i am in the process of removing the carpet from my 83 z-28 and i was wondering if you have to take the entire console out to get all of the carpet out. if so what is the best way to do this? if not how do you do it otherwise?

 

yes, it has to come out. the consoles easy, wait till you get to the seat belts.

 

Those seat belts are one serious bitch, especially if you have a car in which they have never been taken out of before.

The best and only advice that I can give you is to make sure that you have alot of space to work with, because you will need it.

Also, dont throw anything out until you have priced everything out. When I re-did the interior of my 89 rs I chucked all the carpet, both front and cargo, while for the $100 bucks or so it was for the cargo area carpet I should have saved the original because it was not all that bad.

 

I stripped a couple bits and a few screws taking the seatbelts out of my RS in april. I found using a long ratchet really helped a lot. And if you do strip the screws, use vice grips. You gotta be pretty strong to do it but it'll work with a lot of effort.

 

Please don't use a rachet on the seat belt bolts. Use a breaker bar. Breaker bars are for breaking bolts loose, rachets are for turning them once they're loose. Make sure your torx bit fits the bolt head tightly, I found success by tapping them in with a hammer till they were fully seated, then using the longest 3/8" breaker bar I could find with a 6" extension for extra control. If the bit is fully seated everytime before you start trying to turn the bolt they won't strip out.

 

I wound up using a torque wrench to break them loose. I didn't have a breaker bar. But i probably did use the wrong torx bit, I used t-45 and i think it's a t-47 socket.

 

My setbelts were held in by "star" bolts, like and 8 point star socket thing I had to get a proper set for it.
Make sure you get good carpets I thought I would be cheap and get crappy ones boy that was a mistake molding car carpets suck, especially around the tunnel for the gearbox =(