We vacuumed out and cleaned the support rails under the floor, masked them off, and then sprayed them with rustproofing to ensure they continue to last for years.
The factory spot-welded the floorboards in place. While we do have a spot welder, we don’t have the 6-foot arms required to get these installed. A good approximation of spot-welding is plug-welding. It’s safe, secure, and ultimately looks a lot like spot-welding when finished. We can even duplicate the look of spot-welds if necessary after the fact. We punched 5/16″ holes along the perimeter of the floorboards and then laid them in place to mark the support rails from below.
After marking the position of the rails we drilled additional holes where our punch would not fit. We cleaned the areas near the holes to ensure a clean weld and then laid them in place for the last time.
All plug-welded in and ready for grinding. Lots of grinding.