CaveVan Forum
VW T4 "Eurovans" => Interior! => Topic started by: Marshy on May 31, 2015, 04:34:51 pm
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Thanks Cole for the hookup on the pre-cut rubber flooring. A very high quality material and easy to trim for slight variations.
The combination of time and and the heat of south Texas have taken a toll on the backing of the factory floor mat,(http://i1049.photobucket.com/albums/s385/marshallmay/C3C77F7E-3F77-4B15-86FF-6519811CF608.jpg) (http://s1049.photobucket.com/user/marshallmay/media/C3C77F7E-3F77-4B15-86FF-
6519811CF608.jpg.html)
causing it to disintegrate into the carpet, making the carpet sticky and unclean-able. (http://i1049.photobucket.com/albums/s385/marshallmay/B6F34AED-F7DE-4A5C-85BC-9A7144975E21.jpg) (http://s1049.photobucket.com/user/marshallmay/media/B6F34AED-F7DE-4A5C-85BC-9A7144975E21.jpg.html)
This and the constant mess being made by kids necessitated a need for change.
So all seats and brackets for the rear shelf, along with the trim for the side door step trim, and the rear heater vent need to be removed first. The step trim just pulls straight up. Much more simple that I thought. (http://i1049.photobucket.com/albums/s385/marshallmay/5D727393-1037-457B-9E0A-55F73A336E2D.jpg) (http://s1049.photobucket.com/user/marshallmay/media/5D727393-1037-457B-9E0A-55F73A336E2D.jpg.html)
I started with a regular scraper and quickly realized I would grow old and gray and put my kids through college before I finished getting the carpet up. (http://i1049.photobucket.com/albums/s385/marshallmay/A9F49307-F8A5-4AC0-9E67-80DDE41A019E.jpg) (http://s1049.photobucket.com/user/marshallmay/media/A9F49307-F8A5-4AC0-9E67-80DDE41A019E.jpg.html)
So I found a garden tool and put an edge on it with a bench grinder. This was quite a labor intensive project. A power scraper or industrial floor scraper with replaceable blades would probably work better. My carpet may have been worse than others due to the disentigrated floor mat backing, but it took me about 2.5 hours to get all the carpet up.
(http://i1049.photobucket.com/albums/s385/marshallmay/0D5D81AA-0056-4D30-87BB-00C0A4E006CB.jpg) (http://s1049.photobucket.com/user/marshallmay/media/0D5D81AA-0056-4D30-87BB-00C0A4E006CB.jpg.html)
(http://i1049.photobucket.com/albums/s385/marshallmay/5E53348E-0A68-4863-91A5-B5FDC03E06C5.jpg) (http://s1049.photobucket.com/user/marshallmay/media/5E53348E-0A68-4863-91A5-B5FDC03E06C5.jpg.html)
After finishing the carpet removal I test fitted the new floor and trimmed it up to fit just right. (http://i1049.photobucket.com/albums/s385/marshallmay/8FCB94B5-8E3D-4B47-91CC-043620B02316.jpg) (http://s1049.photobucket.com/user/marshallmay/media/8FCB94B5-8E3D-4B47-91CC-043620B02316.jpg.html)
I used a contact cement to glue it down. I put the floor in place, rolled back one half and glued it, then rolled back the other half and glued it. This helped keep it in the right place.
The holes for the rear facing seats weren't precut but some quick work with a razor knife fixed that. (http://i1049.photobucket.com/albums/s385/marshallmay/083E1A08-B7FF-4F8E-A963-156C431FA7D3.jpg) (http://s1049.photobucket.com/user/marshallmay/media/083E1A08-B7FF-4F8E-A963-156C431FA7D3.jpg.html)
(http://i1049.photobucket.com/albums/s385/marshallmay/6323CF6B-D35D-48C5-A37E-596AAA7E13BB.jpg) (http://s1049.photobucket.com/user/marshallmay/media/6323CF6B-D35D-48C5-A37E-596AAA7E13BB.jpg.html)
Reinstalled the seats step trim and it's ready to go!
(http://i1049.photobucket.com/albums/s385/marshallmay/6E0C92C5-6AF8-41FB-8263-058572B32EB5.jpg) (http://s1049.photobucket.com/user/marshallmay/media/6E0C92C5-6AF8-41FB-8263-058572B32EB5.jpg.html)
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Subscribed! I just bought this same flooring product...
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Looks great!
-albertr
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WOW! Looks AWESOME in the white van. Looks like a major improvement over the abuse your carpet has been taking. Should say much cleaner looking in there.
Glad to see a write up on it by someone other than me. :)
Some of the carpet has been a major chore to get off, others have peeled right off with almost zero effort. If anyone comes up with a great way to loosen the glue I'm all ears.
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Some of the carpet has been a major chore to get off, others have peeled right off with almost zero effort. If anyone comes up with a great way to loosen the glue I'm all ears.
It was a real chore to get that carpet up. At first i thought if i could get an edge up, then I could peel the rest. Wrong. The carpet backing just pulled through the fibers, giving me an perforated piece of plastic, and leaving the fuzz stuck to the plywood.
I thought about using some sort of paint thinner, but worried that it may make more of a mess than help the process. Products with acetone could dissolve the glue, but also the carpet and the adhesive that holds the plywood deck together. For me the best solution was lots of elbow grease, mixed with time, music and beer. I took up a strip the width of the scraper from the door to the table, then made my way either side of the bare strip about 3" per pass. Each impact of the scraper peeled back maybe 1/4" of carpet. The area under the seat to the rear was much easier to scrape up. Which makes me think the disintegrated floor mat, and maybe foot traffic, may have helped to adhere the carpet down better.
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I've done a bunch of these now and can't seem to figure out what makes some peel right off and others fight you to the death.
I use a power scraper with a thin sharp blade and it still takes a few hours. A 5' sanding disk on a grinder works wonders for getting all the left over carpet fibers off ;)
I just stripped down a 1993 that I'm building and it put up a big fight. But the old carpet was just nasty after 22 years of use. I vacuumed it several times during the process and it still shook out PILES of dirt as I was removing it.
(https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8866/18252093965_72ba37bca5_b.jpg)
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Now that's interesting. In that picture, it looks like that van has actual plywood instead of OSB that is in mine.
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Wow - huge improvement Marshy. Great results.
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Fantastic! Great idea. Such a clean look and the best part about that is it's so easy to clean!!
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Anyone have shots of the underside of the wood? Looks like it has a lot of contours that need to be in place to make sure it goes down against the floor, and doesn't interrupt the trim.
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I've had the wood floor out. There is a little extra wood around the heater vent, and I can't remember what else.
I've made wood floors from 1/4" ply without the extra shaping and it also works really well.
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Cole -- this may be of interest to you...
I found this looking for DIY rubber flooring for my own van -- its called G-floor and great thing is that it comes in a 7.5' wide roll (making it large enough to do the floor in one piece). Multiple color and texture options as well.
https://www.bltllc.com/g-floor-vinyl-flooring/solid-color (https://www.bltllc.com/g-floor-vinyl-flooring/solid-color)
Cheapest price seems to be ordering it online through Home Depot (for local store delivery). For example, this 7.5x17' sheet is large enough to do 2 vans for $157 material cost. Pretty good. http://www.homedepot.com/p/G-Floor-7-5-ft-x-17-ft-Rib-Standard-Grade-Midnight-Black-Garage-Floor-Cover-and-Protector-GF55RB717MB/203450698?MERCH=RV-_-rv_search_plp_rr-_-NA-_-203450698-_-N (http://www.homedepot.com/p/G-Floor-7-5-ft-x-17-ft-Rib-Standard-Grade-Midnight-Black-Garage-Floor-Cover-and-Protector-GF55RB717MB/203450698?MERCH=RV-_-rv_search_plp_rr-_-NA-_-203450698-_-N)
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That's essentially the same stuff.
If you wanted to do G-floor is a distributor. Looks like the price has come down a little recently.
An industrious DIYer could do it this route for sure and have some left over.
The rear trick is making the pattern ;) Took many many hours to be able to cut my first one as an exact duplicate to the factory carpet. Which, if you read some of the threads around here you will see that it doesn't come off as one easy piece. ;)
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WOW! Looks AWESOME in the white van. Looks like a major improvement over the abuse your carpet has been taking. Should say much cleaner looking in there.
Glad to see a write up on it by someone other than me. :)
Some of the carpet has been a major chore to get off, others have peeled right off with almost zero effort. If anyone comes up with a great way to loosen the glue I'm all ears.
Ok, so mine was a huge Pita for sure! Tried scraper, putty knife, razor scraper, pole scraper....you get the idea. Finally ended up borrowing a multitool from a friend with this http://goo.gl/Qm9p2u (http://goo.gl/Qm9p2u) attachment (top right corner). So wet the carpet and let it soak for a bit. Get it under an edge and as you peel it back, let the tool do the work. Helped speed up the process a great deal for sure!
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Great outcome and improvement on the flooring. How is it holding up now? I am about to put in my cavevan flooring this weekend if I have the time. I am hoping my 93's carpet comes up easy but from what I have been reading it doesn't look good.
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Wallpaper steamer ;)
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My carpet pulled up pretty easy on the front half, thought I got lucky. Nope, rear gave me such a hassle and it took me about 3 hours to get it all up and out of the van. I ended up using nail polish remover which actually worked very well. All is complete now and the new flooring looks great, thanks Cole.
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Awesome.
....nail polish remover huh?
Post pics!
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Yeah what I did was put the remover in a spray bottle and sprayed the difficult sections then scraped. Worked pretty well, also did the iron trick which seemed to help.
This was taken prior to removing the rear bench seat.
(http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20161017/48017e526233cbe62bb15997144f4415.jpg)
The process!
(http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20161017/649c2c5948554626d3ac58326e9d918f.jpg)
(http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20161017/eba16267b9a9939f02b1bef3df0672d8.jpg)
Complete!
(http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20161017/bb967403ca49a4c59f94b35c46f1d44a.jpg)
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Awesome!
Looks good!!
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glad to have that nasty stained 23 year old carpet out!
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glad to have that nasty stained 23 year old carpet out!
Makes a world of difference.
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What's the thickness of the wood in an '03?
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