Good idea Bad idea time: Floors

So.. Im tall. I therefore drive with the seat fairly far back. This leaves the floor bump below the seat exposed. And as Im a high mileage live in the car kinda guy.. even with good fitted floor mats, the carpet gets DIRTY.

As an added bonus the same, only worse is happening in the frequently used passenger footwell. The floormats there dont even clip into place, so they are next to useless, rarely covering the parts that need protection when they need protection.

This has been bothering me almost since I got the car. keeping those carpets anywhere near clean has been impossible. Then, recently, i was working on another project which resulted in my using a can of "flex seal".

And that sparked a thought.

Is there any reason that I couldn't or shouldn't mask off the hard plastic bits, pedals, etc, rubber coat the carpets, and live in an easily cleaned waterproof and durable coated flooring world where I no longer have to worry about having old fries, dandruff, road dirt, pine needles, and various and sundry unpleasant or unwanted substances ground into my carpet?

 

I do have the all weather mats. got them less than a week after taking delivery of the car. They are better than nothing, but not nearly as effective as I would like. They are a bit floppy on the rim, and theres no fastening them in place except for the driver mat. And in fact, somehow the driver floor carpet was actually quite worn down even though it has always been under a mat.

It took a while.. and a lot more Flex Seal than I had anticipated.. But the project is done. Its imperfect, I learned a few lessons in process, but overall, I like it. If I ever buy another new car for work, it will probably preemptively receive a similar treatment.

 

You know, taking before and after photos would have been a great idea. I will try to get some 6 months later photos in the near future.

Tips to anyone following in my footsteps on this.

1) Ventilation and warm weather are your friends
1a: your car will smell of curing chemicals for at least a couple weeks unless you are able to store it with open windows between use.

2) opinion: this would be best done on either a brand new vehicle or one that is so far gone that you dgaf
2a) rubber coated carpet is grippy. This makes cleaning it a different sort of challenge. Id recommend this starting with carpet either new and soft or so broken down its basically flat anyway. If you use spray.. spray the area heavy, then then use a gloved hand or cardboard or something you can dispose of to push the gunk down into the carpet for better penetration, and simultaneously smoothing the surface texture of the carpet. Then future coats help smooth it more. The pour in version might actually be superior for this application, in retrospect. But the smoothing will make future cleaning of dust and small bits of debris much easier

3) its actually not too hard to keep gunk off hard trim pieces.. a modest sized piece of cardboard used as a shield while you spray will do the job reasonably well.. but the spray makes flying whispies, especially noticeable if you use the "Clear" version of spray, and you will be picking them off places like steering column for quite a while.

4)It would be much easier to have done if id been willing to gut the car(take out seats, take of trim, etc) during the process, and if I had started with a real plan rather than the vague idea this would be good for the passenger well, then liking the initial product, so starting in the back seat wells, then feeling i should do the driver well.. then disliking some inconsistencies and redoing sections.. etc.

5) I did end up putting the all weather mats back in on top of this spray rubber application, as they still act as a good tray to catch the bigger debris, which i can then just tip out of the car, cutting my time between necessary vacuuming about in half and.. i got tired of having them sitting in my storage cabinet.

5) One thing i did not anticipate is moisture retention. After a day of inclement weather.. the water is sitting there in your foot well. It cant go through, so you see it, it stays till it evaporates or you remove it. It was interesting to see just how much moisture escapes down below the "all weather" mats during normal use, that you would never see because it normally just soaks into the carpet.

The end result, combined with lessons learned is positive enough that I will likely do this again in whatever vehicle I eventually get next. Its definitely an improvement on the all weather mats from Toyota, and its better than the fitted hard weathertech mats i had in my last vehicle. I figure ol blue has at least another 2-3 good years even at my 50k a year driving rate, so thats how long i have to plan a better method next round. .