$10 DIY Cargo Mat

I got sorta bored today and thought I'd post what I did. I'm not sure if this has been posted before but I thought it was pretty interesting once it was all said and done.


So here it goes;

I went to ye ole auto dump and picked me up a bed mat out of an old '86 Silverado which I think had been clunkered, for $10.

I took the cargo carpet out of my Sploder and placed it on top of the rubber mat and prepared for tracing.



I used a sharp box cutter and traced around my carpet leaving an offset of about a 1/4". I bent the rubber back and with light pressure ran the cutter along the grove and the mat came right apart, easy as pie.



I threw out the sound dampening material as it smelled like old, wet dog. and threw my nasty carpet in there and the rubber on top. Here's what it came out like:




Personally, I thought it looked fairly good, sorry for the cellphone pictures.

What do you guys think?

very nice

Very nice mod!

Looks great!

The rubber mat should be easy to clean, and not absorb moisture like a sponge. It was a good choice. My 88 cargo van has a custom rubber mat. I bought it about 18 years ago.

Thanks guys!

BrooklynBay said:

My 88 cargo van has a custom rubber mat. I bought it about 18 years ago.

Click to expand...

So, I'm about 18 yrs unoriginal, is what you mean... hahah

I hadn't even thought about cleaning it yet, but your right, it's going to be 100x easier now! I tell you what, that rear carpet (almost like the receiving fibers of a velcro thingy) holds sand like it's nobody's business.

I like that!!! I was all set to use herculiner or something like that, but I like what you did a little better!

The previous owner had plywood bolted to the floor that was water damaged. I ripped it up, and found sand under it. The rubber cargo mat was the only mat that was available for it at the time (other than ordering a factory carpet with holes for the rear seats which the vehicle doesn't have anyway). According the the history of the vehicle, it was used by a car rental company, then by a company called Invisible Fence.

Really like how that looks! May have to do that to my ex.

Very nice, I may give this a try too. Agree the carpet is like velcro and holds in too much sand.

Replaced cargo carpet

It was a nice day today so I decided to give this a try. But instead of a rubber mat I opted to replace the dirty ol' carpet which was starting to look like it came off a scratching post that had been pee'd on. Anyway, pics...

Cargo area with the carpet ripped out. Reasonably clean underneath except for some rust near the lift gate.


Old and new carpet. Bought a roll of cheap auto carpet from Canadian Tire for about $20. Size was almost perfect... as you can see, I didn't bother cutting out the tabs for the bottom edge because the new carpet is slightly shorter than the original. It clears the holes for the trim piece so no problems there. In retrospect, I should've put a layer of something between the old and new rugs while tracing because I later had to clean all the old dirt and fluff off the new carpet. Might also be a good idea to trace onto a piece of cardboard first and use that as a template.


Installed with the original padding underneath (plastic trim piece still out). Slight bit of roll at the left because I cut the pattern a few millimeters wider than necessary... too lazy to take it back out and trim.
I didn't bother reusing the plastic lip from the oem carpet so the edge near the seats is a little loose... I keep my tools there so no biggie.