A DIY idea for carpets:

Hey guys, here's a neat little DIY project that doesn't cost much and can be done in a couple of hours! One of our members on Club RSX did this with red premium felt because he didn't feel like spending $400 on a used red Type-R carpet, and who can blame him?

For this DIY, you aren't removing your stock carpet, you're simply laying some soft fabric over it and securing it around the edges and seat/trim bolts.

For about $20, go to JoAnn fabrics and pick out some stuff. For my car, the premium felt almost sticks like mild velcro to the original carpet, but since they didn't have it in yellow, I bought some anti-pill microfleece. Three yards more than did it for my car, so it should be roughly that amount for the Riv.



The next step is to take out your seats, see if you can pop up the center consoles at all, and pop up the rear seat cushion. What we did is take the fabric in three pieces: one to go from under the back seat to just past the front seats' rear bolts, securing them with the bolts and seat hooks. You can bring this back to wherever the edge of the carpeting is in the Riv, whether or not it's under the rear seats. Next, see if the trim is loose enough to tuck the edges of the fabric under along the sides. Take a credit card you don't mind getting trashed and tuck away!

Then, take two longer pieces for each side from the front seat rear bolts all the way up to the front edge of the carpeting and tuck as much as you can. You may need to get creative at the front edge of the carpeting, and the fabric may bunch up if there's too much excess.

Here's how mine came out. If you want to change the color of your carpet in the Riv, this would be a quick way to see if you like your next color.















Now, there was a lot of bad bunching on mine in the passenger footwell area, and the way I move my feet while driving was dragging down the carpet next to the gas pedal, so I got creative and used some finishing washers and M6 bolts I had for under the hood to secure everything. You aren't going to see this much anyway, and the rest of it came out great, so I'm happy!









Here is the original poster's results:









And one more:

Very interesting, it has a lot of possibilties if done right.

One thing I miss about the Acura NSX is that for a few years it wasn't affraid to offer yellow carpet to go along with the yellow leather and exterior.

In the application seen in the pics it almost seems like a moot point when covered by the large black rubber mats. In this case clear mats should be the next thing on the list of mods to be able to appreciate all the hard work. Also if there was a way to cover the clips/tacks it would look soo much better. However furniture makers create those fabric buttons for couches should be the solution to this.

The red and blue did look pretty sharp.


If you plan on this for the Riv, definitely post pics!

My Riv is silver and the interior is black so either way there's not 'tasteful' application of this for me. I like the black and silver seems expected for a carpet option.

To add a couple more hours and frustation to this project you could choose two colors, cut into strips and sew them together; not in a repeating stripey patern but like a center stripe on either side.

Rethinking my silver/black situation I've always been a fan of the houndstooth. I thought the first year Kia Soul's houndstooth interior was wicked; shame it was attached to the HamStar mobile. Trying to like'em but it's just not happening.

There's definitely lots of possibilities for stitching and stuff, but I'd keep the black and silver as it is. If you had a black car with a gray or tan interior, putting in a black carpet would look sharp. I like having the yellow as an accent around the Si floormats, and it keeps it from getting dirty in the middle if I want to throw the mats in the trunk for a car show! The finishing washers were just things I had on hand, and they're JDM yo.

Maybe I'm being captain obvious, but yellow is going to show dirt right quick. How do you plan to clean it?

interesting but not my cup of tea.

The yellow will definitely show dirt soon, but I should be able to vacuum it without issues. The original poster did a full vacuum of his car to test it and didn't have any problems. That's also why I keep the floormats on; the bulk of the carpet won't collect any dirt where it counts. Either way, it's a carpet and it'll get dirty. The beauty of this is that if one section gets trashed, I can just replace that part instead of the entire carpet.

Let us know how the vacuum session goes. Videos strongly encouraged!