Refitting The Sound-deadening and Carpets

The carpets are back in. Well, most of them. Having cleaned them, I wasn't sure where to store them so decided to put them straight back in. 

It also meant I could fit all the sound-deadening that I'd tucked away. It's hessian-backed, coarse fibrous matting that lines most of the cabin. It's about 1cm or more thick.

Jumble of sound-deadening pieces

I'm staying 'old school' and I refitted the original Citroen stuff. As a Pallas car, my car feels as though it already has plenty of sound-deadening and I'm going to give it another go. So many people replace the original sound-deadening with modern stuff or - if it wasn't fitted - add it in. This is meant to help with noise and heat transfer into the cabin. I'm not sure if it's any better than the original stuff. i guess ill find out.

My cabin floors still have the original bitumen/ fibre sandwiches - with the pie-crust crimped edges - glued to them. 

'Pie crust' crimping on the original sound-deadening

The underlying metalwork is solid so I felt no need to replace the sound-deadening. In fact quite the opposite - I was keen to preserve it. I'd even left it in place and masked it off when I recently painted the chassis. 

The inner sill vertical faces of the sills have some strange sound deadening material with a waffle pattern. 

It's not bitumen (I don't think). It's compressed like hardboard, but sags when it gets warm. Maybe it's bitumen impregnated? Anyway...those were glued back in.

Sound deadening on the rear sill

I used car upholstery contact adhesive from a specialist supplier (Car Body Solutions Ltd). I tried applying it with a flat-bladed spreader, but it's VERY sticky stuff and didn't spread very well. I tried to thin the glue with isopropanol alcohol but it wasn't particularly effective.  For that reason I thinned it with Mek. Mek is a very nasty solvent and needs a LOT of ventilation as it's bad for your health. It's also necessary to wear some PPE when using it - gloves and a mask. Also avoid the risk of any sparks around it!

I then moved on to glueing back the sound-deadening which meant working out what went where. It's on the sides of the 'C' pillars by the boot,

It's on the box that the seats are mounted-to.

Sound-deadening under the seats

It's in the front footwells.

Footwell matting

And of course it's on the firewall between the cabin and the engine bay. I used untwined glue here. The firewall already had a skin of adhesive bitumen stuck to it. The fibrous layer goes on that - and ultimately the carpet on top.

Firewall before - sound deadening and carpets removed.

All the pieces of matting fit around the firewall curves like jigsaw pieces. I'd had to remove it to get at the bolts for the rear engine mount brackets.

Sound-deadening for the firewall

I worked methodically: I did a test fit of my piece, used a brush to apply my adhesive to both surfaces, waited a few moments for it to go off and then applied the piece. Being contact adhesive, there are no second chances- no scope for adjustment

I remembered to fit a new rubber dust cover for the throttle pedal before the matting layer went over the hole.

Dust cover for the throttle pedal shaft

And similarly I remembered to glue the brake switch and hydraulic warning wires from the mushroom back on to the firewall before I glued on the matting.

The brake wires snake around the firewall.....

......up and under the dash

Before I'd removed it, the carpet on the bulkhead always sagged and got in the way of my foot on the throttle - sometimes stopping me lifting my foot.

Before: the carpet sagged and got in the way of my foot

I used full strength glue to put the carpet back, to stop that happening again. I used a piece of spare DS carpet from a friend to make a replacement for one piece of worn footwell carpet.

Moth-eaten. Possibly the last piece of my original carpet?

I salvaged the brown vinyl piping from the edges of the old piece and my local shoe repair shop sewed it on the new piece for me. Not easy around the parking brake pedal cut-out!

Replacement carpet and piping.

That carpet panel is screwed in for some reason?

It can't be for safety because the equivalent panel on the passenger side is screwed in too. And they both had much more substantial padding under the carpet - padding stitched to a piece of fibre board.

On the side footwell carpet, I cleaned up and refitted the rubber finishers that go around the holes for the bonnet pull guides.

Before

Matting and carpet after

The carpet on the seat platform/ box is slightly under-sized.  It doesn't fill the gap between the sills

Undersized carpet - doesn't reach the sill.

That small gap each side is to leave room for the unbound edges of the sill carpets to be tucked-in and hidden away. It would have been an easy mistake to align the box carpet to the sill on one side, and then find a significant gap at the other sill.

But I didn't do that. No - I glued those sill pieces on first, and then the seat box part. The screw holes for the front carpet clips were useful for lining that piece up on the box section - as were the bolt holes for the seat runners.

Sill carpets on......

It was only then that I realised that I was getting ahead of myself.........The bound edges of the sill carpet will slip into a channel on the metal Pallas sill finisher. 

The carpet edge tucks in a sill finisher

But in doing so, they hide the screws for those finishers. So....... the finishers really need to be fitted first, then the carpet adjusted to suit! I had to remove the sill carpets. it left glue-y residue on the sills.

Trim screws and glue-y residue

But I'm not fussed - the sill carpets will go down again in due course.

.....and sill carpets off again.

And when I do that, I also need to fix the carpet to the front face of the fuel tank area, as the pieces overlap one another.

The drivers mat on the front footwell carpet has cracked and split. I got another faded carpet  - but with a good mat - from Pallas Auto. I'm planning to cut that mat out and see if my shoe shop can sew it on my carpet - but it's a bit bigger than a shoe! Maybe a carpet shop will do it?

My rear footwell carpet has the old style of two slots for the seatbelt mounting rings to go through. 

Slots in the rear carpet.......

......are for the centre seat belt mounting rings

I'm glad to have been able to clean and salvage that carpet as the reproductions all seem to be the later style of carpet with a 'tunnel' for the wire seatbelt fixings. 

Later and reproduction carpets - with a 'tunnel'

I guess it's easier to sew that than fit metal rimmed slots. I guess it doesn't really matter. That part is hidden away beneath the seat rails and is hardly visible.

What I've always found odd with my type of rear carpet is that - although the other outer bottom ring for my seatbelts is also on the floor (not on the sill) -  the carpet makes no allowance for those rings. there is no small cut out. And it's hard to fit a seatbelt once all the carpet is down there.

Seatbelt mounting ring by the sill

Anyway, seeing a lovely black chassis after so long was great, but fitting the carpets has really given it a lift.

Carpets back where they belong