Boat Carpet Installer

[Fish Police]

Greetings Crappie Fans. Need some help! Looking for a boat carpet installer. The carpet in my Javelin 18' boat needs replacing. I live in Kilgore, TX and willing to drag the boat within a 150 miles from where I am at. You must be reputable and able to guarantee your work and you will get my business. Thanks for your help!

[bella]

[email protected]

[Cmac]

Fish Police, You can do it yourself without much trouble at all, I have a 17ft Javelin Venom & had to do mine, I bought my boat used & the guy before me had spilt oil all over the back deck. When I priced getting the carpet installed the cheapest I found was $330 & it was at a place that did cars.
Me & my father did it in less than a day & saved lots of $$$$ doing it.

If I remember correct you can get a gallon of glue at bass pro for less than $20 (more than you need) & I found the carpet online somewhere (dont remember the name) for less than $75.

If your interested let me know & i will try & help you with any questions just shoot me a pm or post on here.

Chris

[superdave1984]

I installed carpet for twenty years. It is not difficult to do what you are wanting to do. Make sure you use an outdoor adhesive. Pay more for quality here, the cheap stuff is just that. Get a good grade of carpet and ask about the UV rating/warranty. If you can get the old stuff out without ripping it to shreds, use it as a template, but not an exact template. Do it in the shade because the sun will evaporate the solvents really fast and it won't stick, or it will leave bubbles. If it says to let the adhesive "flash" for a few minutes, do it or you will have problems. Flashing is to let some of the solvents evaporate, not all. Get a really good quality razor knife and lots of blades. Remove anything you can obviously. Take your time and it will turn out great. The sides and irregular shaped areas are much more difficult and you may have to cut notches in the carpet to make it fit. Do NOT overdo it with the glue, using too much CAN actually damage the carpet and/or the floor of the boat depending on the solvents in the glue. Also, solvent based glue has some serious fumes. Brain damage is possible. Getting a huge buzz is almost unavoidable unless there is a good breeze.

[Fmab]

great advice!

[fin_n_feather]

I had a local fellow that did fiberglass boat repair and he had told me to soak the carpet in acetone, then the whole piece of carpet (use for a template) would come off and most of the old glue would come off also.

Good luck,

[superdave1984]

I had a local fellow that did fiberglass boat repair and he had told me to soak the carpet in acetone, then the whole piece of carpet (use for a template) would come off and most of the old glue would come off also.

Good luck,

I don't suggest using that method. The possibility of a flash fire is pretty high and also the acetone could dissolve the carpet altogether depending on how it is made. Acetone is pretty strong solvent, good for lots of things, but I wouldn't soak the carpet in it. If your old carpet has a primary and secondary backing, these are held together by adhesive. If you apply acetone or other solvents heavily, you will dissolve this adhesive first then the adhesive holding the carpet to the boat. Seperating the two layers of backing will cause your template to become skewed as the layer with the fibers attached will shrink and wrinkle because it no longer has the support of the main backing. Plus if the main backing stays glued to the boat, you have the problem of doing the process again. If your carpet is a single layer, sometimes called needlepunch, it is prone to ripping if you use a solvent. This stuff is usually easy to identify as is has a smooth back. Also that type is very thin and will stretch when pulling again skewing the template.Then there is the stuff with the rubber on the back. This will not come up in one piece. Period. A wallpaper scraper is good for slowly removing the stuff if it doesn't come up easily. I know this all sounds complicated but it really isn't. Also any strong solvents may remove the top layer of gelcoat from a fiberglass boat. Aluminum you can do whatever you want.