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The Prep Work
This project started as a side project during seat replacement. The carpet and rubber floor mat in the toter were disgusting
with a liquid mess underneath them that can only be described as love child of a chewing tobacco spittoon and a litter box
shared by 17 AIDS infected cats on crack for a month.
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| Driver Side Floorpan |
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| Center Floorpan |
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| Passenger Floorpan |
The Subfloor
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| Main Subfloor Panel |
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| Subfloor Glue-up |
With any hardwood floor, you need a solid subfloor. The hard part on this project is how to put a relatively solid subfloor
into the undulating metal floorpan of the toter.
I used 3/8 plywood held in place by several can of expanding polyurethane foam. It works very well as a glue, if fills
all of the voids, supports distributed weight, and provided sound and thermal insulation.
During the Glue-up, the subfloor had to be held inplace so that it didn't warp from the pressure from the expanding foam.
Several hundred pounds of wall stone did the trick. Lifting them all into the cab and taking them all out again was the "fun"
part of this project.
The Installation
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| First Piece |
The first piece of wood on each side is the head piece that secures the leading edge of the floor. There are two of these,
one on the passenger side, one on the driver side. The alignment of these two pieces must be accurate as when the floor wraps
around the engine doghouse, it is necessary the bridge the two floor sections with a single piece of wood.
Once both passenger and driver floor sections were down, then a row of wood connects them and immediately gets cut
in around the new seat plates. After the floor was installed, then an insert to fill the gap between the floor and the removable
doghouse had to be made.
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| Seatbase Detail |
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| National Premier Seat |
The seat bases were offset 1.5" to the front so that my wife (all 5'1" of her) can be comfortably seated in the drivers
seat. The new seats have a variable seat length and allow for the shortest seat. They are Premier seats by The National Seat
company.
The floor has an inlay, a cherry foot block, an aluminum heel plate, and two different colors of maple engineered
1/2" flooring. At the completion of the project, the base floor height was raised about 1/2". This hasn't caused any
problems with pedal clearances.
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| Foot Block |
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| Heel Plate |
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| Seat Anchor Points |
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| Under Dinette |
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| Refrigerator |
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| Threshold To the Back |
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