middle row seat, floor cracked...fixed

[brad-chevlux]

It all started because the previous owner of my GQ was not the cleanest person in the world. mud and dust every where inside the cab.
so today was it. i stripped out all the seats and carpeting and gave the floor a good scrubbing with some truckwash, and hosed it all out.
gave the carpeting a good clean and tomorrow we will clean the seat and the rest of the inside od the cab.

now to the point. the floor is cracked just infront of the rear mount for the middle row seats. I take it this is a common problem for the older GQs (mine is an 89) i also found a small section of rust in the drivers footwell, about the side of a DVD. the rust is easy, cut and plate. the crack in the floor though, i'm not quite sure. the easy way out would be weld the crack.
But it will crack again. the other thing i was thinking of is to cut out some sections of 1mm plate i'm using for the rusted sections, large enough to cover the cracks and mounting holes. drill as needed for bolts to go through and bolt it in, then weld it in. if you understand what i mean.

what have others done to fix this problem?

[toughnut]

You need to see why its cracked. It may be that there is rust on the underside of the floor. If so you'll have to cut and weld. Otherwise it would be best to clean with a wire brush and weld it. Before you do and if you are going to take a little time to fix it. Get a small drill about 1.5 or 2mm an drill a hole at the end of the crack. This will help stop it from getting bigger. They do this to aircraft all the time.

[Mousie]

cut it out and weld a new pice in

ORR if your ruff

put a plate over the top and rivet it down
bit of sillicon and your done

[brad-chevlux]

You need to see why its cracked. It may be that there is rust on the underside of the floor. If so you'll have to cut and weld. Otherwise it would be best to clean with a wire brush and weld it. Before you do and if you are going to take a little time to fix it. Get a small drill about 1.5 or 2mm an drill a hole at the end of the crack. This will help stop it from getting bigger. They do this to aircraft all the time.

spent most of the weekend under and in this thing with a pressure washer cleaning it. no rust around the cracks at all. they look like stress cracks,
Both look alomst the same and both are the same distance infront of the mounts and both are seperating in the same direction..

i'm leaning towards welding the crack up, than plating over the top of it with a plate about 15cm x 20cm. the bolting the mount through the plate into the original captive nuts.

PS. that itch you have IS CRABS, and you have to loose the BMW and buy an other 4by

[michael a]

FAT BASTARDS IN THE BACK.

Mine done the same.

[jcclures]

It must be a common problem, my brothers has done the same. He blamed corrugated roads and heavy passengers. He just welded up the cracks, it hasn’t given any trouble yet.

[whythef@#!not]

same to mine mate, made plates with holes for brackets of seat bolts to go through shit load of rust proof and welded around the plate, so far so good

[brad-chevlux]

i had a good look at it today. I'm not suprised that people are having this problem.
there is a small reinforcment plate under the floor, but it only has about 9 small spot welds to hold it on, (mine cracked through the last row of welds).
The plate is not very well placed, It only extends about 15 to 20mm rearward of the bolts and about 140 to 160mm forward of the bolts.
All of the force on this plate is pulling it away from the floor, putting all the stress on the welds. If this plate was on the inside of the cab in the same spot we'd have very few problems at all.


Now on to the fix.

As we plan to do a cape trip with 4 people, we'll have 100kg odd on the both the back seats and be on poor roads.
So i thought i'd add some strength as well.

first step is to get a jack and a steel rod/ 2x4 timber and jack the floor up to level the two side off. Clean the paint and weld the cracks up.

second i cut 2 plates 160mm x 160mm from some 1mm sheet.
use the seat braket and position it so the end of the braket lines up the rear edge of the plate. mark and drill two holes for the original bolts,

clean up where the welds will be and bolt the plate in. the front 30mm of the plate will need to bent down to follow the floor.
weld in place.

then i drilled two more holes, this time right through the floor at the front of the new plate into the front of the original plate. i then put 2 M10 bolts through.

sealed all the welds with urathane (just in case) and painted it all