11/30/2003: I Hate Captured Nuts
6 bolts hold on a plate that goes below the driveshaft tunnel, supporting the driveshaft center bearing and the emergency brake mechanism. Unfortunately, the nuts on the other side of the floor are inside of the seat mounting rails, and are just captured nuts, held by flimsy sheet metal boxes, which easily bent, letting the nuts spin.
Although two bolts were missing and one did come out on its own, the remaining 3 just spun no matter what I tried to do.
After trying to figure out how to hold the spinning nuts, I finally just gave up and used a cut-off wheel on an angle grinder and cut off the heads of the remaining 3 bolts.
Success! The plate is finally off!
I’ll have to remove the rest of the cut-off bolts and messed up nut cages when I repair the floor. I expect i’ll just drill access holes in the seat rails and use normal nuts when I reassemble this. It should be less troublesome.