The factory tie downs in the back of the Jeep are garbage. Just from tying down a tire, CO2 tank, and a few boxes, the stock tie downs were almost being ripped out of the floor. I had no faith that the tie downs will hold anything in place if I tipped over on a trail let alone a fender bender on the road.

So, here’s a huge improvement. I am installing a rail across the floor and reinforcing the underside of the floor with a steel strip. The strip is installed using nutserts for easy maintenance in case one ever gets stripped or damaged.

The only problem is that directly under where I want to insert the steel strip, there’s a channel that blocks the access to the bottom side of the floor.





So, plan A was to cut a small tab of the body and sneak the strip in from here:




But, after cutting I ran into a wall… literally. I didn’t want to cut there since it’s an awkward area to cut clean and weld it back on.



I decided to cut a couple other places and sneak the metal strip in from here:



Everything drilled and nutserts installed. Rail temporarily installed to see how it lines up.



I’ll weld the small floor pieces back in and install nutserts on the ends. I’ll also need to repeat this process on the passenger side. Then I’ll reassemble the interior, do minor trimming on the rear plastic panels, cut small holes in the carpet for the hardware, and install the rails over the carpet.

More progress Monday.

 

One Heck of a Project.. Good Pics & Info. Good Luck be sure to use that primer/rust prevent for welds (but you know that already with your skill set)

 

It's time to just pull that carpet and bedline!

 

Be great once its all cleaned up and painted again. I would use large rivnuts simlar to what is used on aircraft. They rivet on with opposing wings and never let go. Look at Aircraft Spruce catalog.

 

Never! I like the plush(ish) interior. Eventually I’ll lay down some sound deadening all around the interior, doors, and hard top. Then work on a stereo project with some decent high end components.

I used steel rivnuts. They’re probably the same thing used on the application you’re referring to. I’ve seen some rivnuts used on different birds I’ve worked on but the standard is to use a piece of hardware rated for the forces being applied to it. I didn’t research this for a 1/4x20 rivnut but the steel rivnut is the strongest there is that I know of. At that, it is a pretty hard time getting them to set properly. I have no doubt that these rivnuts won’t be an issue.

 

Time to get back to work...

I cut the passenger side of the floor, cut and drilled the 1/8 packing strip, installed nutserts, and temporarily installed the rails for cool photo ops.



I'm glad I kept the template from metalcloak for the rear fender install. The thickness of this template was the same as my floor. I traces the cuts from my floor parts and made new floor patches. The reason for this was because I needed the floor to be flat while the parts I cut out had indents pressed into them.




Time to close up those holes in my floor. Before I begin, let me explain something. There's two types of people who cut/weld on their vehicles, the bold and the skilled. I fall more on the first. With that being said, I won't take detailed shots of my welds. If you want to see the welds then maybe you can zoom in on the photos, otherwise, just imagine optimus prime having diarrhea while walking along the path of the new patches. Here's the floor patched up



The welds were sanded down just a bit all around , more holes drilled on the ends and nutserts installed. I used a bit of primer on all the bare metal. Once it dries I'll lay the carpet down, cut small holes in it for the hardware to go through, trim the plastic and button everything up.

 

Just to throw something out there, there's tons of videos on diy nutsert tools. I tried a few of them and the nutsert just spun or compressed awkwardly making the bolt hole right on the edge of the nutsert. These diy tools may work for some but not for me. Using the cheapo harbor freight nutsert tool (the 15% off holiday coupon was nice too) did the job nicely. All bolt holes were centered within the nutsert itself so all hardware lines up nicely.

 

Once the paint dries I started on putting holes in the carpet. A quick google search gave me a good idea of making clean holes in the carpet. I used a scrap piece of aluminum tubing, filed down the outer edge to make somewhat of a circular hole punch. Then heating it up with a torch, it cut through the carpet like butter and made a very clean circular cutout for the screws to go through.




With the rail in place the plastic could be marked and trimmed.



Project finished. Mostly... I'm not sure what I want to do about the carpet cover since it covers the back half of the rails. I can trim it and have an upholstery place re-do the hem on the sides, not completely sure yet.

 

Welding sheetmetal is just damn hard IMO. Even working with 14g on my trailer was really frustrating. I've been going down the YouTube rabbit hole of sheetmetal welding lately and what I've realized is just how much dang work it really is even for the skilled folks to do it properly.....and how much work it really is even for them. I found one video that had some great tips in it, one of which was a bit counterintuitive......crank the power up a notch. I guess I've always just thought that would burn through that much quicker but it really just takes very controlled tacks. It's pretty interesting to watch some of these guys doing sheetmetal patching. No judging here from me!

I agree on the nutsert tool as well. I installed just about all the nutserts on my jeep with a homemade tool and I got down a method that worked perfect 98% of the time counting socket rotations with my impact....but it only takes 1 or 2 that you get cranked down too much to create a real headache. I have a cheap Smittybilt tool now cuz I had a random Northridge4x4 GC at some point in the past that I needed to burn and bought that. It is so much easier to use and knocks nutserts out like a walk in the park.

 

Russ, you’re not wrong about sheet metal being hard. It’s a lot harder when you’re not welding often to maintain the skill. I assumed that my machine (220v Hobart 190) just wasn’t getting low enough on power to handle the thin stuff. I also was using .030 wire when I would have preferred the thinner stuff. But I didn’t wanna make a trip to the store for wire. I knew my welds were gonna be a bit ugly but they’re functional (and hidden) so I’ll call it a win.

Im glad you mentioned the northridge money too. I have a gift card from them for the Black Friday guarantee deal they had. I need to find something that’s ~$50 to buy before the first of the year. I’ve been wanting some rope shackles so I may get a couple of those.