My Vans

I'm always on the lookout for more Bedford Rascal vans in particular - see here.

E50TKE - 1987 Bedford Bambi Camper Van

Changing the interior carpet

The carpet in the camper seemed to be its original horrible brown carpet. It was very fusty smelling and generally let the camper down. So I decided to replace it. My original plan was to just replace the small section of carpet between the seats but after I thought about it and whenever I realised that the original carpet went slightly under the seats I thought it would be a better idea to take both the bench seats out and fit the carpet across the entire floor.

This is what the interior looked like after I had stripped out the bench seats:

You can see the lyno stuff also seems to be original because it was under all of the factory fittings. I also unbolted the seatbelt brackets so that the carpet would go under those as well. Also notice the excellent workmanship on the front walls where the previous owner had attempted to cover them with a "fablon" material. I bought another roll of Fablon and set about doing that properly as well.

And this is the result:

I also added two strips of the carpet up the edge of the walls to the wooden battens so that the entire storage area under the seats was carpetted.

And here's the finished result:

You can hardly see the carpet once the seats are back in but it means that the storage under the seats is nice and clean now and it also seems to help with sound deadening when driving along as well. All in all this job took me a few hours on Friday evening and then another few hours on Saturday to put it all back together - but replacing the fablon stuff probably took about an hour on it's own! It was well worth it though the fusty smell of old caravan is more or less gone now!

Just need to get the seats recovered and curtains made to match the carpet now!