Originally Posted by Strife

2. The carpet is not hard to remove after removing or at least loosening the side plastic panels, but this is not a big deal, as long as you remove the chrome pillar caps and ALL the screws on the side panels. Don't lose them or mix them up. I think you can do it without removing the top handle (there should be enough room under the unscrewed plastic to work with the carpeting without entirely removing the piece).


3. I used plain old contact cement on the rear deck but the trick is not to use too much or too little. You don't want it to soak through but you want to use enough to work. Edges are important. Have lots of mineral spirits around to remove any excess. Personally, I would tend towards not using enough, because you never know when it will have to come off (for example: the flap behind the console, which you have to lift to remove the seats).

On the rear deck lid, only if you are very picky about originality would I avoid wrapping it around. On my 560, I'd buy the original piece. On my 380, I didn't. You might have a problem if your carpet is thick, in which case you would have to shave the wood thickness a little. That wood is absolute c*** (by design, no doubt designed to disintegrate in an accident) and I pulled off some of the top of the plywood, which I filled.

I used extremely cheap, extremely thin "speaker carpeting" which was an investment of $8.00, in black. It doesn't exactly match the rest of the carpet and would be absolutely unsuitable for foot traffic but this is hard to tell and I've learned that even BLACK can fade over 20+ years. My dogs sit back there, and it is even harder than regular carpeting to get dog fur off of.

Really follow the instructions on contact cement. Do both surfaces, and then wait before mating them. If you follow the directions, it works great; if not, it's a horrible mess.