After owning my Barracuda for 20 years, I finally decided to replace the faded, cheap carpet that was in the car when I bought it. Little did I know the set of surprises I would find, and most were painful. I knew the current carpet was poorly fit; there were a few visible folds up under the dash area.

After removing the necessary interior parts, I discovered the top carpet was glued down to another layer of carpet underneath. Even worse, the top carpet was not molded and the carpet was nailed to the floorpan in multiple places! Brillant way to pull it tight when it wouldn't fit by itself .

The bottom carpet appeared to be factory style, but had all of the area other than the flat floor portion cut off. It appears that at some point in the life of the car, the driver's front side of the bottom carpet was stained (oil down from failed mechanical gauge?) badly, and the solution was to cover it with any thing they could find instead of replacing it or cleaning it!

On the positive side, my new ACC carpet did not come with the retractable belt plastic covers, and the bottom carpet had them. While cleaning up the dirt and trash under the final layer of carpet I discovered labels that confirmed these were the original, factory carpet on the bottom. It was upsetting since the carpet (prior to having parts hacked off) was in pretty good shape excluding the staining up front. Also found a fragment of headliner material that was under the carpet, presumably from the original assembly line. Do you think I should put the original carpet labels back under the new carpets, or just keep them in my records with the broadcast sheet?

Anyway, just wanted to share the adventures of the project.

Time to clean up the mess and work on the install of the new carpet.

NAILED down??? Now that's a new one on me! Red interior is very cool.

I do love the red interior is very nice, but it has taken quite some time to recover from age. The original interior panels were all dry rotted but have been replaced. This project is for the carpets. The retractable belt covers are also in rough shape too, and I need to see what my options are for that. The dash pad is in decent shape but it also has a stain on it.

I was certainly a bit upset when I discovered the nails. It just goes to show that you can never imagine at times how these old cars have been molested during their life.

The floor pans are in really great shape, although they have about 10 small holes in them. I have caulked the holes, instead of something more extensive, since I really want to preserve the original factory appearance.

That floor is awesome.

Cool to see a 6-way seat car too.

The covers and belt guides are not normally included in your replacement carpet, but all these components are available from several sources

Also looks like your missing the pedal dress up trim on the accelerator/brake pedal as well, those are available repro as well

Were the original door panels molded in red plastic? I've seen a number of red interior E-bodies in junkyards over the years, & the red plastic seemed to be yellowish plastic possibly dyed red??? Or, maybe the red plastic deteriorates into a yellow-looking plastic as it fades??

My C body was done very similar to that, but no nails. I was pretty surprised to find two layers of carpet in it.

Apparently it was a popular shortcut to take in years past.

Instead of nails, my past installer used some kind of adhesive that didn't hold with a darn.

Thanks!

Apparently the 6-way seat was critical to the original purchaser. I am the third owner.. Not sure if it is true but the story I got from the second owner is that the first owner wanted a Cuda, but was fairly short. So he opted for the base Barracuda with the flat hood and the 6-way seat, but with the most powerful engine available in that trim (383-4V). I have the original hood, but run a rally hood on it now.

Good to know! I do need to start locating these smaller pieces. I had always wondered about the pedals but didn't research enough to know what was correct.

There was definitely adhesive between the carpet layers in my car, and I guess it didn't work either, hence the nails! Makes one think of choice words.....

That is an interesting question! I don't think I saved the original panels since they were literally converting into dust. However, I did take a closer look at the original retractable belt covers. You can see areas where the plastic is decomposing, and it has a yellowish appearance. However, I also zoomed in on an area where the belt passed thru the opening. This area is not falling apart and is quite smooth as may be expected with the belt polishing the surface over the years. It appears the red has been worn off to reveal the same yellowish plastic. So, in my opinion, the parts were indeed molded in some yellowish plastic and then dyed, which sort of makes sense given the variety of interior color.

Curious as to what others may be seeing.....

What are you doing about the nail holes?

The short story is that.for now I am punting, and just sealing with caulk. Here is my thought process. The nails left slight indents, and of course a hole. It might be possible to hammer and dolly them flat, but there would still be a hole. Welding would be the only way to fix that, and that would mean striping some or all of the floor pan and then grinding any weld flat. The original factory appearance would be permanently lost. I am not ready to take that step. I never drive the car in rain, so I'm not really worried about getting water under the carpet, but I wanted to seal the holes anyway.

What would you do under the circumstances?

Dave

The nails are interesting. I bought a 68 Barracuda parts car to repair mine in the mid 90s when I was in high school. A friend of mine and I stripped it down and the carpet was nailed down in it as well, thoroughly nailed down, there was lots of them! It only had one layer of carpet but man was there lots of nails, and they were not easy to pull out either.

my old man repaired the floor in a 53 chevy one time using 1" plywood. a few strategically placed "square" nails and a bunch of roof tar, fixed !

Looks great!