It's a unibody car so I can make the same critical component comments about that thin piece of sheet metal

I cut the floor, made a nice cover and its fine. I'll never have to drop the tank ever again. Done right, its no big deal. If you hack it to bits, then yeah, your are setting yourself up to fail.

Hole cut, edges deburred, primed and painted. Nutserts installed, cover shaped to fit the contours of the floor and wrap over the edges of the stamped sections for strength and to help locate it (shaping skills still a work in progress). Primed and painted both sides. Stainless button head hardware, some rubber on the back of the cover along the edges for sealing purposes and call it done. And yes there is room between the underside of the floor and the tank so nothing (nutserts etc.) will puncture or rub the tank over time.

No pointy self tapping single use sheet metal screws or pop rivets, no gobs of RTV, no drilling blindly or cutting through the top of the tank with the whizzer wheel and sparks flying, no plasma cutting, or red wrench. Just common sense and a little bit of planning and some effort will get you through and no one will be the wiser.

Chris

I remember draining the tanks from the pump well for vw's when my dealership used to fill up diesels w/gas (by accident)....and no, it wasn't me..

Wow

Saw pics of the '98 access panel. It's a bit larger than that.

Pic (obviously not mine):

http://i882.photobucket.com/albums/a...98fuelpump.jpg

i butchered mine up.

the question is if you care what people will say

But you would be incorrect. None of that thin sheet metal holds the chassis together. The front and rear sub-frame, braces, suspension, and body panels do. You could remove all the sheet metal from the area I crudely highlighted below without causing any structural issues to the car:

http://i.imgur.com/sAhOcLy.jpg
(disregard where I accidentally highlighted part of the front sub-frame where the trans crossmember mounts - you definitely need that)

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you can blindly take a saw to this entire area. You'd have to cut around a few factory braces and mounting points, but if you carefully removed just the sheet metal, the car would be as structurally sound as it was prior to you destroying it.

That car would at a minimum lose square. If not fold in half

You're going from one extreme to another. I don't really know how to prove this to you, but think about this... Do you think GM engineers would make an entire vehicle's chassis depend upon some flimsy sheet metal? Do you think this flimsy sheet metal, despite being able to bend it with your bare hands, is somehow simultaneously strong enough to hold your entire 3400lb car from "folding" in upon itself? Without this metal, your rear differential and k-member will bend, the sub-frame will collapse along with the bumpers/rad support, and your roof will form a V shape? That would be crazy... So just think about all these heavy-ass iron parts that connect to each other, they're what hold the car together. The crappy flimsy sheet metal is just there to separate you from the outside elements.

When it comes to the squareness of an f-body... It's probably not truly square to begin with nor was it when it came off the assembly line brand new.

No, they designed a whole car. Al the pieces depend on the other to maintain their structural integrity

Dead horse kicked enough