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When I was asked by Toronto Triumph Club President, Dave Sims, to provide our TR3 as one of the Anniversary cars (60th anniversary of the TR3, figure 1) for the 2015 British Car Day, it seemed an appropriate time to complete a long-planned sprucing-up of the interior. After acquiring TS 17692 LO, it was obvious that the non-original carpet, seats and other panels would be in need of correction. The necessary components were purchased and were awaiting installation, but many other projects always seemed to push this update into the future. 

The original rubber floor mats in front of the seats had sockets that snapped onto snap studs installed on the floor pan. If installing new floor carpets in this area, a ring prong can be pressed through the carpet from the top side, the cinch plate goes over the prongs (round side down), and the prongs bent over to secure the fastener to the carpet. A pair of needle nose pliers can be used to compress the ring to the plate and a second pair of pliers can be used to bend over the prongs. If the snap studs need to be replaced, new snap studs can be affixed with a rivet through the existing hole or with a snap fastener screw stud.

Another issue needing a decision is how to install the material. Many of the vertical pieces were glued in place, without underpad. The front cockpit rubber mats were held in place with snap fasteners. The carpet under the seats is held in place by the seat sliders.

It is interesting to note how little of the carpet is visible and consequently a very ratty carpet may not look too bad – until you look more closely! Removal of the seat pans revealed how ratty (figure 6) my carpet set was.

 In the case of the TR2/3, the seat sliders are individual, and each slider is comprised of a lipped piece that bolts to the floor pan and a lipped piece that slides on this piece but also has attachments for the seat pan. The two sliding surfaces require lubrication to ease the sliding motion and I like to use lithium grease. I have used both spray lithium grease (in situ) and tub lithium grease (when dissembled). An underpad should be used with your new carpet. Custom underpads are available or you can cut your own using the carpet pieces as templates. Original underpad was a jute fabric but many have substituted a more modern underpad or metallic backed padding for soundproofing and heat reflection. For each of the following steps, it will be assumed that the same process was followed for placing underpad beneath the new carpet.

Another decision you will need to make about underpad is whether it will be attached to the metal surface, to the carpet, or kept loose. Some of the original installations had the underpad glued to the surface and if (when?) it gets wet, there is no way to dry it out. Another option is to glue the underpad to the underside of the carpet such that it comes out easily when the carpet is removed. Other surfaces such as under the seats, the underpad can be left loose because it will be held in place by the seat rails.

The bulkhead (1) and heelboard (18, 19, and 20) pieces can be test fitted and glued into place without underpad. I like to use 3M Super 77 Spray Adhesive.

If the snap studs for the passenger and driver side foot wells are still in place you can reuse these or install new ones, as described earlier, in their stead. I have used two techniques to mark the location of the fastener on the footwell pieces (12 and 13). The first, with the carpet aligned correctly in place, use a sharp awl to locate the hole or fastener on the metal surface. When located, mark with chalk. The second, with the snap stud or screw in place, mark the head of the screw or the snap stud with a substantial amount of chalk, press the carpet in place so that the chalk on the screw/stud transfers to the back of the carpet. Rub the top side of the carpet directly over the snap stud such that the chalk marks the bottom of the carpet exactly where the pronged ring will be located. Install the pronged ring and cinch plate at this position as described earlier. Repeat this process until the eight fasteners holding the two carpet pieces to the floor are installed on the carpet. These two carpet pieces can now be snapped in and out as desired.

Bulkhead pieces (2 and 3) attach to the vertical bulkhead area in the footwells via pronged rings (four each side) and can be fitted in a similar fashion as that described for the passenger and driver footwell floor sections. The scuttle pieces (4 and 5) attach to the sides of the footwell areas via five screws and cup washers on each side. You can mark the location of the screws similarly to how the carpet was marked for the floor sections using either the awl method or chalk. If you wish to use chalk, you can temporarily fit the screws to locate the holes and give a surface for building up the chalk. Figure 7 shows the scuttle piece (note the five screws) and the bulkhead piece.

 In dissembling the seats and tracks, I discovered the installation was like many I have seen where the bolts holding the tracks to the floor pan went through the tracks and then the carpet, trapping the carpet tightly to the floor along the entire length of the seat track. The problem with this setup is that the carpet will sometimes become damp and clamping a wet carpet between two metal sections not only increases the possibility of rust but also of rotting carpet. Anytime I have removed seats and old carpet from a TR, the worst part of the carpet has always been the area where the seat is attached to the floor. TR4/4A/5/250/6 had a good idea here. These models used small spacers (figure 8-TRF WM67, Moss 228-175) between the floor pan and the seat rails so that the rail was lifted off the floor pan and to give some space for the carpet to air out. On these models, eight spacers were used but the TR2/3 models have six bolts per seat if you want to add this improvement when installing your carpet.

 To install these, I lay the cockpit carpet (#14 & 15) in place over the bare floor and marked the holes where the seat rail attachment bolts would go through the floor pan, and then used an X-acto knife to cut an opening, using a spacer as a guide for the cut (figure 9). To make sure the cuts were in the exact locations, I worked slowly, doing one or two at a time, reinstalling the carpet and inserting the bolts in the holes to anchor it before marking the next one or two holes. It is best to make the cuts on the bottom side of the carpet. Once the holes have been cut, similar holes can be marked and cut on the underpad.

Once the cuts have been made for all 12 holes, the carpet can be installed, and the seat rails reinstalled to hold it in place (figure 10). Normally, these rails would have been cleaned up and repainted before installation but in this case, they were installed as is since there would not be enough time to rebuild the seats before British Car Day. The rails will be refurbished during the installation of the new, leather seats and spring seat cushions.

It is obvious where most of the carpet pieces go by their shape. If you purchase an original style carpet set, the more complex and confusing part of the jigsaw puzzle is the part that covers the gearbox cover. Figure11 shows these pieces (#7, 8, 10, 11). For a finished look, the bound edges cover the cut edges.

Gearbox carpet pieces 7, 8,10, and 11 installed. Cut edges of carpet pieces are covered by bound edges of adjacent carpet pieces. 

The driveshaft pieces (16 and 17) can be installed with pronged rings snapped to studs on the driveshaft tunnel.

If you want to finish your carpeting task by paying attention to the boot, many vendors provide a single carpet for the boot floor as original (#21). Moss carries a five-piece carpet set (figure 13) for the boot that covers the boot floor, the wheel arches (left and right), and the side panels (left and right) and gives a very nice, quality finish to the boot. The wheel arch pieces and side panel pieces were glued in place using spray contact adhesive. The boot floor piece was simply placed on the boot floor.

Next task – rebuild the seats with new leather upholstery and seat springs.