Really floored

Once upon a time, I replaced the floor pans on the Beetle.  It was a big affair, Dad and I pulled the body off the pan.  At the time, it was also the only car I had, which means WI winters.  Seven years down the road, I stepped through the Drivers's floor.  Last time I had the Beetle out, I fixed that.  Not surprisingly, the passengers side is pretty rusty too, so I decided to fix it.  Instead of cutting grinding, welding, and cursing, I decided to use the Jeff Tanko Glasspatch(patent pending).  Ive used it with great success many times.  Basically, you just layer fiberglass over the swiss cheesed rusty metal.  It may seem like two-bit hackery, but it works, and works well.  The fiberglass resin bonds well to the rough rusty surface, and seals it off from moisture.  I used the Jeff Tanko Glasspatch(patent pending) on one of the inner fenders on the Mighty Caprice™  four winters ago, and it's still holding as good as the day I did it. 

The first step is to prep the metal.  A wire brush on an angle grinder works well.  Any clean metal gets ground so the fiberglass sticks. You can see in this pic the holes in the front floor section. 

Next comes the 'glass.  I put four layers over the whole floor, two cloth, two mat, and ending up with around 1/4" of fiberglass over the whole thing.  I also ran the glass up around the sides to bond the floor pan with the rest of the body.

Though rusty, the rear of the floor actually had most of it's metal still there, and I want to keep it from rusting more.  The inside is taken care of, the outside, not so much.  After a through wire brushing, this is what we're left with:

Remember how I said I love brushed on Rustolium?  Once again, I'm using it as my not so secret weapon.  To be really effective, it has to go on thick.  I used a roller, and used an entire quart to coat the floor.  Between the Jeff Tanko Glasspatch(patent pending) and the Rustolium, the floor in the Beetle should be good for many years to come :)