About every month or two someone posts about the difficulty or removing old carpet where the backing has glued or welded itself to the deck. Here is a tip that I discovered accidentally that works very well in my case, where the backing is an old foam type.
Soak the carpet with water and then wait about two hours for it to absorb into and through the foam. Then slowly but steadily roll up the carpet. The water seems to break the adhesion and the backing releases very easily, no sticking.
I stumbled onto this on my 1997 330 Sundancer that will be getting its new carpet in about two weeks. During some new canvas work about two weeks ago the aft cockpit area got soaked during an overnight rain. The next morning I noticed the carpet was loose and not sticking - thought I was just lucky in that area. Yesterday when I went to remove the carpet it was firmly stuck again. So I soaked it and waited. Voila! Easy release with no sticking or foam tearing. Even the spots where the foam had torn due to sticking came right up.
No guarantees that it will work for anyone else, but it's probably worth a try. If you have a really bad case the addition of a small amount of detergent might also help.
Soak the carpet with water and then wait about two hours for it to absorb into and through the foam. Then slowly but steadily roll up the carpet. The water seems to break the adhesion and the backing releases very easily, no sticking.
I stumbled onto this on my 1997 330 Sundancer that will be getting its new carpet in about two weeks. During some new canvas work about two weeks ago the aft cockpit area got soaked during an overnight rain. The next morning I noticed the carpet was loose and not sticking - thought I was just lucky in that area. Yesterday when I went to remove the carpet it was firmly stuck again. So I soaked it and waited. Voila! Easy release with no sticking or foam tearing. Even the spots where the foam had torn due to sticking came right up.
No guarantees that it will work for anyone else, but it's probably worth a try. If you have a really bad case the addition of a small amount of detergent might also help.
