Hot Topic--Driver's side Floor Work

I've been trying to carve out some time to work on my Eleanor, but it seems my schedule was against me...until Saturday.  Of course, it had to be the hottest day of the year so far in central Indiana at 94F degrees.  But at least I was in the shade and had my box fan circulating air.

The first step for the day was to finally get the heater and AC fan housing out of the dash.  I did find the last screw that was holding the fan housing in and got that out of the dash...

Then with that out of the way, I finished labeling the interior wiring harness and got that out of the way...

...and that allowed me to get the engine compartment wiring harness out of the way....

The only wiring left is the rear harness that I'll remove when I take the tail lights out later.   But for now, I was trying to make some progress on the driver's side floor.   The first order of business was to remove the driver's side door for better access.   I should have done it on the passenger side, but didn't.  Since I'm moving toward getting the body stripped down to put on the rotisserie, I might as well start now with the door removal, which was fairly easy since I'd already gutted it.

The one tool I bought that is worth it's weight in gold is this Eastwood body panel stand.  It's really nice to hold and work on body "pieces parts" and supports up to 500 pounds...

The door is in really good condition.  The car obviously didn't spend any time on the road in the dreaded "rust belt" of the Midwest.    With the door out of the way, I took some measurements to make sure the new seat riser would go back in place as close as possible to the original.   So the drilling of the spot welds began...

Some of the welds were too hard to access.  So I broke out the air saw and cut the rest of it out...

Obviously some mice had made this area their home at one point.  A dust pan and shop vac cleaned this mess up.   Here's the seat riser from the top with my dimensions for later use on installing the new one...

 
One thing that's different between the factory riser and the aftermarket one is the absence of the center support.   I really don't know why this piece isn't added to the new part.  I figure I would rather be safe than sorry.   So I'll be cutting this out of the original, clean it up, and install it in the new seat riser as I did on the passenger side.

The replacement front floor piece and seat riser are made in North America and not a China part.

However, the lip that is spot welded to the inside of the rocker panel had the flange bent the opposite direction (for a convertible).   They don't make the 1/2 pans any other way.  So,  I had the straighten it out and then bend it to the proper position for the fastback.   Here it is after I fixed the flange.

I laid the floor in place to take more measurements so that the access holes for the seat mounting hardware would line up with the original floor.   After the measurements, I scribed my lines and started cutting out the floor.  here's as far as I got...

Looking at the inside of the rocker panel

I started drilling out the spot welds for what was left of the seat riser, but the heat was getting to me and my wife and I had a high school graduation part to attend.   So that's where I stopped for the day.   I'm hoping to get the rest of the floor cut out, the frame rail cleaned up, and the floor pan trimmed to fit.   Then it's drill out the holes for the spot welds and start the installation next weekend.   So progress continues to be made on the "other woman" as my family (i.e. wife) refers to my Mustang.