Joe Gosinski of Chicane Sport Tuning lays the foundation for our new interior with his Cabin Carpet kit. An alternative to the factory on-piece molded carpet, Chicane's kit relies on high -end materials and a multi-piece layout for an upscale look.
Horse Sense: It's amazing how carpet in a Mustang is so easily overlooked. Aside from the front-row footwells, only the rear hump over the driveshaft tunnel and a bit of the rocker panels is in plain view. However, spill some oil on it, and you'll be spotting the damage from 50 feet at night.
By this point, nearly every Fox Mustang can use new carpet. Thousands of heel scuffs and a few hundred missing French fries have seen to that. The only real question is when you'll get around to it.
For us, time ran out when we eyed the bombed-out seat upholstery in our '91 hatchback. We knew we had to do something about it and realized the only real solution was a nearly complete interior makeover.
Freshened carpet was clearly going to be part of any interior redo, and as we investigated our options, three choices materialized.
This was the good side of our '91 5.0 hatch. The floormats faded long ago, and the carpet sported enough deeply embedded dirt to choke a shop vac. A glance on the driver side shows the cratered upholstery we'll be addressing next.
Assuming the carpet isn't torn or threadbare and hasn't seen too much damage or soiling, cleaning the original carpet might be viable. By cleaning, we mean a serious effort, where the interior is mainly stripped, and a steam cleaner is rented and brought to bear. Obviously, this is the way to go when restoring as close to stock as possible.
The second option is a stock-type replacement carpet. Ford doesn't service Fox Mustang carpet, so we turned to the nicely priced replacement kits that are so widely available.
For the vast majority of Fox restorations, this is the way to go. The aftermarket carpet, which is molded like the original, is inexpensive and simple to install. Take out the old, slide in the new, and put the center console and seats back in.
Carpet work always means clearing the cockpit, and the seats are the first items to go. Their mounting hardware is easily found just under the seat, inside the car. Look also for seatbelt or lumbar support wiring before trying to heft these suprisingly heavy chairs out the door.
One downside to the usual aftermarket option is that the carpet is a lighter-weight material than Ford's, so if you're looking for a concours restoration or the plushest carpet possible, you'll probably want to hunt down some good original carpet. Good luck. On the other hand, if you're making a fun street machine, the aftermarket carpet's noticeably lighter weight is a crafty way of gliding over the scales. That's a great thing for most of us reading this magazine.
The third option comes to us courtesy of Joe Gosinski at Chicane Autosport Tuning in Torrance, California. Chicane has long had its own unique place in the Mustang firmament. It's a combination of performance and flash, offering a variety of specialized Mustang and Saleen hop-up and customizing parts. These can result in stunning cars-witness Joe's own Fox Rod on our March '06 cover.
For Fox carpet, Chicane is working the kinks out of a nonmolded, multi-piece carpet kit. The idea isn't to replicate the stock carpet, but to move up-market with low-nap, high-quality material, then cut and hem it into a new style. The result is subtle; one of those pieces that gives the interior a classy appearance without standing out in the process. We decided to give it a try.
We don't claim Martha Stewart status, but contrary to what this photo suggests, we do vacuum our Mustang from time to timm. Still, the amount of gunk that accumulates in out-of-the-way places is impressive. It's no wonder that new-car smell is replaced with something less pleasant.
While stock Ford carpet is molded, the Chicane kit is made up of several pieces of sound-deadening underlayment, along with six pieces of carpet. Where the carpet pieces visibly overlap, they're trimmed with a hem. The technique and look is similar to the traditional European sports-car practice familiar to early Porsche fans.
Because the Chicane carpet is multi-piece, it doesn't rely on the seats, center console, thresholds, and other interior pieces to hold it in place, as with Ford's molded one-piece carpet. The Chicane carpet, as installed in our car, glues the underlayment to the chassis, then glues the carpet to the underlayment. Next, the seats and such are reinstalled, further locking the carpet in place.
Since our prototype install, Chicane has opted to deliver the carpet with the underlayment already glued to the carpet. That saves one gluing step and makes it easier to avoid wrinkles in the finished job.
Remove three screws, and the door thresholds pop off. they clamp the outer edges of the carpet to the rocker panels. | 
A surprising amount of labor is needed to remove the center console. It begins by unbolting the armrest. Look for hardware under the two pop off oval panels on the side of the console, where joe is gunning here. | 
While in the neighborhood, Joe also unbolted the inner seatbelts. These use star fasteners, so be prepared with the correct socket set. Also, remove any brackets for under-seat wiring you might see; anything, in fact, that pokes up through the carpet. |