side of the metal piece you will notice I added about 3/4 of an inch to bend up and meet the rocker panel.
I had to split the toe pan to have any chance of working with it and shaping it. 16ga metal is quite firm and with my limited sheet metal fabricating capacity I had to make the toe pan in two parts. I picked the spot on the cardboard template first, cut it, then marked the metal.
Here is a quick fitting of the right side of the toe pan.
After making the bend. I vise gripped the piece to a U-beam piece of steel and hammered away at the edge to make the bend.
Fitting both pieces and trying to decide if I want to underlap or overlap the toe pan along the transmission tunnel.
Unfortunately, I miscut the other half of the toe pan when fitting it and had to recut it. The new piece is on the left. I measured once and cut twice. These types of mistakes are time killers.
I decided to weld the right side in before trying to fit the left side again. Here is the backside of the right hand toe pan piece. I primered it and used rubber undercoating. You can also see were right around the spot weld areas I ground down the paint and undercoating not to contaminate the welds. The metal used to cut the toe pan is also zinc coated so I think I'm good to go for 30 years on these pans.
Here is the top of the torque box which was completed first. Check the left menu for a link to that project. Same deal here, primered and undercoated and then the spots for the welds cleaned up.
You can see I drilled nine holes for spot welds to the top of the torque box. To bring the pan tight to the torque box I had to tack weld pieces in so the clamp would have a place to catch. However the left side fits, this right side can only fit one way, so I'm going to just get it out of the way.
My amateur welding for your amusement (pro welders look away now). Trying to weld the 16ga to the thin firewall was tricky. I think I burned thru one or two spots but overall it came out well.
Looking forward to grinding welds is the most exciting part of welding. Just kidding, it's tedious and horribly boring.
Finally I can get back to fitting the left side. I still wasn't sure if I wanted to over or underlap or even do half/half. Eventually, I decided to overlap.
Nightime came so I had to take a flash shot. The overlap looks to be promising and I didn't screw up the cuts this time.
There you have it, a 16ga toe pan. I am not going to weld the bottom bend until I fit the floor pan.