How to Replace Carpet 2000-05 Chevy Impala Part 2

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This is the second part of putting the carpet into this 2002 Chevy Impala. Again, tools you'll need are wrenches and screwdrivers, whatever it takes to get your seats and other trim in and out, a utility knife, and good scissors, and you may want some trim adhesive and you may want to use a heat gun to get the carpet well fitted.

We're ready to put the new carpet in, so you want to basically just take it in, half-roll it, bend it in half, I guess from front to back. What I'm using is that brace. It goes across. It's a big lump in the carpet, so I'm lining that up first and then rolling it forward into the dash area. Then I'm just starting to press it down into place with my hands. Now, turning our attention to the back a little bit, it's basically just an exercise in, continuing to press it into place, get the molding, everything starts making more sense at this point as far as when you first took it out of the box, it just look like a wrinkly piece of carpet. Now, as you press into place, you see that a lot of the detail and stuff is in the mold, that didn't show before because it had to be folded up and rolled for shipping. I just use my fists a little bit, trying to work the carpet into place as much as possible. Then here, I'm working in the front, again, just pushing down on the carpet. Try to work from the middle, you start in the center of the carpet, get them to get everything in place correctly then work from the middle out, get the middle all the in where you want it and then work to the outside, work to the front and work to the back. I'm just getting the carpet basically in place and laying down up here and folding it up in under the pedals and what not up into the dash.

Here, we're going to be back to threading in the bolts for the seats. I'm going to take a razor knife, obviously being very careful on using the razor knife. You could probably use scissors too, and you just want to cut slits, but that allows to do is if you don't like where the carpet is placed, once you get everything down into place, you can move the carpet around and those slits won't be as noticeable if you do something in the wrong place. Here, where I need to make one of my slits, the factory insulation is there so I've cut through with my knife first and I'm just going to use a nice good set of scissors and pull the insulation back and trim it off, so that I can get through the carpet and get the bolt out and just keep fitting the carpet. Now, I need to cut out for the heating ducts, and on the driver side, I had some wiring, I want to be very careful. I can feel the heating ducts with my fingers first so I figure out where I want to cut then I'll lift the carpet up. Obviously we're working with a razor knife so again, be very careful. I'm cutting on each side of the duct, again, lifting up so I don't cut the wires. I'll just use my good pair of scissors and make the cut around the duct. A lot of stuff like this is under the seats so if you don't get it perfect, it's okay so there we go. This is not the best shot of this, but now we're just making all the rest of the cut outs, doing the front seats here. Make sure your carpet is exactly where you want it then make a slit and then cut out with your scissors. You don't have to duplicate the factory cut out perfectly but you want to make sure that it allows you easy access to those slots where the seat goes in. Then do the same thing for our inner seat mount. Again, be careful using the razor knife, make the slits and then use your scissors to finish off the cut and just cut out all the rest of your cutouts basically using the same procedure. Make sure the carpet's where you want it first and then make the cutouts. Up underneath where the passenger feet go, you can see there's a nice, big plastic panel you can pull down and remove and then tuck the carpet up in there. You may need to cut it out around the mold a little bit. Those pieces are basically the only pieces I cut out for that area and this is up around the brake pedal and gas pedal. Quite honestly, you can't really see up in this area so it doesn't have to perfect but you need to make sure that you cut out enough so that everything comes together. As you can see, once you're up in an angle where you normally look at the car, you really can't see up in there that well.

Basically, at this point, you've got the front trimmed out, all your cutouts are trimmed and the next step would be to trim the sides. But at this point, you could see there are some wrinkles in the carpet so if you have access to a heat gun, basically this it's point, before you cut, trim the sides, take the that heat gun, heat up those wrinkles, press them. Maybe use a little bit of a roller, almost like a roller like you would you use in the kitchen to roll those wrinkles out. I didn't have use of a heat gun so I just went to the next step which is to trim the sides. Here, I'm going to fast forward through. Make sure the carpet is down in the place where you want it. Push it in and then always use the less is more, so you want to trim less at first and remember, you do have some pretty big side panels that allow you to make a little bit of a mistake, but obviously you want to avoid making mistakes. Trim it out. Again, less is more, I'm cutting it a little bit, then checking it and then cutting it a little bit more. If you wanted to, in place of that staple and tab that was there, you could glue that sides down to the edge of the car, just to keep it in place some.

Now, we're going to speed through here, going to bring that pillar trim back in, get it around the seatbelt and put it up into place, get it around the weather strip. Get it to fit back on there, and get it to clip at the top and clip it at the bottom, make sure it's all over the weather strip. You just have to work it and then get it so it goes over the hard part of the weather strip. Put it down into place and then your rear trim piece, get down at the place, and you made a little cut out in the carpet so you can fit in there, push it down. Then do the same thing for the front lower trim, push it in the top. Again, you've got the cutouts on the sides, cut it out so you can have the tabs in the the way. Obviously, we cut around. If you're screwing it down, they're on the holes to screw it into. Get that in place. You can see our carpet is pretty well-installed and most of the cutouts are done. Again, this might be a good time to take a heat gun to it, get some of the wrinkles out that you don't like. Pull the bolts out and make sure you have good access to those holes, you want to have them nice and clear so when you put the seats in, it's easy to get the bolts in. It's looking pretty good, a whole lot better than that smelly, stained and burnt up carpet that we had before.

Here, we're going to put the seat right in, make sure you get the seat belts in that slot. Push it back and then down right into its little slots and push it down in, nice and firm. Now, we're going to bring the passenger side seat in, show you this side, it's a little easier to get in. Driver seat is the same thing, just it's a little more difficult to get in because it's bigger. You want to move the seat back a little bit, get it forward into its slots and then tilt it back. Now, we're getting in back here. Lift the seat up again, just to make sure it goes down in place correctly. Those bolts should go down into the holes and in easily. I'm just using an air ratchet and tightening those bolts up and after I tighten them up with the air ratchet, then I'll use a hand ratchet and make sure they're nice and tight. Re-attach the seat belt here and then put the cover down over, make sure you get it nice and tight. Repeat that for the driver side, make sure you hook up the power seat and air bag. Now, we've got our seats back in, all our trim done. You can see, here's the finished product. Certainly, I wouldn't having it heat gun and just kind of heating up those wrinkles a little bit and just make them a little bit nicer, but they will relax overtime, regardless. Put in a new set of floor mats, the back, everything looks great. I have to tell you, this carpet smells a whole lot better than the dirty and, like I said, burnt and stained, mess. This car was from a smoker so the carpet smelled pretty bad, but this new carpet helps eliminate a lot of that smell.

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