General Can you offer me some carpet fitting advice?

[smart51]

I have taken the remains of the rubber mats out of my car and ordered a new carpet. The rubber mats were fitted beneath the handbrake, beneath the starter and choke levers, beneath the gear lever gaiter and beneath the seatbelt mounts. Is that right? I wonder if having the mats or carpet beneath the gear lever would cause it to slip. Which bits should bolt through the carpet and which bits bolt directly to the chassis?

 

[bugsymike]

Generally for a nice fit most fit items above the carpets.
One very important thing is seatbelts, they have stepped spacers etc. so the seat belt fittings are secure to the chassis, but where necessary can swivel slightly for alignment to the harness. So they mustn't be pinching the carpet but free of it.
Seat mountings usually have carpets holes that do not impede firm fixings to the chassis for similar reason to seatbelts.
I would expect even for thin rubber floor covering the principle would be the same.

 

[smart51]

The carpet is in and is not a bad fit. It looks a lot better with it. Somehow I managed to swap the belt buckles left and right. The release clasp is on the seat side of the slot. I'll need to swap them over at some point.

I went for a brief test drive and to get some fuel and got an interesting set of reactions. One guy at the petrol station was fawning all over it. He's asked if I'd just painted it? The give away was splashes of red dust on the tyres from flatting the paint. The petrol station checkout has ANPR on it to check for fake plates. He'd looked it up on his computer and announced that my car was 48 years old. He was amused that I'd brimmed it and only put £21 of fuel in. Then I got home and a door to door salesman loitered while I backed it in to the garage. He opened with "wow, that's a loud car isn't it?". He didn't make the sale.