With the tail panel out I figured it was time to slide the new trunk floor in and see how it fit. A significant piece of the car getting put back in place, if only to check fitment. Neat!
Except that there was no way it was going to “slide in” because the forward most edges of the trunk floor flares outward, slightly wrapping around the far side of both wheel housings. With the wheel housings still complete and firmly attached to the car there was no way to get the trunk in place. I suppose it’s a good thing that by this point I was planning on replacing both of the wheel housings anyway.
Initially I thought it would probably be a good idea to trim as little of the wheel housings off as possible, specifically to try and preserve the attachment points for the trunk lid mounts due to the rigidity and support they provide to what’s left of the back half of the car.
It was a nice thought but didn’t work out. It soon became apparent that the path of least resistance was to remove most of the inner half of each wheel housing.
That finally did the trick and with some ear-splitting metal-on-metal screeching I was able to slide the trunk floor into place for an initial fitment.
Overall it fit very well. It didn’t sit quite far enough forward so I will need to make some small modifications to allow me to push it further into the car so that the rear lines up with the ends of the quarter panels.
On the interior the trunk floor is about half an inch shorter than the original which I should be able to compensate for when I replace the floor pan without too much issue. The gap looks wider in the photo below because I had to remove a couple inches from the floor pan in order to break the original trunk floor free.
Now that I know the trunk floor looks like it will work there’s still a fair amount of work to do before I can start welding it in. The frame rails need to get cleaned up, I need to decide whether I’m replacing the shock support panel under the trunk, the trunk floor needs some small adjustments, and a zillion holes need to be drilled.