black carpet swap/no dash removal- piece of cake!
 

I swapped out my carpet today, I have had this black carpet down in my basement for the last 5 years or so, maybe more?
I did not remove the dash. All in all I think the carpet can be swapped JUST FINE without taking the dash out.
I have my gauges in the dash, a bunch of stereo and amp wiring, aftermarket ECU is all under there, I just did not want to
bother. I was also afraid of plastics breaking.

So a simple slit with the razor knife to remove a inch or so of material from the console forward and a little
tuck here and there and I think it came out pretty good.

I think one could do this job in under a hour. I took longer because I had to re-route all my stereo wiring.
Since going turbo swap and relocating the battery my system was making alot of noise from running along side the 0 gauge
battery cable.

I have super lush black mats on order from Jason S, my seat brackets will be here this week so I can bolt my mazdaspeed seats in, I also ordered black/red stichted shift, e-brake, and center console lid leathers from Redline.

My camera fogged up a bit coming out of the AC office and into my hot shop.

http://robx-7.nopistons.com/d/3449-1/carpet+002.jpg

http://robx-7.nopistons.com/d/3452-1/carpet+003.jpg

very nice, I wanna do a black carpet swap badly

The carpet looks really good, and im digging the steering wheel as well.

wow that looks sexy with the gray interior.

I have been putting it off for so long because of the dash, reading things from people like
"you wont be happy with the carpet swap if you dont pull the dash", maybe if your a complete gorilla with a razor knife and go crazy slicing and dicing, but I found the little slit and material removed to be very easy to manage.

looks great Rob! did the sterio noise go away?

Now that's pretty tasty!

This is the first thread I looked at after spending 3 hours pulling and entire interior. Dash and carpet where the hardest parts. :(

It will go a lot faster next time. Yours looks great though!

Looking good as usual Rob!

we have had the seats out recently they came right out, I have to say this was by far one of the easiest modifications that I have been putting off.

Scrubbed, powerwashed, hung out in the sun to dry the carpet earlier in the day, was about 90 degrees so it dried right up, sprayed some industrial strength fabreeze on it every half our or so to get that old carpet smell out of it. The car this came out of must have been garage kept, the padding was in great shape and it did not smell at all.
When I got it from the car in the junk yard I was heart broken they were parting the car out, it was MINT.


Roan- would you believe after all that wire re-routing I forgot to turn the radio on to check it, car is covered up and sleeping again- will check it out when the seats come.

I think im going to do something custom with the door panels, might remove the gray perforated leather and replace it with something closer to my new seats, im actually really liking the black and gray, unless I come across a whole black interior locally im staying with the gray.

What exactly did you "slit" As in which part of the carpet area. Do you mean just in front of the console as in ash trey area?

you remove the actual center console, so thats no problem.
The only place you slit it is all the way up front, its best to do this AFTER you remove your
current carpet so that you know exactly what im talking about, its so simple when your doing it. Just cut a little bit at first, its easy to cut more later but you obviously cant add more if you cut too much

Oh ok. So I have this right, remove the carpet first, then cut it before putting it back in? And in theory you should be able to "slide" the carpet out from under the dash right?

correct, and by removing your old carpet before you cut your new one you get a good idea of what needs to be trimmed and tucked

i dunno why you wouldn't just remove the dash. The hardest part is getting that stupid defrost panel to come out and not shatter the thing in the middle into a million pieces.

If you take your time and pay attention you won't break anything and you'll end up having a much nicer install. I took the time to swap my carpet with the dash out cause I had a black dashboard to put in there as well.

between my stereo crap, gauges, aftermarket ECU wiring, vacuum lines, etc, and the fact that the original dash plastic is brittle and my dash dont move around now the decision was pretty easy on my part.

I also have mechanical gauges in my car which would have meant removing the senders from my engine, the water temp sender aint easy to get to thats for sure, plus its all loomed in with other wiring.

I defy anyone to inspect my car and tell the difference.


http://robx-7.nopistons.com/d/3554-1/mats2+001.jpg

I like the shiny black stereo and shifter piece. Did you just use a spary can? let me know i might try that on my car.

^^ forreals that looks clean^^

I sanded the s4 plastics, put about 5 coats of epoxy primer, sanded that again, and sprayed DuPont Imron on the plastic.

No spray cans used

I went a little overboard on my last car (pontiac) with the interior.....spraypaint isn't bad
lol


http://i139.photobucket.com/albums/q...0/100_0560.jpg


Good job with the carpet, I want to switch mine out when I do my overhaul