On the virtues of winter floor liners

"Textured Soy Protein" (texturedsoyprotein) 01/12/2015 at 16:14 • Filed to: None

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My Grand Cherokee is my winter vehicle. Since it's a winter vehicle, I have all-weather floor mats: some suitably burly-looking !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Look at all the crap they've accumulated!

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That's a lot of crap that's not in my carpets right now, which is great. I'm a happy camper. But there are 3 slight issues with these.

1. Snow falls off my boots and melts into puddles which stay in the liners. See that line of dark grey sludge just south of the dead pedal? That's a puddle. They're trapping the water—yay—but that water freezes if the Jeep is parked outside for a long time.

2. The "tire tread" which is great for scraping the bottom of your boots off on, has the blocks a little too close together so it's tricky to get a rag down in there to sop up the puddles. Which I need to do because...

3. The grommet for the factory floor mat hook to poke through—bottom left of the mat, bottom right of the picture—is so tight that I can't really get the liner out at the moment while it's so cold which makes the plastic/rubber/whatever these are made of less flexible. I assume it's that way so water doesn't leak through the hole and down into the carpet, but I'd probably spill all the water from the liner while trying to get it off that hook.

Oh well, I guess I'm going to just keep sopping up the puddles with rags, and then hose the liners off when the temperature is warm enough for me to use an exterior faucet on my house.

Winter is messy business.

jkm7680 > Textured Soy Protein 01/12/2015 at 16:19

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Maybe try all weather floor liners?

If I were going to have a specialized winter vehicle I'd have a P71 Crown Vic or PPV Tahoe because rubber flooring.

4muddyfeet - bare knuckle with an EZ30 > Textured Soy Protein 01/12/2015 at 16:21

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Nah, Jeep have done it wrong. The proper way to do this is to have sluice holes like Defenders do. You can even scrape your boots on whichever pedal is handiest (footiest), and then kick the bits out.

It's a "Porch-uh" > 4muddyfeet - bare knuckle with an EZ30 01/12/2015 at 16:26

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I rented a Defender 90 a while back in Hawaii. No carpets, a cover for the CD player, and spray liner over the metal. You could just hose the thing out. It was awesome.

Textured Soy Protein > jkm7680 01/12/2015 at 16:28

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These are all weather liners. I'm just calling them winter liners interchangeably.

jkm7680 > Textured Soy Protein 01/12/2015 at 16:30

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Whoops, I meant the Weather Tech brand ones. Those seem to offer more protection.

Justin Hughes > Textured Soy Protein 01/12/2015 at 16:32

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I had a great solution when I worked at a flooring store. Carpet styles are as fickle as clothing styles, and they were always throwing out old ones and bringing in the new. That included the 2'x3' samples we cut for the showroom. Come winter, I'd grab a couple of these on the way to the dumpster and use them as my floor mats for the season. In spring, I'd chuck them in the dumpster, where they were going in the first place.

4muddyfeet - bare knuckle with an EZ30 > It's a "Porch-uh" 01/12/2015 at 16:37

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I have to admit I actually mop mine out. The rear tub is alu, so no worries there, and I just make sure to dry out the footwells so the above picture doesn't happen.

Textured Soy Protein > jkm7680 01/12/2015 at 16:45

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They're pretty similar. The sides maybe come up a little higher but that's not the issue.

These don't have the tire treads like the Rugged Ridge ones, so it'd be easier to mop up crap from them, but then there's no tire treads to scrape my boots on. Since they're a tray like mine, there would definitely still be a puddle. I bet the grommet for the hook is just as tight as the Rugged Ridge ones also.

It's basically just the nature of the beast, regardless of brand.

Rico > Textured Soy Protein 01/12/2015 at 20:37

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For the puddles you should try some of those super absorbent towels/chamois or just using paper towels. I've got weather tech liners that have some pretty deep grooves and I've been using older waffle weave drying towel (easy to wash and super absorbent).

gmporschenut also a fan of hondas > Textured Soy Protein 01/12/2015 at 22:35

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The ones you have look better as your heels can grip. i'm not crazy about the weathertech ones as they are too smooth and your feet slide around.

Textured Soy Protein > Rico 01/12/2015 at 23:33

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The last time I tried mopping up the puddles I used some rags made from cutting up old wifebeaters. I thought the ribbed fabric would suck up more water. Did decent enough and I obviously don't care much about them. Chucked em in the laundry and they were all good.