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Carpeting over the gearbox housing

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PaulR
Posts: 16
Joined: Thu Feb 20, 2020 1:30 pm
Location: Swindon

Carpeting over the gearbox housing

Post by PaulR »

Hi, I was wondering if any members had any experience/advise when gluing new carpet over the gear box on a Daimler V8. So far laying the new underfelt and then carpets on top has gone fairly well, but when it came to carpeting over the gearbox housing it all seemed to go wrong with the carpet full of lumps & bumps. I've managed to pull it off in order to start again, but I'll need to re-stick some of the felt down first.

Should the carpet be stuck firmly all over the gearbox housing or should it just be glued along the edges and pull tight to help create a smooth effect. If it is meant to be stuck firmly all over, how do you get it to stay snug to all the curves? I've tried using some lengths of wood against the side of the car to keep the carpet secure but obviously it didn't seem to work.

Any advice would be much appreciated as I'd rather not make a mess of it the second time around.

Thanks
Paul

classiclife
Classic Wise Man
Classic Wise Man
Posts: 1601
Joined: Wed Sep 05, 2018 9:55 am
Location: Ridgewood - East Sussex
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Re: Carpeting over the gearbox housing

Post by classiclife »

Hello Paul,

I have just fitted the transmission tunnel carpet to my V8 saloon with the added issue of having a newly created fabrication for the manual g/stick.

The car was originally an auto.

When I ordered the interior trim kit from BAS International, I went for the auto carpet as this is the correct shape initially, I then had to cut and shape it accordingly to deal with the g/stick addition.

A lot will depend who you sourced the carpet from - there is good and not so good. BAS supply excellent products but in my case (only) I needed to cut the carpet at the top middle edge adjacent to the bulkhead. The cut was about 6" in length and this allowed the carpet to spread out naturally and any bumps, lumps or ridges disappeared. In effect the cut created a V section which is hidden by the radio / speaker console albeit I had spare carpet left over and shaped a section to fill the V - purely for ascetic reasons.

Of course with the underlay you can be far more drastic as the carpet covers any cuts - but cutting the carpet is not for the feint hearted, but in some cases it is the only option; as proved to be in my case but my circumstances were slightly different.

I glued the carpet to the underlay in full and found I needed to do this to ensure that any suggestion of rippling was eliminated. As for adhesive I used "No Nonsense Contact Adhesive" from Screwfix which I found to be excellent. The trick is to allow each sprayed surface about 3-4 minutes to cure correctly. If you try to stick the materials together beforehand the full impact of the adhesive will be reduced. To ensure that the carpet stuck correctly I used a decorating seam roller - the type you use for joining edges of wallpaper - I found this tool to be excellent throughout the laying of underlay & carpet.

One other adhesive I used was Evostick Time Bond which is applied via a brush, whereas No Nonsense is an aerosol.

If you have reached the stage where the lumps and bumps are realistically never going to disappear, then it may well be the case that a surgical incision is the only option. The golden rule is make tiny cuts at a time and ascertain if the carpet is responding to the correct shape you want.

Hope that assists ??

Good luck.

Richard.
1968 Daimler V8-250 Saloon
DLOC East Sussex Branch Secretary
DLOC 2.5L V8 & V8-250 Registrar - https://www.dloc.org.uk/v8-250
DLOC 2024 International Rally - https://www.dloc.org.uk/rally-2024

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