[T3] Installing carpet: The Saga Begins

["Erkson, Toby" <toby.erkson@intel.com>]

28 years.  Not just the age of the carpet, but the age of the dust deeply
embedded within.  Two and a half hours later the only thing my work provided
me was the orangish red and black view of the floor pan in the cabin of my
baby.  And a good amount of that 28 year old dust every where.

Well, the tar pads in the rear came out easily, thanks to the many years of
water they were soaking in.  The front ones proved to be quite difficult but
they had to come out because they had been marinated in water many times as
well.  It turns out the tar pads sandwich a thin styrofoam pad between them.
And the adhesive that holds them down basically turned into obsidian :)
After the great amount of rust below the rear pads I knew the fronts needed
to be scraped out.  Good thing I did because the sections of pad that were
not adhered to the pan contained rust.

I did find a 3mm rust hole that's gonna need attention.  After vacuuming my
mess things didn't look too bad.  I'll be taking a wire wheel to remove the
scale and rust, then give everything a fine coat of Corroless.  And, with
the auto body restoration class I'll be taking soon, I hope to weld/patch
that little hole myself :)

Boy, I'm sure glad I didn't decide to a 1/2-assed job.  Too much rust to
ignore!  But this job is gonna be taking much longer than I had hoped...

   Toby Erkson
   air_cooled_nut@pobox.com  <-- Please use this address for email
   '72 VW Squareback 1.6L bored and stroked to 2.0L, Berg five-speed
   '95 VW Jetta III GL 2.0L, P-Chipped, Jamex sport suspension
   Portland, Oregon, http://www.icbm.org/


-------------------------------------------------------------------
List info at http://www.vwtype3.org/list or mailto:help@vwtype3.org