Trevor Brady

Presuming you've got the body off the chassis

(How the heck do I do that?) You'll be presented with the central spine of the chassis with 2 pretty flat pieces of steel either side which constitute the floor of your beetle. If your bug has been through twenty odd Irish winters you'll notice some extra air conditioning in your floor pans. These may have been repaired in the past with all sorts: fibreglass, body filler, wooden sheets, pop-rivetted metal panels etc. None of these is an ideal solution to the problem of a rotten floor. You should replace it with a new one.

New floors are easy to come by

and not too expensive when you consider the important job they do. Your parts supplier, (Emilio, Martin Murray, Otto, German Car Parts, other British companies) will provide you with a floor pan to suit your year of beetle. The main difference is pre '72 and post '72. The seat mounts are different. If yours has a big triangular hump just below where the front seats go, it's post '72, if it has 2 rails below where the seat should be, it's pre '72.

I'll describe how to remove the right side floor pan,

cos it's got all the difficult bits on, like battery, brake hose, pedals. The left is the same only easier...Anyway, you've removed the seats, carpets/rubber mats etc. Take the battery, unclip the steel brake hose. It's probably ready to be ditched anyway, add it to your list of replacement parts. Remove the pedal assembly by unbolting it from the floor. Go to the left side of the central tunnel at the front of the chassis and remove the cover plate from the throttle cable. Two 17mm bolts hold this on. Unhook the throttle cable, inspect it for wear and replace if necessary. Unhook the clutch cable by sticking your fingers into the hole in the tunnel you've just uncovered and wriggling the cable off the big hook. This hook is directly connected to the clutch pedal and pulls the cable when you depress the clutch pedal. Keep the cover and bolts in a bag and store them safely. On the opposite side of the tunnel, there's two more 17mm bolts. Remove these and the pedals are ready to remove. Store the lot somewhere with the rest of your parts.

Now comes the fun:

get your goggles/facemask, gloves and ear plugs on (remember, safety first!) and fire up your cutting tool. I'll presume you're using an angle grinder. You'll see the floorpan is welded to the chassis on 3 sides. This was spot welded at the factory all those years ago, and these spot welds have to be broken or ground down to free the old sheet metal. Anyway, cut out as much of the floor as possible, I'd say stay an inch inside the perimeter of the floor, don't cut right out to the edge, there's a little ledge folded into the central tunnel and the front and rear cross members, this is what the floor pan is attached to and must not be removed, or you'll have nowhere to weld the new one to. So the majority of the floor is removed, chuck it in the skip. Starting at one end, scrape away whatever paint/sealer is present at the edge of the old floor. You'll see little dimples in the edge of the floor every few inches. These are your factory spot welds. Get the drill out with a 10mm bit and drill through these dimples until you reach the ledge I just spoke to. Don't drill through the ledge, you don't need to and it's bloody hard to drill! Repeat the drilling for every one of the dimples you can find. Get your hammer and cold chisel and strarting at one end, begin to chisel off the old strip of metal you've got left behind. You'll find you've drilled through most of the weld, the rest will give up with a little persuasion from your hammer ;-) At either end of the floorpan, there might be a small bead of proper weld, just to finish off the attachment. Grind through this. The strip of steel should now come off and be ready for the bin.

Get the grinder and put on a grinding disk.

These are thicker than the cutting disks and are designed to be used on the face as opposed to the edge. Using one disk for the other application isn't recommended, they can shatter violiently. Clean up the ledge, removing any remnants of the welds and old paint/sealer. You'll see that most of the floorpans you get have the rear cross member included. If the cross member on your chassis is still solid, there's no need to replace it, and the one attached to the new floor pan can be removed, by drilling throung the spot welds, as described before. Place the floor in place, resting it on the ledges of the central tunnel and cross members. Drill some 8mm holes at regular intervals about 2 inches apart all along the three edges to be welded. This way you can reattach it the same way the factory did. Starting at one end, apply a bead of weld into the hole you drilled in the floorpan. This makes a strong bond with the chassis. It's called a plug weld. Make it so it's slightly higher than the level of the floor, you can grind it down later on for the smooth finish. Repeat at another hole a bit away from the first. Thsi prevents too much heat building up in one area and warping the steel. You can go back and weld the holes you missed on the second pass. Once all the holes are plugged, a light grind will smooth them off and you're ready for seam sealer.

Seam sealer

is usually a smelly thick grey substance, and is applied with a thick nylon bristled brush, specific to the job. When you buy your tin of sealer, get the brush too. Apply the sealer to the joint you just welded, using the brush the shove it into any crevices . The stuff shrinks as it dries, so use slightly more than you think you need. Oh, use this stuff in a well ventilated place, the fumes are pretty strong. Get under your chassis too, and do the underside of the new joint. This will be painted over later on, so don't worry about the colour. Give it a day or so to dry out before applying any paint or undersealer. Reattach all the bits'n'pieces if you're ready, although why not clean them up and give them a fresh coat of paint?

Repeat for the other side, as the manuals say, reassembly is the reverse of disassembly ;-)...