Carpet and Insulation

So, with the third brake light installed, I was ready for installing the carpet.

Recall that I removed the carpet in order to replace the interior insulation, which was very grungy and smelly. After installing all of the new insulation, it was time to replace the carpet.

From Q's House of Speed

This is pretty straightforward - just spread the carpet inside the car again. The tricky part is getting the side door sills to install correctly. To do this, one needs to reinstall the rubber trim around the doors. For some reason, the rubber trim seems to have shrunk a bit, and it would not fit all around the door sill. Further, it seems to be too thick, and it is very hard to slip into the groove onto which it fits. After a bit of struggle, I was able to get it close, but it still gets in the way of closing the door.

Sigh...

The door sill themselves were easy to install, though.

The carpet does not smell bad anymore. Which is a good thing. Next up - reinstall the heater box, seats, belts, and the car would be ready to go. Little did I know...

Long time, no driving...

It's been almost 6 months since my last post - time flies, doesn't it - and admittedly, I have not made as much progress since then. Yes, the car still is not running, the interior is not done, and there is no sign of having the car running any time soon - just like last time.

But I figured I'd update the blog and show where I'm going.

As you might recall, I needed to repair the heater core, as it was leaking coolant onto the pedal box. To do all this, I gutted out the interior carpetting, center console, and all the insulation associated with it. The plan was as follows:

- replace old/grimy insulation with something newer
- clean carpet and reinstall
- repair heater core and reinstall
- refurbish center console, and reinstall.

Well, I am still stuck in step one - replace insulation.

But before reinstalling the insulation, I had to deal with the bent jacking support, which had bent into the driver side floor pan. I took the car to Group 2, and they basically hammered the floor pan back into shape for me. It is not super strong, but for now, the repair is sufficient. The good news: the rocker/sill is perfectly good and strong, so structurally, the car is in good shape.

So, on to the insulation:

First, I cleaned up all the interior, basically lots of vacuum cleaning and good-ol' water and rags. The hammering of the driver side floor pan left a few spots with no paint, so I covered that area with Wurth Undercoating paint. This helps keep rust at bay, and it even helps with noise deadening! (Not that the localized application helps with that at all.)

Next, I started installing rubberized asphalt + aluminum sheets from B-Quiet over in Canada. Their Extreme product is similar to Dynamat, but at about half the cost. Since I saved so much money (right...) I also purchased their V-Comp product. The asphalt layer helps dampen vibration, while the V-Comp absorbs noise.

Installing the rubberized asphalt sheets is painstaking - a real pain in the butt (and the neck, back, arms, stomach, and legs. Seriously.) It is important to minimize any air pockets left between the sheets and the car body. To accomplish this, I cut lots of smaller pieces (about 6" x 18" sections) and pasted them inside the car. I started around the edges, worked my way up to the firewall, and finished the floor sections last. Using a wooden roller (and its handle for detail work) helps tremendously, but it still takes lots of work. I estimate I spent about 24 labor hours working on this.

A single 50 sq. ft. roll was sufficient for the job. The results look nice (so far.)

And that's all I've done so far.

Next up, I need to install the V-comp product. I ended up buying two 13.5 sq. ft. sheets for this task. This will not provide enough material, but I'll make sure to paste it onto the firewall, and the driver and passenger side floor sections. Any leftover material will be used around the transmission tunnel section, and then on the driveshaft tunnel section. I've already cut the pieces - I made templates out of newspaper, and cut to match - but I have not test-fitted them. I am very curious to see how it all comes out.

A few notes on this whole noise insulation thing:
- Again, this is very tedious work - especially in the cramped confines of my one-car garage. I see these kinds of material installed onto cars on TV shows all the time. They never say how long this takes - now I know why.
- The material is a bit messy - the rubberized asphalt leaves marks all over your clothes, hands, and skin. It's not too bad, but one has to be careful not to stain any parts of the house (e.g. the shower floor) when you are done working. (Don't ask me how I know...)
- The stuff is heavy. I estimate I'll be adding about 60lbs to the total weight of the car. On the plus side, it's fairly low in the car, but still, 60lbs cannot be a good thing.
- And I still don't know how well this stuff works. The GTV is a noisy car by nature, so I might be completely wasting my time with this. We'll find out soon enough.

Next up: A light detour...

Carpet comes out.

With the heater core and center console removed from the car, I started thinking that removing the carpet would be faily straightforward. This runs counter to the "do only one project at a time" rule, but a few things became clear while working under the dashboard:

1) The interior carpet is pretty dirty
2) The insulation under the carpet looks old and ratty (at least, near the edges)
3) The carpet smells pretty bad. Actually, very bad...


Removing the driver and passenger seats involves removing four fasteners per seat. These fasteners are round-headed allen wrench types, and require a 7mm (?) allen wrench to remove. Once all four fasteners are removed, fold the seat and remove from the car. My seats were spaced with four 15mm or so plastic spacers. Make sure not to lose those.




The passenger seat worked the same way. However, due to space constraints, I had to remove it through the driver side. Although nothing bad happened, I would recommend not doing this if possible - it is annoying and difficult to get a good handle on things.



Removing the seatbelts was also very straightforward. I only removed the bottom anchors andleft the top anchor fastened to the side rear wall. My belts are old and somewhat frayed, so I think I'll replace those also.


The door sill trim plates do not need to be removed completely, but they need to be loosened up so that one can pull out the carpet from under them. They are held in place by four metal sheet screws. On my car, the screws use a square thread on the head, which required a few trips to the hardware store to get the proper-sized square key.

The E-brake boot comes out by pulling it. In the process, the boot itself fell apart. Again, another thing to replace. I may also pull out the e-brake assembly, just to clean it and refurbish it. Again, scope creep makes an appearance.

The rear seat plates are these L-strips of chromed metal which are screwed in place in the rear. Removing them is straightforward, but the strips' edges are sharp, and I ended up cutting myself ("it's just a flesh wound!") Very annoying!


Once all this is done, one just pulls out the carpet. The carpet is a single shaped piece, so pulling it requires a bit of finesse. Start from the farthest edge, pull back and fold towards yourself, then pull the near edges, fold away towards the rest of the carpet, and pull the whole "roll" out of the car.

Removing the carpet uncovered the insulation batting underneath. In my car, this looked very nasty - dirty, rusty, dusty, and just plain old. The batting seems to be made of cloth fabric, with a layer of bitumen/tar on top. My impression was that it was a pretty good quality piece, kinda like 40 year-old dynamat, with a 3/4 inch layer of fabric attached to it.
However, pulling the insulation batting would cause the top bitumen layer to crack. It also unleashed a dust storm inside the car. (Take the proper precautions if you ever do this.)

After trying to remove the insulation carefully, I realized I'd be throwing the old thing away anyways, as it was way too dirty and smelly, and the cracking of the bitumen was pretty much widespread. So I just started pulling the stuff without much regard for reusing it. It all folded compactly, and ended up going straight to the trash bag.

Underneath, I found a few things:
1) Lots of dirt - mostly dust from the insulation batting. I had to vaccum-clean and use wet rags to clean up the interior, and it came out OK.
2) No rust, just fresh red paint. This is good news, as any major rust under the carpeting would require major rebuilding measures
3) A bent floor pan area at the driver side foot well. This occured a few months back, when the driver side jacking point bent inwards. This will require a few strong sledge whacks, some welding, and a bit of paint. Fortunately, this all happens under the car, so the visible finish will not be affected.


After all this was done, I re-installed the driver seat. This allows me to drive the car in its current half-baked state. The interior looks a bit like a race car's, and driving it is even noisier. But this will allow me to drive the car to the shop to repair the jacking point/bent floorpan, and in case I need their help with anything else.