Any ideas?

I've seen a few GT replicas with them, including the "Tangerine Scream."

Were they a regular VW part, a limited-run Porsche part, or custom-cut from standard rubber stock?

Thanks!

pete

I had a conversation wityh morph about these. He is able to make them.

I have seen a rubber mat with ribs in it on sale at Home Depot or Lowes. It is used for "stair runners" and is about 48" wide and is on a roll. I've bought it and used it for mats in my shop. Thin stuff, maybe 3/16".

Pete, can you use your influence and contacts to get your hands on an original piece of matting? Then we can measure it up to find the correct pattern (width of groove and raised ribs) and thickness.

I smell a group buy on this also.

Probably the same stuff I got from the local Ace Hardware. Comes in rolls 48 inches wide, they cut to length the ammount you need. I got three yards for under ten bucks. In Vintage Motorsports magazine they had a great article about the Lufthansa 914-6 GT with some good interior shots. I'll try to take some pics of the material I have when I get home.

the automotive material that i can get that looks to be exactly the same is like 60.00 a liner yard. OUCH ! and thats MY price for it.
james

T'was thinking about this again. Would really like to do it and will happily pay $100+ for a good pair of repros.

Was also thinking a similar trunk mat would be a great anti-rust move away from foam and carpeting?

I've got a call out to see what my sources can come up with, but the Tangerine Scream and at least one GT restoration have used these, so how did they do it?



pete

I think you would find that the matting, the fabric they used inside and even the engine grille material were just 'industrial' stuff. It was cheap, light and available. The big trick is to find exactly the same stuff if you want a real recreation of the parts. If you are not worried about originality, then the same 'industrial' stuff will do just fine.

For example, look at the engine grille material. Lots of people recreating the lids use a second stock grille plus some trim. Now look at the photos of the original GT grilles. There are photos from several cars to compare, and the all show the same thing: the factory used just regular expanded metal and spliced three pieces together. IIRC, the two splices are above the carbs. They didn't use expensive punched flat sheet, they used sliced and stretched metal. Now if you want to do an accurate recreation, you would have to measure the pattern. If you don't want to be perfect, then just ring up a metal shop.

Same thing with the matting. If we knew the ribbing dimensions and thickness of the original, we could probably obtain that. Otherwise we could just get some from a hardware store. I tend more towards getting original pattern and so on, but one would have to be one heck of a concours judge to know original pattern from a hardware store stock item.

Pete, if you can determine original material specifications we will try to find a match to it. Access to known original parts it really the tough part.