I've removed the original, factory sound deadening material from both passenger and driver floors. My floors are quite solid, but I do have some rust pinholes (nothing bigger than a couple mm). I am trying to get the car back on the road and have decided to NOT tackle the dogleg rust or give her body paint at this time. I am building my motor right now and will be tackling the engine compartment/ front end rust and paint before installing the new motor. The rest of the body and rust issues will be dealt with a couple years from now. I won't be intentionally driving the car in the rain, but I DO live in the rainy PNW and will be driving the car to attend shows, meets, and club drives, so there is no way to guarantee that she won't get wet occasionally.

I am thinking that I will strip the floors down to bare metal, treat any remaining rust with a rust converter, prime and paint them and then use a Kilmat-type sound deadening mat over the pinholes and follow-up with a coat or two of spray undercoating from underneath to "sandwich" the pinholes. I think this will keep them sealed and from getting worse until I get around to welding new floors in at a later date.

Does this sound like a feasible "band-aid" or a stupid idea? Anybody actually done this?

Those holes will definitely grow in time. Personally, It’s a band aid. IMHO

I will be replacing the floor pans in the future, just want to be able to drive it for awhile without worrying that the rust is growing. I think this will be a decent temporary band-aid that won't exacerbate and grow into a bigger issue in the future. I retire in 5 years and then I will be able to devote the time, until then I really want to get back to enjoying the Z and the Z community!

I started out that way, but once I got down to bare metal, I found that there wasn't that much metal there. And then I found that the frame rails were also badly rusted. But if you can isolate your holes to areas away from the frame rails and get to bare metal on both top and bottom, I would be tempted to weld in a patch to see if I could avoid replacing the floor pans.

I think if you can get the metal fairly clean and treat the rust, this would buy you some time until you're ready to tackle it

On 9/7/2026 at 8:37 PM, Patcon said:

I think if you can get the metal fairly clean and treat the rust, this would buy you some time until you're ready to tackle it

I agree with Patcon, it will definitely buy you some time. How long depands if you keep it dry, it could last for years before you need to seriously think about replacing the floors. Just be careful when cleaning around the pinholes. Those pinholes are the result of rust creeping through the metal, so the surrounding metal can (most likely) be very thin in places.