This weekend, the stuff on the floor of Roxanne was floating. I got stuck in a BIG mudhole, and now the carpet is totally soaked and muddy (I opened the door because I wasn't thinking), and the rear storage areas are still wet after I removed all of the water that I could. I am terrified of my floor pan rusting out if I don't dry everything out really well.

 

So far, I vacuumed everything at a carwash as best I could, I soaked up all the water I could out of the carpet and storage areas with rags, and I was able to get into a heated garage to park overnight. Aside from driving around for hours with the heater on and the windows partway down, what can I do to dry out my car?

 

Oh yeah, and I forgot to bring my camera, so no pics of my car buried above the rear bumper.

pull the carpets and get them dry. You may have to remove the fuzzy insulation underneath, as that takes forever to dry. My carpets are plastic on the bottom, so whatever is under the carpet won't dry unless I pull them. Yours might be too. That's the only way unless you like mold and rust.

Mmmmm, smell the composting bogwater tea!

Carpets, padding, and maybe even the tar pads gotta come out. Wash the floor pan with soapy water and then rinse with bleach water solution. A few days and or nights with an electric space heater in the car should dry it out. Pressure wash the carpets, drip dry in a warm place or maybe try a commercial tumble dryer. You may never completely get rid of the funk but the faster you clean and dry things out the less mildew issues you'll have down the road.

Ditch the carpets, apply bedliner to the floor and fear water no more.

Oh man, I don't wanna strip the interior. I think I'll vacuum like crazy again, then pick up a cheap space-heater and leave that in there every night for a week or so, and drive around daily with all the windows down for a few minutes.

 

If I'm gonna have to take the carpets out anyway, has anybody used that brush-on bedliner in place of their carpets?

 

Wow, you posted about the bedliner as I was writing this one!

I like the bedliner idea. I just took out my seats and put a box fan in the door for a couple nights. It still smells sometimes when its hot out.

The bed liner is freakin great! That and my seats are the Summit racing seats that are totally weather proof. I can clean the inside and outside at the carwash!

if youre not gonna pull the carpet

(take it to the carwash and blast it on the floor mat hooks)

and throw that fuzzy crap called "shoddy" away,

you can use newspaper, dont ball it up,

just lay it out and put some weight on it,

once it gets going it works well.

seems adding few layers as needed works better than replacing a single layer repeatedly.

once its saturated, toss and repeat.

 

 

best way is to pull and scrape though

dude come on.... after only afew interior pulls in my day... I can yank the carpet and most everything in the interior of my 87 GL in an hour Its really not THAT hard.

 

Its worth it I think.

I think I'll just go ahead and rip out the carpet and do the bedliner. Up here, the floor is constantly wet during the winter, and my car is always dirty both inside and out, so I think that's the way to go.

The herculiner rebate is good for 3 more days, but I think a quartwill probably do your job. But a quart is half the price of an entire gallon. Decisions. Where did you go bogging on Sunday? Saw you coming back into town sporting fresh mud.

After swampage, the carpet is memory. You can probably get away with cutting it at the bottom of the console so you can still have it look like you have carpet. Get a couple of big rubber truck matts for the floor. They'll cover most of it, and kill road noise really well. That's at least the cheap way to go, 20 bucks or so. I've done it that way in all of my offroaders.

Bedliner if you have the money, gonna be the best solution. My neighbor across teh street has his entire jeep floor bedliner'd looks sweet.

Good luck

Eric

Northguy, where did you buy your herculiner at?

 

I went offroading on this trail that goes off to the left of Buffalo Mine Road. Didn't go very far because I was by myself and didn't want to get in trouble.

Schucks Auto. The closest one to you is on Debarr over by Costco. Either that one or on Muldoon a bit south of Fred Meyers. Did you cross the bridge at Buffalo Mine or continue past the parking area and across the river?