Rules require a floor covering? What we used instead of carpets.

One of the things you notice when your car catches on fire is that the stuff you use to put out the fire is capital M messy. We’ve found fire powder in every nook, cranny, crevice and crack in the car while we’ve been working on the engine swap, and every soft piece has received multiple scrubbings and is still giving up powder residue.

The carpet was particularly gross, and several shop-vaccings did little to lessen the grossness. We even did some scrubbing with drill-mounted brushes to try and loosen the powder, and while it got better, it never truly came clean.

Although, if we’re being totally honest, it wasn’t that amazing to begin with. It may or may not have been the original carpet, but the reality was that it had absolutely given all it had to give, so finally we just pulled it out of there and gave it its last rites.

So now what? Well, carpet kits for the SW20-chassis MR2 like our 1991 model aren’t particularly pricey–less than $200 will get you a full set of molded factory-style rug.

But at the same time, we had also made the decision that this was going to be more of a track- and autocross-focused car that likely wouldn’t be seeing any more street duty.

Simultaneously, the SCCA also updated the Xtreme class rules to clarify that cars no longer needed “carpeting” but simply “floor covering.” Basically, the rule was clarified to prevent gnarly looking strip jobs and to ensure that cars showed up to grid looking presentable and finished.

So, yay. No actual carpet needed.

Instead, we turned to Goodyear for some 3mm rubber flooring. A 4x6- foot roll cost us less than $45 and was more than enough to do both footwells of our little sports car, with plenty left over for other projects.

We used rug tape to adhere the rubber to the floor of the car after a thorough cleaning and degreasing with a mild paint-prep-style degreaser (be sure to have plenty of fresh air ventilation when you’re in the footwells working with solvents) and, so far, the floors appear to have firmly adhered with no signs of lifting.

Cutting the mats to fit the floors is something you probably don’t want to take advice from us on, because it always felt like we were doing it wrong, but we’d love to hear what your approach would have been in the comments.

For the record, we started out trying to make a template from cardboard, but the 3-dimensional nature of the floor made this difficult. So we just went commando, starting with a piece or rubber we knew would be too large, finding a straight edge to start from–the seat mounting bosses made a great index point–and repeatedly dropping it in place, marking off what looked like extra material with a Sharpie, trimming and repeating.

Once we got a “good enough” fit, we worked on the bunched-up areas that collected on the vertical parts of the rubber near corners. We made relief cuts perpendicular to the edge to allow the rubber to lay over itself in the corners, then marked the overlap with a Sharpie and cut away the excess.

Once we were happy with the fit, we made a reference mark, applied the rug tape liberally to the back, and worked from the centerline of the rubber outward until it was all adhered.

The result isn’t exactly show-car worthy, but it’s definitely race car worthy, and should be more durable and easier to care for than the carpet was.

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