carpet swap/auto belt replacement

[Sittn86]

When I bought my Duster last year, I was ashamed. The car was in shambles. I've since decided that it was a diamond in the rough. Okay, maybe just an unpolished turd.

After dealing with the smell of sour milk and ass matter coming from the floor of my car for months now, I decided to do something about it this weekend. Since I have a complete '93 Duster that decided to flatten a deer, parts aren't a problem.

I started on Saturday afternoon by stripping the interior of the parts car. Then I hung the carpet on the trailer ramps to pressure wash it & let it dry overnight. Sunday morning, I removed the elephant diaper from the good car, along with the auto seatbelt. With the carpet out, I discovered a big bulge in the floor where the passenger's right foot goes. I fixed that with a sledge hammer & installed the new carpet. I don't even want to know how that bulge got there. I'm hoping it was an improperly placed jack, but it was probably abuse, judging from the rest of the car. The only problem I had with the carpet installation was a slight difference in the hole where the console goes. I just had to cut it a bit & it fit right in.

Unfortunately, I had to leave the original console in the car with the shoulder belt mechanism because the mount for the other console is part of the car. Other than that, it was pretty straight-forward.

For the seatbelt, I had to replace the track with a plate for the upper anchor & put the new retractor in place of the old motorized one. I would have left the auto seat belt in, but it never worked properly & I grew tired of giving a detailed training session every time someone new got in the car. Trim wise, I had to replace the 2-piece a-pillar panel with the 1-piece and I swapped the big rear- quarter trim panel. The old one only had a hole for the rear seatbelt & nowhere for the webbing to feed through. The lapbelt has one bolt with a 16mm head. (yeah, figure that one out) There's not a hole in the new carpet, so no worries there.

The whole reason I typed this is because I've seen people wondering about this in the past. I gave it a shot & it worked out great, so I thought I'd share the experience.

[Sittn86]

Ok, I tried more pics, but it didn't work. I'll try later