was tearing out the interior of my GS today to clean up some wiring, and thinking of swapping the carpet my SE into it. anyways i can see swapping the rear part (shifter to bin section) easy enough, but shifter forward looks like the dash has to come off?

anyone managed to swap the front carpet without yanking the dash?

 

Yes, but it's tricky. Take out the radio and surround, you will find a bracket that holds the console part of the dash to the floor hump. Remove the bracket, shifter and armrest, then slide the carpet out.

 

I know that on 79-83 you can take off the dash panels around the shifter. Then, underneath all of that you can see where the sheet metal dash frame bolts to the transmission tunnel with a u-shaped bracket. There are four 10mm bolts that you can take out, 2 on the sides, 2 on the bottom. Doing this will free up this bracket and you can pull it out of there. Then pull all the carpet towards the rear of the car. It should slide out underneath all of the junk hidden under the dash.

Also, I can't remember how the 84-85 dashes are made. It also works well sometimes if you cut a slit in the carpet underneath the dash. It is easy to hid when you re-install it, and can really make it much easier to remove the carpet. If you don't see what I have described above, then this may be your best option...

Jamie

 

Proceedure works the same for S3-S4 carpet, probably the S5s too.