Seats and Carpets

I spent the weekend carpeting the inside of the car and then fitting the seats.  I wanted to get these jobs finished before I dropped the car onto the ground when access to the underside becomes more challenging.

No problems fitting the carpets, but keeping the glue off them was very tricky.   I think that the winning formula is to start at the bottom and work up, covering the carpets with paper / cardboard once they are in place.

Finished result:

I also fitted the stainless steel trim to the front footwells.  The trim is profiled so that it fits the entire width of the car and fits around the base of the vertical chassis member on the outside edges:

As soon as I had fitted the rivets, I realised that it would look much better if the rivets were fitted from the footwell into the front face of the trim.  Must remember this for next time!

Once the carpets were done, I trimmed the excess carpet edges along the centre tunnel and around the crescent panels.  After this, the aluminium tunnel covers were trimmed to fit:

The adjoining edges needed some attention to ensure that they were parallel and the width of the handbrake slot needed increasing to stop the handbrake microswitch from fouling as the lever is raised or lowered:

Once trimmed to shape, they were all covered with the leatherette material and attached into rivnuts with some black Allen head bolts:

I need to wait until the gearbox is in place before I can cut the hole in the centre panel.

A note on fitting rivnuts: I found it neater to fit them after the carpet was fitted, but the carpet needed trimming to the diameter of the rivnut before it could be inserted and pulled tight.  I did this by drilling the 9mm hole, putting the rivnut into the hole and running a craft knife round the outside edge.  After pulling out the excess carpets, the rivnut can be fitted as per normal.

Before fitting the seats, I fitted the seat belt lower bolts, as these will be inaccessible once the seats are in.  In order to satisfy my OCD, I opted to fit the bolts with the heads under the car and the threads into the adjusting rails (driver's seat) or into the seat (passenger's seat).  There are 25mm spacers under the passenger seat so that both seats are at the same horizontal level:

And a nice, tidy underside:

And now, the car is ready to be dropped to the floor in preparation for the engine installation :)