Driver front floorboard. Uh, can you say Fred Flintstone
brakes? As we discovered later, the original rubber floormat trapped
water underneath it and the floorboards rusted from the inside out!
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Passenger front floorboard. The metal beyond the
hole is perforated like swiss cheese.
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Driver rear floorboard, same as all the rest. Large
hole with swiss cheese perforated steel.
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Passenger
rear floorboard. This was the worst of the floor and rocker panel area.
But more surprises awaited us.
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Rusted out passenger rocker panel.
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Both the inner and outer rocker panels are completely
rusted out. Dad had repaired with body filler in the 80's, and had sandblasted
the overall body. As far as we can tell, the blasting sand settled into
the rocker area and ate away around the bondo.
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Even the front of the rocker panel showed the rust.
The driver side was in the same sorry condition. These were replaced
immediately, one at a time, to stabilize the body and keep it from sagging.
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The inside of the trunk even had rust over the
wheel area. The inner wheelhousing was gone and probably had been for
years.
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The tailpan to taillight area had been worked
several times. You can see the various reds, grays, greens, blues,
and a mixture of other primer and welding colors.
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The tailpan had shown some bubbling of paint.
Once that was cleared away, Kurt found holes. Lots of holes.
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The entire tailpan was a maze of holes held together by small bits
of metal. Another candidate for complete replacement.
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Under the really bad passenger rear floor pan,
even the brace had rusted through. This is the long body brace that
goes from side to side of the entire body. Both ends had to be replaced.
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The driver rear floor wasn't as bad, but the brace still had rusted through.
Notice the shape of the dogleg area just behind the door.
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The
biggest surprise - the dogleg on the passenger side was completely
gone!
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Bondo had been holding everything in place
on both dogleg sections. At this point, the rockers are in for stability,
but we had to stop and ask if Betsy was worth it. No one made a reproduction
doglog for any tri-5 at the time, so we knew this would have to
be completely fabricated.
After many discussions and every reason why
we should and should not continue, we finally decided that Betsy
was worth the work.
The dogleg reconstruction has
it's own page, since the work was so extensive.
Oh, and someone finally makes doglegs for the
'57. Not a perfect fit, but a great starting point.
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The driver rear floorboard. You can see the
rusty brace and the small pinholes.
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A better picture of the rusted out brace.
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By the time Kurt had removed all the bad metal,
there wasn't much left of the driver rear floor pan section. Time
for new steel.
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Even the brace under the driver front seatpan was rusted through.
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The trunk need complete sheetmetal, which could be ordered in
3 pieces, the pan, the last 10", and the tailpan. We needed all
three.
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The welds holding the side to the floorpan had even rusted out.
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Notice the small rust holes in the floorpan.
The rusty metal between the small hole and the larger hole had pinhole
rust.
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The original dash and kick panel area is in good shape. At last something
didn't have any rust that needed repairing.
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