Decarpeting and rear seating a Postal

[bigwalton]

I've been meaning to get this up since Sunday, spent the day getting the stock carpeting up out of the bed and installing a flip and fold rear seat. It's mainly to give our dogs somewhere to be other than at our feet or in my wife's lap (she didn't like them free in the back and I ususally carry it packed full with part and tool boxes. Now Kate feels like it's a more useful vehicle

Anyhow, the carpet was glued in with some seriously tenacious crap. I took a wire brush to it in the thickest places to try and de-fuzz it somewhat. Now what's left is rubbery and kind of acts like non-skid stuff. The paint under most of the carpet is incredible, just the tops of the ribs in the bed have wear and there's a couple of spots in the floor at the rear door that are rusting, but nothing close to what I was expecting.

Also, for fear of being hated for saying it, in order to remove the flat plate bulkhead that the postal tray was attached to, I had to remove one rollbar bolt on each side that held it in. After all the crap I've heard about these bolts, I was up for a battle. I put a ratchet on them and they both backed right out, pretty as you please. I even tried the other two easily-reachable bolts just to check and they came out with little effort too. Ah, the wonders of a never-removed, stock hard top!!

Well, here's the page with the pics, click on them to get the full size. The file names are pretty well descriptive.

http://users.ohiohills.com/caoakes/decarpet_rearseat/page.html

 

[CJ8Chris]

Anyhow, the carpet was glued in with some seriously tenacious crap. I took a wire brush to it in the thickest places to try and de-fuzz it somewhat. Now what's left is rubbery and kind of acts like non-skid stuff. The paint under most of the carpet is incredible, just the tops of the ribs in the bed have wear and there's a couple of spots in the floor at the rear door that are rusting, but nothing close to what I was expecting.......

..........Ah, the wonders of a never-removed, stock hard top!!

Eric,

....Looking at all those pix, its AMAZING how clean, shiney and new the inside of the World Cab top looks after 20 years where you pulled off the insulation.

....I'll take scraping ashesive gook off of metal versus back yard welding and patching any day of the week!

...One of my criteria when I buy a jeep . TRY LIKE HECK to find one that came from the factory with a hardtop, (Another reason I'd like a Postal or Overlander), maybe get lucky and find one that's never been off, makes it a bonus with regards to body condition and rot. My experience has been that when I've helped friends buy the newer (but of course, used) YJ's, it seems like the automatic Laredo's with Factory A/C seem to never have had their tops off, makes a great rig for mechanical mods versus spending time on a usually a more difficult or time consuming body resto.

 

[Robert Slone]

Eric,

Try some DIF wallpaper stripper on the rubber goo. Available at most paint and hardware stores and fairly cheap - >$5/pint. mix it strong and let it sit about 10 - 15 minutes. Or try some acetone or even "Goof Off" also available at paint and hardware stores.

I'm about an hour from Durham so if you reach a point where you need an extra hand give me a hollar. I not much of a mechanic, but I'd be willing to give you a hand on a weekend here and there if you need it. Also we need to hook up sometime so I can give you these doors and this steering wheel.

Robert

 

[bigwalton]

Re: Re: Decarpeting and rear seating a Postal

Eric,

....Looking at all those pix, its AMAZING how clean, shiney and new the inside of the World Cab top looks after 20 years where you pulled off the insulation.

The trick with the paint under the insulation is that the insulation is not adhered to the paint in any way. The best I can describe it is that the insulation was wet when it was sprayed in and stuck to the paint as it cured BUT once dry, it formed a smooth "shell" anywhere it touched paint without actually sticking to it in any serious way.

Basically, the structure of the thick foam and the shell holds it in place and if you can get behind the shell you can pull off decent-sized sheets of the stuff all at once. The trick is getting behind the very stiff shell without screwing up the paint too bad. You can't use your fingers for more than 3 minutes or so before the tips are on fire, so we used combinations of scrapers and screwdrivers to pry off what you see.

The process is a PITA, but not nearly as bad as if you had to really scrape or strip the stuff off the paint. It also becomes very hard once you start working over your head, which is why we quit at the top edge of the sides.

 

[Marine-OpLaw]

Re: Re: Re: Decarpeting and rear seating a Postal

It also becomes very hard once you start working over your head, which is why we quit at the top edge of the sides.

Eric,

Wait a minute here.... I thought you mentioned in the 'naming your Jeep' thread that your Postal's name was "D-Dog".

If in fact true, why not just tell D-Dog to "rollover" or "play dead" (not sure what command you've taught 'em)? Then, you can go back to working on it like you were doing the floor.


Too much idle time on my hands...

 

[bigwalton]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Decarpeting and rear seating a Postal

Too much idle time on my hands...

Wow, you're not kidding... sheesh

 

[Jimbob]

Is that the postal tray or some sort of footlocker behind the back seat? Thats exactly what I need to rig in mine for storing the basic always prepared stuff!

 

[sgt.]

Eric

What is your opinion about taking out or leaving in the insulation.
I was going to take mine out but haven't brought myself to do it yet.

I can't get passed once it is out it is gone and there is no more.

I am going to leave my carpet in for now. its in good condition.

I haven't been around for a while, can't get away from the gun forums.

 

[sgt.]

BUMP

 

[bigwalton]

Eric

What is your opinion about taking out or leaving in the insulation.
I was going to take mine out but haven't brought myself to do it yet.

I don't know why I didn't see this to reply, FWIW, here goes.

I had to dig through it to get to the bolts to take the top off anyway, this messed things up pretty good.

Also, I had gotten WAY too much of the dust from the insulation in my eyes packing, unpacking and driving it around. I was about sick of it.

Obviously, I went with removing the weight and started tearing it all out.

After dinging up the top riding trails and putting a lift and new axles under it, it wasn't exactly a stock postal anymore, so I didn't have any issues making it a little less stock