Reply to "Lowered floor pans?"

I've sat in a later car with factory dropped floor pans and the seats fitted
to that car used up all the drop and more. I'm 6'5" and 255 lbs and drove my
'74 L with the stock flat seats for several years but finally decided to
install dropped floor pans. I installed the pans from Marino Perna. As I
understand it these were designed by Kirk Evans and he makes them in a couple
of diffrent drops. Mine were the larger drop (about 3 inches at the rear and
maybe half that at the front). You can see the angle of pans here:

http://www.bacomatic.org/gallery/album03/pantera_at_bodyshop_005

These are the big pans that cut into both the fore-and-aft and side-to-side
floor pan reinforcements. This allows for larger seats and permits the seats
to slide fore-and-aft, unlike the drop pans that stay within the boundaries of
the original pan reinforcements. The pans are flanged on two sides. After
removing the carpet, we made a tape line around the perimeter to use as a
guide. A cut-off wheel was used to get started then we switched to a Sawzall.
After cutting out the floor with the Sawzall, we had to trim it in a couple of
spots then the pans dropped right in place. I cleaned all the areas to be
welded with a die grinder and rotary wire brush wheel to ensure a clean weld.
After a bit of hammering, we welded along the entire perimeter of the pan.
You'll need a helper to hold the pan edge flush with the surrounding floor.
The front edge of the pan is shaped so it can be welded to cap off the (now
open) forward section of the longitudinal brace. We capped that off, peened
the leading edge over to form a better welding surface and made filler pieces
(patterned off of cardboard templates) to close off the various gaps (there's
a sizable one around the emergency brake handle and several smaller ones both
inside the passenger compartment and underneath)). On the bottom side, we
made pieces that tie the pan directly to the fore-and-aft and side-to-side
frame rails. Oddly, the aft portion of pan wasn't formed by a metal brake.
Instead, it was a separate piece of metal tack welded to the main pan. Under
load, that portion off the pan deflected so we welded along the entire length
and it became very rigid. Marino provides a pair (per side) of very stiff
U-channels that are welded to the floor of the pans, stiffening the pan
bottoms and providing a place to bolt the seats to. Without these stiffeners,
the pans would "oil can" under a heavy load but with them in every thing is
quite stiff. The pans themselves are of a heavier guage metal than the
original floor. With every seam welded and the pans tied into the original
frame stiffeners, it doesn't look like I've lost much, if anything, in the
way of rigidity. Jacking the car on one corner will lift it off the ground
on 3 corners with no sag so it seems stiff.

One other thing to note. If you have your headliner in (mine is out), the
welder would likely leave smoke stains unless you cover it. We covered the
doors and dash and disconnected a few wires to the gauge console to swing
it out of the way while welding. Also, on the bottom side of the welds,
you'll need to fill in some gaps with seam sealer.

The engine and transaxle are still out of the car so I'm not sure what the
final ground clearance hit will be but I needed all the drop I could get.
I think the ground clearance on the road will be acceptable but putting the
car on a trailer could be tricky. I sat in the car to steer and brake when
we rolled the car off the trailer and was told there wasn't much clearance.
With the engine and transaxle back in, it will likely be low enough to
scrape. The ramps on that particular trailer are fairly short and I think
my buddy Eric's trailer has longer ramps plus he keeps a set of boards to
make the approach angle even shallower so hopefully I'll be okay there.

Part of the reason I went to the drop pans was to fit more comfortable
seats since I take the Pantera on long trips so I ordered a set of Gary
Herrig's seats. I wasn't sure I would fit well in the Corvette seats so
I found a local Corvette to sit in and found I fit fairly well. Whether
or not you fit in a particular seat is as dependent upon your shape as the
shape of the seat. The 'vette seats aren't prefect for me but the edges
of the seats are soft enough that I felt fairly comfortable in them,
at least in the 'vette. I ran into a problem with them in the Pantera,
however. The 'vette seats have a fixed headrest that's at an angle relative
to the seat. In the 'vette, the seats recline so the headrest is vertical.
In the Pantera, with the seats slid all the way aft, the headrest pokes me
in the upper back. I have to slide the seat forward several clicks to get
the back reclined enough that the headrest is vertical. The seats use up
much of the headroom gained by the dropped pans but removing the spring
support under the cushion coupled with a reclined position gets some of that
back. I'll have to wait until I drive the car awhile before I decide if the
position is comfortable enough. I did sit in a 2005 Ford GT and those seats
fit me very well but I bet those are very expensive.

BTW, I wasn't aware that Gary's seats use parts off the Pantera seats.
This caused me some grief when I went to install the new seats as my
old seats were in storage 400 miles away. I drove a 350 mile round trip
to borrow the parts from another Pantera owner only to learn that two
different length seat rails were used on early Panteras. Mine were the
long ones but the ones I borrowed were the short ones. The passenger side
seat looks like it would hit the emergency brake handle so I trimmed that
area. I've also got one of Kirk Evans bulkhead reduction kits on order
to allow the passenger seat to slide all the way back.

Dan Jones