A Steel Soldiers buddy of mine gave me a 50′ roll of used conveyor belt that he got from work. We picked it up at the SS Georgia rally in October. Today was a nice, 73 deg December 21st day, so I went outside and worked on the Jeep. My floor mats were getting pretty ragged, so I grabbed a utility knife and sliced off a 2′ section of the belt and began measuring. The ones I had were about 20″ tall x 16″ wide with a few cutouts to fit around the tunnel. I cut mine about 20″ tall x 21.5″ wide to fit all the way over to the sidewalls. I had to cut out for the tunnel, floor drain and gas tank strap. The passenger side was about the same. This belt is about 1/8″ thick and slightly textured, so it makes a decent floor mat and covers more of the floor than the others did. I don’t think these will ever wear out!
Now that I had the front ones done, I measured for the rear. I decided to make it a tight fit, going from wheel well to wheel well and all the way back to the seat supports. Now the whole rear is protected. I tried heating them up to “form fit” them to the front floors, but the belt was just too stiff. I used a propane torch but it didn’t work.
After I finished with the mats I decided to take a drive. I followed my normal route down the back roads, back to the highway at no more than 40mph. She was running great (except for the annoying parking brake rattle that I haven’t fixed yet), so instead of turning down Main St. to go home, I stayed on the highway for another 3 miles and turned into a neighborhood. I rode around the neighborhood, then down more back roads until I got home. A nice ride!
Rebirth of an M38A1 