X2 on what Gordon is saying-- I'd not put it back in at all.
Without it you'll sit lower in the car, which is a good thing, unless you're 4 foot tall.
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Remember, guys, the Chesil is an English car.
It was born on the Dorset coast.
I think the wood is there to absorb moisture from the air and to encourage mold, which, in time, imparts that unmistakable British character to a car. You just can't do that with fiberglass.
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Not that we haven’t tried to get moldy fiberglass at a number of Carlisle gatherings... 
Had old '59 MGA - plywood floors too.
@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. :-)
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Martin wrote: “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.”
I’ve been saying that for a while, but then I’m inherently lazy and don’t like axle boot replacement. 
There has been our share of home built cars over here, too, often done as a family effort without the benefit of good mechanic experience. @Alan Merklin has seen his share of those, others, too. And then there are those others built at home that are superbly done. Kind of a toss-up.
Look on the bright side, though, Martin.... Once you finish, it will be done RIGHT! (And then you can be like some of us, coaching others through their build!)
At least by the time I’ve finished this one I’ll know pretty much everything I’ll need to know about Chesil Speedsters for when I buy my next one..
@Gordon Nichols I’m with you - axle boots are messy at the best of times, so for a little more money the reduced hassle and peace of mind is worth it.
Oh, and @Gordon Nichols don’t forget this was a factory build. Most home builds I’ve seen are far better quality - they take the time to get it right and don’t do shortcuts. At least in England. I can’t comment on US factory builds..
@Martin's Eleven (UK) posted:Oh, and @Gordon Nichols don’t forget this was a factory build. Most home builds I’ve seen are far better quality - they take the time to get it right and don’t do shortcuts. At least in England. I can’t comment on US factory builds..
Let's hope Westfield Sportscars Ltd is doing a better job building them now that they purchased Chesil.
@Martin's Eleven (UK) posted:@Gordon Nichols I’m with you - axle boots are messy at the best of times, so for a little more money the reduced hassle and peace of mind is worth it.
Good thing it's a VW. The Cayman axles are upwards of $800-900. But the boots are $8 each. I guess I'll be swapping my just-starting-to-crack boots. All four will be replaced in the spring.
Martin, your car is going to be fine, your work ethic will get you through. You're doing great.
I could be wrong, @Robert M , but I think one of the reasons of the purchase by Westfield would have been to increase professionalism and quality of the commercial offering. As they’ve shown with their Westfield 7s, there’s a ready market for quality, ready-built versions of what originally was a kit offering only. I’m sure that’s the way the market is heading. But that will have knock-on benefits for us tinkerers too - better spare parts supply, better engineering design etc.
Thanks for your kind words @DannyP (and the rest of you guys!) - helps keep me going when I’m lying on the floor in 3C/37F garage temp skinning my knuckles! A UK garage built in approx 1970 (the house was built 1928) is not known for being draught-proof or easy to heat.
I built my current garage (my second in five houses) back in 2006-ish. Nice smooth concrete floor, no drafts, insulated but no heat (yet). Unfortunately, the insulation moderates the temp inside where it's often colder in than out. Right now, at 11am in New England, it's the same temp inside as your place (3C/37F) - Must be why they call this "New" England, right?
Just got my car up on jack stands a couple of days ago as I'm doing some mods to the gas heater control circuitry. The heater's in the nose of the car so half the time I get to sit on a roll-around shop stool and the other half I'm lying under the dash. 
That whole under-dash thing gets old quickly when you're my age.
So what do you do when you're not spanning on the car, and did Portsmouth get hit by Storm Filomenia as Spain did?
Gordon, humidity is a pain in a garage and it adds to the coldness IMO.
I have an insulated garage and I have been heating it for the last 2-3 years with an overheat heater on 220v . It is doing the job but I often think of running pex in or on the floor and a water heater to heat the 24x24 garage.
Covidly speaking we redid our master washroom and added pex and water heating under the tiles, the floor is really nice and warm and dampness is non existent.
I got fed up working under the car with so much stuff in the way so took the exhaust off this afternoon. It takes up so much space it’ll make getting to other parts, such as driveshafts and valve clearances so much easier, as well as giving me a chance to check the exhaust over and clean it up - as you can see it’s covered in burnt oil from the numerous leaks this car has had in the past.
It’s very light weight - the whole system weighs less than my Volvo muffler. Thin wall stainless. I’m intrigued now so will weigh it this week.
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Sidewinder, basically. That's a good header.
@Gordon Nichols luckily for us we missed the snow. It’s been bitterly cold for a fortnight now which is unusual for us - normally weather changes after a week. It’s a very damp cold though, which always feels so much worse. I was in Calgary once on business (QSound) and it was -35C but weirdly it didn’t feel as cold as UK, but every time I breathed in, the inside of my nose crinkled like the black crackle dash on an MG. The damp is the problem in the garage so I have a dehumidifier but that only really works above 8C.
Outside of spannering, I work in digital health. I’m semi-retired/consulting a few days a week now but worked for the NHS for 10years until last January. I helped create and ran all the interactive health tools on the NHS website, including the BMI Calculator and Heart Age Test (which tells you your heart age compared to your real age). I’ve been in digital since ‘86 when I worked for an Atari ST magazine before joining MicroProse (which had its US HQ in Hunt Valley, MD) during its glory years of the ‘90s to work on the World Circuit Grand Prix sim (amongst others). Happy days!
Cleaning up the exhausts, I spot this:
Cylinders 3 and 1
Cylinders 4 and 2
hmm, I knew the Dellortos were seriously out of whack but I’ll have to keep an eye on this. Obviously I’ve still to check valve clearances and check the Porsche-style fan shroud is working correctly. Is this just fuelling or do I need to look for something else? 4 and 2 look very lean, they’re almost clean inside, whereas 3 and 1 are very sooty.
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It looks like you said, which is often just a mixture screw adjustment. It also looks like no gaskets were used between the heads and exhaust flanges. I have copper re-usable gaskets, the same ones since 2005. Pretty durable I'd say. I don't know if they're still available.
There were gaskets between headers and exhaust flanges, but they were pretty much disintegrated, hence the leaks. Also the entire exhaust is push fit with no paste to seal gaps, so there are a few small leaks along the way. It seems a good system though as @edsnova mentioned above. I just need to make it a fraction quieter. I'll look into copper gaskets - thanks for the tip @DannyP.
Back in the interior, I've got the plywood on order (since lockdown we can't 'click and collect' large items, so it has to be delivered) to make the floorboards. Once those are in, the interior can be reassembled until such time as I can get it to the trimmers to redo the carpet and torn seats. The red carpet and red seats is overkill IMO (a bit 1970's shagpile boudoir, rather than crisp Germanic four weave primness), and the reds don't quite match, so I'm heading towards a beige/oatmeal carpet and keeping the door trims and seats red. That should lighten up the interior considerably and make it more functional and less lush! (examples are here and here). It should go well with the black body.