There is quite a bit of room under the baggage floor that is unused. I have seen several people talk about using this are for various things on their websites. Some of them have added doors and that is what I decided I would do. I wanted the door to be large enough for a quart of oil to go through easily and decided on 5" x 12" for the opening size.
For reinforcement around the opening I cut in the baggage floor I used .032 aluminum and cut it as large as I could and still get it to fit cleanly between the ribs. I left a 1/2" ledge of this .032 on three sides for the door to rest on with the hinge on the remaining side.
To cut the hole in the floor and the hole in the reinforcement piece I decided to make a couple of plywood templates and use a router which PK has already demonstrated as being very effective.
Here is an image of the templates. One has been cut and is laying on the other one which has the corners drilled.
Here is the second one ready to final cut the sides after roughing it out with my jig saw.
The jig was fastened to the baggage floor pan with double sided tape. I then used a flush cut router bit to make the cut.
After getting the opening cut I laid out the rivet lines and marked the hole locations. This gave me a great appreciation for those who built or are building the plales that are not matched drilled. Thank you Van!
Once I got the holes drilled I clecoed it all together and here is what I have.
Now I just have to figure out how I want to do the hinges and make the lids out of .025.
Like I said this is my first deviant behavior and I can see it does add to the build time. I spent a little over 8 hours just on the above and still am not done. I figure I will have about 15 hours in it by the time I am done.
Disclaimer: I am not recommending anyone else try this, if you do you should look into the structural issues yourself.
Using the router to make the cut looks like a good idea.
CJ