Seat Box & Tool Locker

Our seatbox and tool locker

The Sonoma tool locker:

The original plan:

Strip all parts off seat box.

clean, prime and paint seat frames

clean underside of seat box

apply Powerfoam for sound deadening underneath

apply closed cell foam & limp mass vinyl for additional sound deadening on top

The detour in the plan:

The new chassis does not have a battery tray in the engine compartment so we will mount the battery in the tool locker under the passenger seat. The problem is, the battery tray in our seat box does not have the battery tray in it. However, the Sonoma 109 seat box does. After seeing that the underside of the Sonoma seat box had been sprayed with some sort of tarlike undercoating, I decided to just swap the tool locker. In about 30 minutes the rivets holding both tool lockers to their seat boxes were drilled out. In addition to the undercoating, the Sonoma tool locker was also pretty rusty inside. After about 90 minutes, I had removed all of the undercoating and all of the loose rust from the interior and it was ready for primer and paint. Then it will be riveted back into our original seat box and the plan will be back on track.

Here is the pile of crud that came off the seat box and tool locker:

This is the tool locker after it had been wire-brushed, primered and with the beginning coat of paint:

Here is the final product ready for reinstallation:

Uh Oh. More Rust Damage

Turns out there was more damage on the bulkhead than I thought. This is the left hand side "hip" of the bulkhead. Perforations in several spots. We are trying to find the 25" A-Pillar repair peice. So far, we've only found the 18" peice.




One rust hole about the size of a matchhead on the bottom of the core support.

Also, it looks like American Metal spread the sheet metal apart along the bottom edge of the core support to get better penetration in the three step dipping process. The support has a curve to it now that will have to be corrected.

Parts back from chemical strip

New T-Posts

We were very fortunate on the bulkhead. What you see is the extent of the rust damage--confined to the lower part of the footwells and the bottom of the A pillar.

Core Support

Bulkhead. You can see part of one side step near the bottom of the picture.

It took a full month to get these parts back from American Metal Cleaning. The next step is to weld in the new footwell repair panels (RNF0002 and RNF0003 from Rovers North) and repair the lower A pillar on the driver's side. After that, all of these parts head to the galvanizer!