Original floor covering in a 49 Plymouth

[Joe Flanagan]

I'm trying to find out what the original floor covering was in my 49 Special Deluxe second series. I know it had undercoating on the floor, and I understand two rubber mats up front. Carpet in the back, I've heard. Does anyone know if this is correct? Strikes me as a little odd that there would be no covering over the transmission hump and you'd be looking at black undercoating there.

[Young Ed]

Dads 50 has rubber mat front and back. The back one goes up under the seat so you dont see the floor.

[oldmopar]

The front had a full rubber mat covering the front like the way a older truck looked

Ed

[Joe Flanagan]

So the rubber mat went over the hump? All one mat?

[Young Ed]

I believe its 2 with a split somewhere under the front seat. I think the back one runs up to the top of that foot rest piece.

[BobT-47P15]

Yes.....one large single mat - formed for over the hump. in the front.

Usually in these older cars, the rear was a "horsehair" carpet.

Edited October 5, 2009 by BobT-47P15

[JerseyHarold]

I've never seen anything but rubber matting in any '49-'52 Plymouth, front or rear.

[Joe Flanagan]

Does anyone know if there are reproductions available?

[49DODGEBOY]

wish I had a floor to cover.....(sorry, could not resist)

my '49, unless it had carpet at one time had what looked like rubber in it also/

[Joe Flanagan]

Dodgeboy,

Once you get that floor whipped, you're on your way.

[blueskies]

My '50 had rubber mats front and back. The front mat went across the hump, up the firewall, and under the front seat. The rear mat went across the hump too, from the front of the rear seat up under the foot rests that are under the front seat.

I think the foot rests had their own covering, seperate from the mats on the floor.

I saved all the nasty rubber mats from my car, in case I needed them for patterns to cut carpet, which I have yet to do...

Pete

[oldmopar]

My 47 P15 which was a very original car had a full front mat no visible split but it may have been split under the seat. It had no back seat as it was a business coupe. sold the car last year so can't help a photo. As I remember it had small ridges or maybe you would call them lines on the mat.

I see Roberts sells repro mats but no idea what they look like

Ed

[PatS....]

My 49 Chrysler had a full one piece rubber mat in front and carpet in the back and trunk

[Johnny S]

Joe, all P17 and P18's had a one piece ribbed front floor mat with horsehair backing. As Bob T said the front piece covered the entire front from door to door and extended just about 6 inches or so underneath the front edge of the front seat. The rear was also a ribbed rubber mat with horsehair backing. It was pretty much like a long, fairly wide floor mat from door to door over the hump. The metal surface underneath was treated with a tar-like substance that seems more like road tar than it does real undercoating (maybe a "distinction without difference"). The horsehair would absorb all of the water and the water would seep underneath the tar and viola....aerated floor boards followed by no floorboards shortly thereafter. I'll see if I have decent photos.

John

Colorado

[Johnny S]

Your other question Joe was if there is a vendor who makes reproduction original floor mats. I haven't found one yet.

I have bought two NOS, or probably more correctly NORS, ones off of eBay over the years and can get you some photos early next week if you wish. When they show up they are usually NOS in a box, are generally an aftermarker replacement, hence the NORS designation, (the ones I have read "49-52 Plymouth" on them) and they are starting to dry out and crack. Cost has been around $100....I've seen them sell for more and less.

John

Colorado

[Johnny S]

Joe, I didn't find any photos of original floor mats in my files. I had a lot of photos of folks showing off their carpet job but absolutely "0" on original floor mats. I did have a couple photos of what my floors looked like as I started to scrape the "tar" off them. Looks a lot like a POR-15 job ... just a little thicker and probably not stuck as well as the POR-15 would be.

[JerseyHarold]

You should be careful when scraping the tar-like sealer from older cars. I've heard they used asbestos as a filler material in them.

[Johnny S]

Agreed.....I scraped with "little vigor" and used a fairly decent mask while I was messing with it.

[Joe Flanagan]

Thanks for the posts, everyone. John, thanks for your advice and pics. My floor didn't look half as good as yours. And I had giant holes in the front. You could look down and see the ground. Almost like planned obsolescence, the way they set it up. I would love to find original mats but we'll see how it goes. I'll post whatever I find out.

[eric wissing]

Joe, in an earlier posting I had quickly googled rubber matting and there are many suppliers of material that is ribbed and could be helpful. Getting it to conform to the floor's contours would be the challenge. There probably are some good adhesives for glues out there if you attempted to cut and make it fit. It would be much easier to do this without the seats or anything else in the way. Eric

[Joe Flanagan]

Eric,

Were the original mats glued down or just laid in place?

[Dodgeb4ya]

1949 Plymouth`s original rubber floormats had " jute" backing- horsehair glued to the underside of the rubber floor mats front and rear and were just laid down over the floor. Plymouth Belvedere`s 2 Dr Hardtops`s in 1952- had factory carpets front and rear . I think that was the start of front and rear carpeting for Plymouth.

Bob

[eric wissing]

Eric,

Were the original mats glued down or just laid in place?

Joe ,they were just laid down. With the padding underneath, a person could hide any bumps caused by joining multiple peices together. Did someone say that Roberts sells a mat? Having the padding glued to the rubber would keep it from moving about. I wouldn't want it attached to the steel floor. Eric

PS: your car is coming along niely.

[Normspeed]

How about Sal Salerno for the mats? He's in the links section. I've never dealt with Sal but I think 47Heaven recently got his P15 mat there, looks good.

[Joe Flanagan]

I just checked my Roberts catalogue and they show floor mats that supposedly work for all Mopars from 1930 to 1956. They have jute backing. Front costs 65, rear costs 70. They also sell what they call "carpet sets," which look in the picture like they cover the entire floor front and back. These are 175 each. It says they include a heel pad and dimmer switch grommet. Cut and sewn, ready to install.