With Stage 45 of our 1:8 scale Ghostbusters Ecto-1 partworks build behind us, I feel we need to address the surface of the Front Inner Floor. There have been discussions online whether the car should have vinyl floor mats like the ones provided with the model, a fully carpeted floor, or a combination of both. The original Cadillacs of the time could have had any of these options.

Since we never see the car’s floor in the films and, on the restored Ecto-1 seen below it is quite obvious that the floor is carpeted (with a rubber heel pad visible), I decided I was going to go with carpet inside my model.

I have installed aftermarket carpet before (on my Back to the Future DeLorean) and it added a really nice quality to the interior. Luckily, our mod man Mike Lane recently released his Footwell Carpets with Heel Pad set for the Ecto-1! This mod consists of six pieces of custom pre-cut, black adhesive scale carpet pieces:

Let’s get these in the car and see how it looks!

Installation

Step 1

First, remove the Gas Pedal and Speakers from the Front Inner Floor. These are each held in place with a single screw from below:

If you already installed the stock Carpets (floor mats), pull them up and out. If any of the 3M adhesive tape remains, you can roll it up with your fingers to remove it. We want a nice clean surface to work with here.

You may notice I left the silver Headlight Dimmer Footswitch in place, this was on purpose:

Step 2

The first carpet section to install is the smallest and fits at the wide end of the ‘transmission tunnel’. Remove the backing paper and align the circular cutout with this post, as shown:

Carefully press the adhesive side down to the floor while aligning this small hole.

Once this was installed, I used the rounded ends of some tweezers to tuck in around the edges:

Step 3

Retrieve the long skinny carpet section, turn it over, and remove the backing paper from the ‘cone’ shaped end.

Having only half of the adhesive exposed make it easier to work with larger ‘stickers’:

Fit the wide end of this section up against the carpet we just installed, aligning the circular cutout to the same post. Smooth the carpet to the floor towards the rear of the Front Inner Floor:

Lift the rear of this section and peel the remaining backing paper away. Then, gently roll the rest of this carpet down along the floor. The two ‘tabs’ of this section fits down into the wide groove of the floor, like this:

While ‘tucking’ in the edges of these carpet sections, you may expose some of the white paper base (as you can see above). If this happens, you can simply touch up the exposed paper with a Black Sharpie:

Step 4

Next up, we are going to add the driver’s side front carpet section. This is a really large piece to work with, so only peel the front half of the backing paper away and cut it off with scissors. Don’t cut the carpet itself!

Using the Headlight Dimmer Footswitch as an ‘alignment’ pin, carefully apply this carpet to the left side of your Front Inner Floor:

Make sure we align these holes as we stick this section down:

Step 5

With the front section of this piece now anchored in place, you can peel off the remaining backing paper…

… and gently roll the carpet towards the back, making sure to align these three holes:

The very rear edge of this carpet section is meant to be folded down into the wide groove, like this:

Step 6

Moving on to the rear of the driver side, we will be using this piece of carpet:

Remove the backing paper and apply this carpet section to the rear ledge of the driver side of the Front Inner Floor, aligning the holes and posts as shown:

The front half of this carpet section is designed to be tucked down into the wide groove, like this:

Step 7

Repeat this process with the large carpet section for the passenger side, making sure the three holes line up:

Step 8

In a similar way, attach the rear section of the passenger side, aligning the posts and holes, and tucking it into the groove as shown:

Step 9

With the carpet now completely installed, we can replace our Gas Pedal and Speakers using the same screws we took out:

Thoughts

Personally, I think these Self-Adhesive Carpets looks phenomenal! I am always impressed with the fitment precision of Mike Lane‘s products and this mod lived up to that expectation once again. Even the pre-installed heel pad is accurate and wonderful. In any case, it is a huge improvement over the boring plastic floor. I am so happy I was able to get it installed before we got too far into the build, thanks Mike!

One more thing, if you really like the floor mats, you can still put them on top of the carpet. I won’t be doing this, but I wanted to show it is possible: