1994 Ranger 374V Recarpeting

The carpet on the boat came up fairly easily.

I used a sharp, wide wood chisel to scrape the residue off the boat. Most of it came up easily with the chisel.

The small bit that remained came up with some acetone and a rag.

The carpet on the lids came off just as easily.

I drilled the lid rivets out with a 3/16" drill and carefully removed the small piece wedged in the lids with a screw driver and some skinny needle nosed pliers.

I purchased some Weldwood Original contact cement to use on the carpet edges so I would not have to clamp the edges. I used the Roberts 6700 on all the large flat surfaces.

I also bought some 1/2" grip 3/16" rivets and some #10 stainless washers to reattach the box lid hinges.

My brother came over to help me install the carpet. We decided to do all the box lids first. We followed the instructions from marinecarpeting.com/m on how to make the cuts to install the carpet.

We made sure to orient the lids with all the grain indicator arrows pointing toward the rear of the boat since the front bow piece was already cut in a large "V" shape and the grain arrow on it pointed toward the rear of the boat. To help with that, I marked the lids with an arrow too.

The lids were coated with Roberts 6700 then placed onto the carpet piece labeled for that lid. The corners were cut but we were careful to not cut too close so the edges would wrap down over the rounded corners and still match up along the corners.

It took some experimentation, but we got better at it as we covered the lids.

We coated the edges with contact cement and wrapped the carpet around and inside each lid.

There were several lids with a insert inside the lids. The original carpet was captured by this insert as were the ends of the hinge rivets. So, we glued the carpet around the three sides without a hinge first.

Then we glued the hinge side to the back of the lid, used a small Phillips head screwdriver to poke holes for the rivets and then installed the hinges.

Then we still could install the stainless backing washers before wrapping the carpet into the inside of the lids.

I will be resealing all the openings in the lids with resin before reinstalling the latches.

The next day, we started working on carpeting the rear of the boat.

Again we used the contact cement on the edges and the Roberts 6700 on the flat areas.

The hardest part was trimming the carpet properly once placed on the deck. The edges that show were very challenging. I did not do as well as I had hoped. The knife they sent works, but there is a technique to it that is not mastered in one try. We used the small Phillips head screwdriver to scribe along the cut section which helps seat the carpet well. Then we used a new blade on each cut. Even so, we still had a few times where the cut was not complete on the first attempt.

Overall, we did pretty well with the rear deck. I think it looks pretty good for amateurs.

The front of the boat will have to wait a week or two. Gina and I am going camping with the NSSO at Falls Creek Falls State Park in Tennessee for a few days.