The carpet underlay in the front was switched round so the cutout for the pedals was in the right place. Still don't know why that didn't occur to me when I was fitting it - though having to work around school kids running around my driveway at the time probably didn't help.
The observant among you may also spot the other thing I forgot yesterday afternoon in the above photo.
The fuel switch was left on overnight. I can however now confirm that the needle and seat in this carb are decent enough to prevent the whole tank decanting itself overnight. Though it did leak by enough that I created my own little recreation of that video of them crossing the border the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall when I started the car up. Thankfully after five minutes or so of driving the biblical levels of smoke reduced to invisible again.
As I had hoped the carpets had fully dried overnight. They're not spotless by any means but I think are a hundred times better than they started out.
My suspicion was that once they were in the car that the marks would be far less apparent.
Think I was right.
Perfect? No. However it's a 39 year old car, and based on that context I think is entirely acceptable. The area by the pedals is looking in really surprisingly good shape given there's no separate heel pad or anything there.
Not sure what these carpets are made from, but it seems to be pretty hard wearing whatever it is.
Next issue I wanted to address was the door cards. Nothing says quality like trim that fits this well.
The main reason for that is that a whole bunch of these clips were missing.
Of the eighteen that should be in that door card there were three present (and four in the driver's door). With them all present and correct it looks...a bit better.
Being totally honest this card is never going to sit absolutely right as it's been quite badly water damaged and is warped as a result. It's a lot better though. Doesn't flap around a bunch when the door closes now either.
Same was done on the driver's side. That one at least has escaped any major water damage so is sitting properly.
It's actually looking like a car again!
If you're really paying attention you may have noticed that the driver's side window winder has changed from chrome to plastic. That's because I have two plastic ones but only one chrome one and then being mismatched was bugging me. Yes the metal one looks nicer, but I'll take them matching over individual visual appeal.
Really need to get the parcel shelf under the dash out to give it the same treatment as the rest of the carpets as it's absolutely filthy. That might wait till the weather is a bit warmer though so I can just leave it in the sun to dry.
The carpets will come out again at the same time as I want to get the bulkhead behind the shelf rust proofed same as the floors, and to get proper paint on the area beneath the B pillars so the current tide mark isn't so obvious. Shorter term all the carpets need to come out the boot so it can be properly dried out and rust proofed as well. That requires me to empty all the crap out first though!
While in the boot, I did spot a convenient spot to mount some concealed speakers if I did decide I wanted to fit a stereo at some point in the future, which honestly I doubt I will.
Between the carpets being back in the car (and no longer saturated) and the cooling shroud now actually being bolted together the car is waaaaay quieter to drive. Don't get me wrong, it's still ridiculously loud, but it's a thousand times better than it was. You can actually have a conversation at 50mph just by raising your voice a bit rather than actually having to shout.
Here's the obligatory before and after from the day I got the car and today inside.
Quite the difference.
Externally not much has really visibly changed though!
