1970 Front Pan Alignment
 

I am in the process of replacing the front pan on my 1970 911T. I have it in place and am ready to tack it. I want to get the alignment as close as possible.

Any tricks for getting the pan into the exact position before beginning welding?


David Nolen

1970 911T

In the manual, sections 50 or 8 - I can't remember which they are called - is an illustration showing measurement points on the bottom of the pan and an accompanying table of those measurements. At the tops of the pages is "Floor Panel Assembly Dimensions." That's what I used to check the alignment on mine. At the bottoms of the pages are: 30.1 - 1/2 & 30.1 - 1/3. Hope this helps & there will probably somebody who will chime in to clarify it. I only have copies of the pages right now to look at.

Run a string from behind the car to well in front of the car picking up the centerline of the car (there are plugs in the data points and the engine case parting line should be in the center at the rear. You will need this line to be lower than your work to clear all the obstacles. That will necessitate "plumbing up" to make your marks. Then, measure from the bosses where the cross member bolts up forward to the pan bosses and diagonally as well. And hope your car has not been hit and out of square as when you do all of this you might find some distressing facts. I hope not, because if those points all line up and check out, you're good to go.

Don't forget to get the front bosses level to the car. That's almost more important than a perfect alignment. The reason for this is that there are compensations for aligning the front end if the thing is bolted up a bit out of square, but not for the grief you will get if one side is higher than the other side(other than a stack of washers, which ain't cool).

Thanks.

In some ways, this one should be fairly straight forward. The gas tank support was in good shape (the pan was done before) and is being reused, so the height of the front bosses should be OK. The crossmember was not removed either, so I guess I just need to get the pan situated to make the front bosses square with the crossmember.

Let me know if my thinking is OK or off base.

I just did mine, and I measured from the bolts that mount the steering rack crossmember to the closest t-bar mounting hole on the opposite side, in an X pattern. With these two measurements identical, the geometry is far closer than necessary. I also mounted the A-arms before tacking the pan in to confirm full range of movement without binding.

Thanks...That's what I'm going to do.


David Nolen