Carpet Dye

[elite38868]

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[AlexGS]

Many thanks Sean, very encouraging.

Your first pictures look exactly like my carpet. I don't know where that green-ish colour comes from, but it wasn't the intended shade

The last pictures look very nice - by the time it's installed in the car, it probably looks even better. What was happening with the heel-pad on the driver's side? It looks like it has some sort of film.

So, no 'crunchy' texture from the spray-dye? And how many cans did you need? Might be a bit hard to find somewhere to post them overseas, I'm guessing.

Thanks,
-Alex

[elite38868]

Alex, I used two cans, but probably could have used a 3rd to get it more even and a little darker. The carpet is as soft as before. The green/light blue color comes from being exposed to the sun and elements.

The best way is to take your carpet out and vacuum it very thoroughly. Then go over it with the cans and let it dry one or two days.

[AlexGS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gprocket Ok Alex, send me the plane tickes and I'll cut your grass AND dye your carpets!

[gprocket]

Alex: Travelocity has 1 seat left at $4,275 but the deal was for my wife and I so we would need to get the next fare at $7,082 USD each. Fourteen grand plus - yea I'll throw in an oil change and some body work!!

Sean: Great job! I just used a single can of SEM over the carpet dye - it still needs another coat but it seems flexible enough.

So my thinking is that if you wish to fleshen up the current color, a couple of bottles of the water based dye will probably do the job. There is zero odor and no need to pull the carpet out or even tape it off. Any overspray is easily wiped off.

If you are looking to change colors, I think the flexible paint is the way to go. Pull carpet as Sean says and you should be happy with the results.

[ChazzyD]

When I went looking for the vinyl paint type cans, SEM's colors are formulated to match modern Hondas and Toyotas, etc. which is fine if you are looking for a nice grey color, I didn't see and medium to dark brown colors for the 164 brown carpet, seems all cars these days have a light tan or medium grey interior scheme. I have to agree the water based dye is basically for a quick detail of a used car with minimal fuss (don't have to remove the carpet) and made for maximum profit for a car detailer business. The aerosol spray is for carpet out and a wholesale change of color. I think we are all learning about this stuff as we go. Aren't forums great.
Charles

[elite38868]

It really isn't that hard to remove the carpet at all. It's just remembering where all those screws go back! Even worse if your seats don't move.

[ChazzyD]

I just wonder if they keep a bucket of the mysterious gooey substance on the assembly line. You know the junk your always running into when working on the weather stripping or the seats or almost anything in the interior, there's always this gooey sticky stuff that gets all over your hands. Never run into that so often before working on a car. Course, when you combine that with the foam that turns to goo and the plastic that turns to goo... I actually found if very laborious to remove the carpet, but that's par for the course on a 164, right? Talking a bout seats that don't move, went to see Get Smart at the local Drive-In (which has two screens and a very nice operation, BTW, just over the border in Alabama) and my fairly new to me "S" seats let me down... literally, the back rest went down but wouldn't go back up... great. Had to drive home holding myself up with the steering wheel, nice ab workout but a real p!$$@r. Turns out the switch was to blame, as I was able to swap it out with a switch from the old seat and now works fine. The contacts in those things are very small and any bit of corrosion causes failure.
Charles

[AlexGS]

LOL!
Yes, there is some mysterious process visible in the YouTube video 'Making the 164' where there are actual people (one of the first times) putting in the weatherstrips and seemingly dusting them (actually, they're probably spreading goo ready for your later enjoyment).

Taking the dashboard out of my 164 revealed blocks of the most amazing foam known. 'Dry' in appearance, it disintegrated to a sticky resin when touched (I guess that's the stuff you're talking about). Its relation to normal foam was like the relationship between chocolate mud cake and a light sponge cake. 'Self-saucing' would be a good description.

Soft-touch coatings on plastics seem to have a habit of turning sticky and transferring to hands (I've renovated '96-'00 FIAT Coupes with this problem - I just wet-sand and paint with matt black, also my '02 166 had gone sticky over much of the interior) but happily the 164 seems to only have one piece of soft-touch plastic - the roof console.

The soft-touch plastic is definitely the elephant-scrotum of the 21st century - previously, a really coarse vinyl texture was all you needed for stylistic success, but now, the 'touch' is important - pity that after a few years the 'touch' is awful

-Alex