1955 Ford - Thunderbird.
The teardown begins.
After removing the seats, carpet and all other interior, I discovered the floor boards and rockers were completely rotted out. Someone has replaced a lot of it with some tin and pop-riveted into place.
There wasn't much metal left after you removed the sheet metal patch. They didn't even cut out the rusted metal, just pop riveted the metal on top of the rust.
The whole rocker was made out of some bent sheet metal. If the car didn't have a frame under it, the car would have broke in half on the way home.
I had to remove the entire flooring, rockers and center transmission tunnel.
Someone had replaced the stock shifter with this Hurst shifter. Cool idea but instead of lengthening the shifter rods, they cut out the floor so it was forward about 6 inches. What a hack job they did. They had made it so your hand would hit the dash every time you shifted into reverse or second.
After repairing the transmission tunnel, I installed the factory shifter ($300 later). I have all the chrome on the new shifter taped up to protect it.
I have removed all the sheet metal from the front to the rear of the passenger compartment, including the rockers (all the metal under the doors).
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