Before I install the carpet...

I ran my rear wiring harness (lights,etc) along the outside of the driver's floorboard.  I also ran a small bundle of engine wires (tach, coil, starter solenoid, etc) with the battery cable along the passenger side tunnel.  

Your harness may be a little different, I built my own.  But you should have a branch that needs to go to the rear and along the outer driver's floor is an appropriate location. Make sure you use rubber grommets at all the penetrations, steel and fiberglass will both eventually damage the wires.   Also it is a good idea to include an extra wire in the harness...you never know what you may need in the future.  Jmho.

James

" Also it is a good idea to include an extra wire in the harness...you never know what you may need in the future. "

Actually, based on vast experience, I would run three 12 gauge extra wires.  

Ya nevah know........   And it's a LOT easier now than it will ever be.

I wish there was a video or something out there to help with this wiring madness and carpet install.

I test fitted the carpet this morning and it's not going to be easy. German weave is not easy to work with.

Should I remove the pedal assembly, shifter and e-brake??

Any recommendations on glue? I did a test piece using 3M 90 glue and it sticks pretty well to the dynomat...

Longfella,

I don't know what kind of Speedster you are carpeting.  I went through that a couple of years ago and used a carpet set from Vintage ---my car is a VS.  I did get a set from another mfg. but it didn't fit like the vs one does.  I have looked at the carpet sample book for IM Cars at Carlisle  and their stuff is beautiful.  What brand did you buy?

I'd suggest that before you install your carpet that you slather the pan with a thick coat of the  black rubberized truck bed liner which will deaden sound plus repel water.  Then over that I'd install Dynomat which changed my life on trips ---the sound deadening is sensational.  Inside  the doors and at the rear over the package tray to stop the engine noise.   The "thunk" sound when I close the car door is quite nice and sounds like high quality rather than tinny.

After the bed liner and the Dynomat install the carpet using the 3-m product in the green spray can---good stuff and easy to work with.

Good luck with your project and share some photos with us!

ps---I didn't remove the pedal assembly---just worked around it----same for the snifter.

Jack wrote: "ps---I didn't remove the pedal assembly---just worked around it----same for the snifter."

Yes, it's true......Iron-Butt Jack  doesn't drink tea often, but when he does, he drinks from a Waterford Snifter.  Carpeting around the base must have been a chore....

I've carpeted around the pedal cluster, too.  I only remove the pedals if there's no way in the green Earth to do it any other way.

Actually, ALL of Jacks comments are right on.  And read the 3M can before use - it will tell you to spray both surfaces being mated and then let the stuff tack up and THEN put them together.  You get 2-3 tries at moving stuff and then,  you're stuck.

Here comes my stepping stool..... DO use good ventilation when gluing 3M 90 and other automotive chemicals are extremely toxic. Everyone laughs at getting almost high off the stuff but over time it will leach into your kidneys and bladder with a no so good result that can get ugly. For now,  we'll skip what that stuff does to your brain.

Jack Crosby posted:

Longfella,

I don't know what kind of Speedster you are carpeting.  I went through that a couple of years ago and used a carpet set from Vintage ---my car is a VS.  I did get a set from another mfg. but it didn't fit like the vs one does.  I have looked at the carpet sample book for IM Cars at Carlisle  and their stuff is beautiful.  What brand did you buy?

I'd suggest that before you install your carpet that you slather the pan with a thick coat of the  black rubberized truck bed liner which will deaden sound plus repel water.  Then over that I'd install Dynomat which changed my life on trips ---the sound deadening is sensational.  Inside  the doors and at the rear over the package tray to stop the engine noise.   The "thunk" sound when I close the car door is quite nice and sounds like high quality rather than tinny.

After the bed liner and the Dynomat install the carpet using the 3-m product in the green spray can---good stuff and easy to work with.

Good luck with your project and share some photos with us!

ps---I didn't remove the pedal assembly---just worked around it----same for the snifter.

 

 

 

Hey Jack - Great info! The 3M product I tested was the green can version. You definitely do not get a lot of time to play around with the carpet, but it stuck the test piece to the dynomat really well.

Both the bottom and the top of the pan have rubberized truck bed liner. The top part is fully covered in dynomat, including the doors (I also added stuffing inside the doors before the panels went on.

My build is based and sourced from VS. I started a little over a year ago on it. The carpet kit is from the same maker Kirk uses, but I upgraded to German square weave which is turning out to be a PITA to work with. The kit seems pretty close, but I know I'll have a challenge around the steering column, pedals, and shifter... the pieces are not "perfect" and I never seen a set installed... just pictures I took when I visit VS from time to time...

This will be my first time carpeting a car :/

Alan Merklin posted:

Here comes my stepping stool..... DO use good ventilation when gluing 3M 90 and other automotive chemicals are extremely toxic. Everyone laughs at getting almost high off the stuff but over time it will leach into your kidneys and bladder with a no so good result that can get ugly. For now,  we'll skip what that stuff does to your brain.

The area will be WELL ventilated. I've been around Kirks shop when they use the DAP industrial strength contact cement and it is nasty stuff...

Kirks build book has pictures of the carpet and which order to do them in, but it doesn't give you much details about "where" they go and what additional cuts/trimming you need to do. This is one step I don't want to mess up. I don't want to cut the wrong piece and have to purchase a replacement... German square weave isn't cheap!

Forgot to mention, the carpet kit I got came with padding. I'm assuming it goes where your feet reside, but there are two other long narrow strips of padding I have no idea where they go... :/

If anybody can snap some photos of various interior carpet shots that would be greatly appreciated!

Areas needed: Front firewall area up under the dash, door panel area, rear section under seat, both sections under your floor mats...

Thanks in advance!

Funny thing happened, I used the search feature and drilled down to 2008 and it made me laugh. The amount of people puzzled by VS' carpet kit was great. I'm guessing it's one of those once you do it once it all makes sense... LOL!

I've also found that the NAPA version of the 3M carpet adhesive isn't worth a Tinker's Dam.  Very little life in the "stick-um".

Gordon Nichols posted:

I've also found that the NAPA version of the 3M carpet adhesive isn't worth a Tinker's Dam.  Very little life in the "stick-um".

The other brand I looked at (have not tested it) is DAP's Contact Cement in the can (you brush on). It is not the industrial version... not sure how to get that...

Gordon Nichols posted:

I've also found that the NAPA version of the 3M carpet adhesive isn't worth a Tinker's Dam.  Very little life in the "stick-um".

The Permatex equivalent isn't bad, but it's only 3 bucks a can cheaper than 3M, which everybody knows works. Since I'm not carpeting 75 cars a year, it's hard to see why I'd use something else, but my inner tight-wad has won out on more than one occasion.

3M. It works. 

The DAP contact cement is pretty good stuff and I've used it in a number of different applications.  The Green can is a water-based, (I think), which sticks well, too - it's holding my convertible top to the windshield header.

The DAP red can stuff is something-other based and sticks really well, too, and I've used it for much larger areas where I could brush it on.  90% of the time, though, I just use the 3M in the green can.

3M  90  can cost as much as $22 in a local hardware store best price is at  Lowe's for $13.

That 3-M 90 adhesive is also good for re-sticking things that come loose like the rubber that surrounds the engine compartment and the rubber along the outside of what I'd call the "running board",  where my left foot will brush against that rubber piece and detach  it . Both of those are a constant nuisance and often need re-attaching.  Spraying those makes a big mess so get some cheap paint brushes, spray a few ounces of glue in a container and brush it on rather than spray it.

Gordon is right---apply it to both sides and let it get tacky.  Masking tape is good to use for holding  things together  until the glue cures.

As Gordon mentioned, the DAP Weldwood Contact Cement "The Original", in a can, works very well and is good for applications where you need to use a brush instead of spray.  Make sure you get the red can that says "The Original".  Also, make sure both sides are completely cured (15-20 mins) before sticking them together. 

I have also found that hot glue is useful for small places like the corners of carpet, rubber trim, etc.

James

Whatever works, right?

Years ago my company had a customer who complained that our smallest storage system made too much noise (??) so I sent a person out to their site in Cambridge, Ma, to see what was going on.  Our system there was small(-ish) but still had 24, 5-1/4" disks spinning inside so I suppose it made some noise, but you could never hear it running in a "normal" data center.  What she found was this:

It was a small company, just down the street from MIT, that had grown like crazy in less than a year and they had run out of space months before.   The only place they had to put our system was in the (unisex) rest room.  I guess that when you're sitting right next to it in a nice, quiet restroom and reflecting on life, it made a lot of noise.   So, with one of the mechanical designers talking her through a potential fix,  she went out to Home Depot, got a big sheet of shop floor mat (the stuff people stand on at a workbench ) and a can of red Dap contact cement and glued sheets of the floor mat onto the inside of the cabinet panels.  That dropped the noise level by almost a third.  Life reflections went on unabated.

Was the next service call about how it "suddenly quit working" after they drilled holes into it to mount the toilet paper holder?

Justin:  LMAO!!!!!!!!!    

It probably should have been, but they got the system in January of that year.  When the summer rolled around with a lot warmer temperatures, the heat output of that box (roughly a constant 12,000 btu's) was enough to turn the comfortably warm restroom during the winter into a sauna during the summer.

I wonder what "Cousin Eddy" would have said.

BTW:  At about $250,000 per system, that was probably the most expensive "Kleenex" box stand of all time......

Gordon Nichols posted:

Justin:  LMAO!!!!!!!!!    

It probably should have been, but they got the system in January of that year.  When the summer rolled around with a lot warmer temperatures, the heat output of that box (roughly a constant 12,000 btu's) was enough to turn the comfortably warm restroom during the winter into a sauna during the summer.

I wonder what "Cousin Eddy" would have said.

BTW:  At about $250,000 per system, that was probably the most expensive "Kleenex" box stand of all time......

The sh$$@rs full!

Hey, Justin!  I just thought of another story:  Customer calls our local support office (the customer happened to be in France) and said that they had an "Environmental issue".  

WTF?!?!?!?  

So a field tech runs out to the site where they had a bunch of larger systems (each about the size of a kitchen refrigerator at about $1.2 million a pop) all in a row in a Data center, except that one of the systems is lying on it's face in a hole in the raised floor of the data center, where it landed after falling through the hole opened up by one of their techs during some equipment moves.

It was still running perfectly, lying there in the hole.

"What should we do?" they asked the tech, who promptly called the crises center in the middle of Corporate Engineering (literally - right in the middle of the building).   A bunch of us get into the center where we can dial in to any box world wide and see what's going on, and call the box.......  It responds immediately and the syslog shows the system impact (we could, btw, also detect earthquakes all over the world because the boxes "call home" whenever they had a big, system or disk event happen).  The system recovery and RAID5 file recovery executed as programmed and it was still running as if nothing had happened.  We told the tech to leave the system as it was (since it was running just fine) and ask when their next maintenance period was scheduled and plan to be there then, shut the system down in an orderly manner, put it back upright (with good floor panels under it) and then bring it back up and online.   I can't find that photo, but we all got a kick out of it.

I must have hundreds of stories like this.

Proving once again that every day in every way, shyt happens.