Well, I have completed my carpet install on my 2004 Triton TR20X BMC Edition. I will say I was intimidated at first and proceeded with caution. The start to finish for me was around 55 man hours. I had a good friend Sam help lay the carper and prep some. I started with the lids and hardware and organized them individually. I will say that organization is key to this job. I found that taking off the carpet was not that hard on my boat. When removing, it left a lot of the underside vinyl of previous carpet. What I used to remove that was a 1" chisel. I found that this was the easiest tool to work with and it made scraping the lids and fiberglass easier. I tried bigger scrapers, but just couldn't get it to work good. After removing the main part of the old carpet, I used a grinder with an 80 grit solid stone to remove all old glue and stuff from aluminum lids. I used a sander with 120 grit sandpaper on the fiberglass. The grinder was the best thing for me to remove the glue from the aluminum lids and the sander was great for the fiberglass. I did all my compartment lids first before tackling the boat part. I bought 8 pieces of wood strapping and cut into lengths that would fit alongside my lids. After gluing the lids, I used the wood and clamps (as others has stated) on both inside and outside of lids to keep the carpet tight. I then used a roller to roll the carpet out.
After completing my bins, I moved to the main part of the boat. I did use all my old carpet as guides/templates. I stopped using the old carpet for the lids as the corners were just too beat up. I just cut the corners like someone showed in the sticky's. When moving into the boat part, I noticed that the floor part of my boat was the toughest to pull up. It was also the toughest to put down, especially with dual console. After cutting out all my carpet, I dry fitted the pieces to make sure they fit good. Finally, after gluing all the carpet in, I put all my lid covers back into place without the hardware on them to hold the carpet in place. After letting the glue dry for a day or two, I then proceeded to put back on all hardware. I think it came out pretty good. I did take my time on almost everything. The last thing I wanted was to waste all the this time and money and have to redo it all over. I know after doing it the first time, I could cut out at least 10-15 hours.
I know I didn't tell you the whole story because I would be typing forever lol But I would be happy to help anyone that has any questions. I have posted some old, during and finished pics...
Michael
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Originally Posted by Triton420
