Since I didn't go to Bismarck, I spent as much time (and money) as I could on the car this weekend. At work, I got two 4x8 foot sheets of cold rolled 18ga steel. Our sheet metal guy helped me form the front floor boards from the patterns I made. It is nice to have access to a nice sheet metal shop! Saturday morning I went out with the new floors and dropped the passenger into place and fit REALLY nicely. The 1" flange towards the middle is where I will spot weld the trans tunnel.
After ensuring it was going to work, Lucky and I laid down some beads in the panel for strength and drilled for the seat mount. We then found that it needed a step to mate up with the rocker nicely. So we swapped dies on the bead roller and ran that. Test fit it a couple of more times and found everything I needed to clean up for welding it. I then drilled some 1/8" holes and used my new clecos (thanks Dad) to hold it into place. Then, one by one, opened those holes to a 3/8" hole in the floor only and plug welded the floor to the bracing underneath, firewall, rockers and cowl.
It was going so well until Lucky informed me that I still had a crossmember to cut out and a new one to fabricate under the floors. So after calling him some colorful names and cursing to myself, we got the old cross member out and figured out the steel I would need for the new ones. But because of that, the drivers side floor will have to wait a little bit.
I thought I took more pics, but evidently not. Here is with the beads laid down but before welding it in.