Today was a big day for progress on the interior. It was decided that I would be stripping the inteior and laying down a layer of Herculiner to hopefully subside any eventual rust on the body. The Jeep is in such a great shape that we were hoping for the best as far as hidden rust spots were concerned. After the doors and hard top were removed the first step was to remove the carpet and rear seat. This is a very easy task, its just a lot of fishing carpet around mounts and removing bolts.
When it came down to removing the rear seat, the first level of resistance was reached. Three out of the four bolts holding the front of the rear seat down snapped off. And they snapped off nearly flush with the surface. Getting them out will be still one of the hardest things to do.
Moving foward into the Jeep the front seats and carpet are removed. Here you can see the first glimpse at the floor rust. Like the rear seat there was some issue getting out the front seat. Two of the bolts proved to be rather difficult to remove, but came out after some finessing.
The rust on the driver side floor pan was initially viewed as horrible surface rust. As we chipped away at the rust, it was obvious that the floor would need to be replaced. There should be plenty of solid metal to weld a new section of sheet metal in place. Normally I would weld in a replacement panel, but I would much rather have this done over the weekend and not push the project back into the next week.
The rollcage bolts have been removed in the rear, and the cross bar was removed with the sound bar. Unfortunately four of the front bolts on the rollcage were sized, and stripped out several Torx sockets. We could not apply enough torque on the torx to remove the bolts. The solution was to purchase several cheap Torx sockets and weld one to each bolt. With a much larger cross section making contact with the bolt they broke loose easily with a 2 foot breaker bar.
At the auto parts store there was a same year Jeep Renegade with their top off and no doors. Copycat.
