My next project is going to be a late 50's style rod. It's a few years off, but I, like most of you, build these things in my head multiple times before anything gets started. Which brings me to my question, and yes, I did a search, and found little. What was commonly used for floor covering by era, say 40's to mid 50's, late 50's and so on. Carpet? What style/material? Rubber? Most of the modern traditional builds seem to have wool carpet with bound edges (even in open cars), but it seems to me many of the modern builds are a little more 'polished' than what was likely really being done by the average Joe in the early days (obviously, there are many exceptions to that statement, such the Doane Spencer car etc.). Feel free to skewer me if this has been beaten to death, I just wanna learn.
Up well into the 50's most guys just used the rubber that the car came with. Most likely the rubbers were in pretty good shape back then and if they were not then a few bucks bought a replacement set. At that time molded carpets were scarce except in more expensive cars, and expensive too. Molded rubber was cheap then but today molded carpet is cheap and easy to find even for cars that never had carpet. In the mid to late 60's most guys were still useing rubber but carpet was becoming much more common. By the early 70's carpet "took over".
There is a cabinet shop next to me and you would not believe the cut offs they throw away, they told me "take what you want, take it all" and I was thinking about the 48 Chev Aero Cp. I am currently working on. A wood inlaid floor you know light / dark woods maybe an inlaid Chev emblem The price is right, free. I don't know, what do you guys think ? I hate to see that good **** just thrown away.
I put rubber liner from the Home Depot in my bucket. You can see it a bit in here, this is when a first laid it down so it had not had a chance to flatten out from being rolled up. [edit]Here's a couple other shots I dug up
I too have been thinking of a wood floor in mine- It was ll available in the 50's and 60's. Im actually going to use some Vertical Grain T&G material that was salvaged off a building built around 1900- anyone that had woodworking abilities back then would have had the ability to use their shopsmith or metal cased craftsman woodworking equipment to build a cool floor for their rod. I say go for it! OJ
If ya aint lookin for Concoors', try a carpet shop and check out traditional "Boat Carpet". Cheap and easy to cut, it comes in black and a few hideous basic colors. I just did a '61 with it and cost me @ $ 60. It was $.50sf in 3' and $1sf in 6' widths
That was my line of thinking, not to mention, an open car in my part of the world is guaranteed to get uh, 'damp' at some point or 'nuther. I ***ume the resto houses keep replacement rubber floors for early Fords.
A buddy of mine used diamond point rubber mat in his '27 roadster. Clamped a straight edge on, and DA'd the diamonds off the edges, making it look like a custom molded piece. Pretty slick.
The people that make Dyna-Mat insulation make a floor covering called Dyna-Deck that reads and looks good online, but I've never seen it in person. IIRC, it's about 3/8" thick, as its also an insulator, doesn't absorb water, and has a surface appearance sorta like a rubber floor mat. Summit carries it and has a warehouse/store only 22 miles from me, next time I'm over there I'm gonna ask to look at a piece of it. Sounds like what I want for my roadster. Dave
Here is a similar thread I started last year. I'm still looking. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=550431
Square weave and short cutpiles were out by the 20.Loop showed up in the 50s and starting in the late 60s the switch was being made to modern cutpile, early 70s loop was done, through the entire time rubber existed with some cars having a rubber front and a carpet rear.The question was,what is traditional? well the correct answer would probably be that if you were broke you would use whatever the car came with or if you were building a 50s show car like the origional moonglow[54 chev] built in the 50s it had loop in the interior as well as in the trunk, like many things in hotrodding and sleds, there are few absolutes.
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