@Gordon Nichols and @Stan Galat - I think it was originally done to provide a flat foor for carpeting and a clean base for seats - I'm guessing there might be discrepancies in floor height if people shortened the chassis in differing ways. This way, the floor would be a consistent height for the seat rails. Perhaps it's a legacy from Buggy builds of the 70s? Or it could be, as Mitch says, simply a way if incorporating wood somewhere so that something can rot instead of rust!
However, I've sized up the seats without the wood floor and it's a no for a couple of reasons.
- Without the wooden floor, the seat is TOO low. I can barely see over the bonnet. This is because the seat runners are set low on the seat, so there's only about 1.5" between the floor and the seat base. I would need to fabricate taller seat mounts to balance things out.
- The way the Chesil is designed, there's around a 2" ridge parallel to the floor that sits tightly over the plywood. If I remove the wood, I'd have to shave this metal part of the subframe down to not interfere with the seats and carpeting.
It's obviously a design feature that simply has to be accepted. So I'll be buying some fresh plywood tomorrow and crack on with cutting out some new boards - I'll split them in two (front/back) just forward of the seat mounting holes, so I can fit them without removing the body. This will still work in terms of keeping the seat mounting safe.
However, as usual, I'm finding more issues that are more problematic and/or dangerous with a second-hand replica than a production saloon. It just goes to show (as all of you know) that some people who are not mechanically minded and are buying these on BAT because they're trendy and pretty are potentially buying deathtraps. More so in the UK because any car built before 1973 doesn't need an MOT (yearly test of roadworthiness). Even an MOT doesn't necessarily pick up problems either, so the tyres rubbing against brake hoses, chafed oil cooler hose, loose body mountings, dodgy steering crush cage, all the oil over the gearbox and the leaking CV joint throwing grease everywhere - none of these were picked up in the MOT the PO got before selling the car.
If you read a previous post of mine berating the state of the UK kit car market back in the 90s, you'll see why I have this opinion - some of the welds on this car are pitiful. Huge blobs, some unwelded gaps, none of the lumpiness ground down to be smooth, no primer or any kind of rust proofing paint before a quick squirt of sealant is smoothed over to cover up any ugliness.. Hence the rust you see here - perhaps the wood is in place merely to hide the rust?? ;-) Thank goodness quality control has got better in recent years.
So, I found a significant number of bolts between chassis and subframe are loose - no wonder the car shuddered and clonked over bumps. All duly tightened - I'm so looking forward to seeing how this car drives once finished!
The new CV joints and driveshafts arrived in the post today - it was almost as cheap and far easier to buy an entire driveshaft with both CV joints for £91 (about $121) rather than buying two CV joint kits and doing all the disassembling/reassembling. And of course it made sense to buy both rather than just the one that had thrown grease. So I'll fit them at some point in the next week.
One bit of great news is the Dellorto Super Performance manual finally arrived - I'd been hunting for three months in the UK before one finally turned up on Ebay. So I'll be using this when I get to grips with the DRLAs. :-)