Rugged Ridge 13696.01 Replacement Carpet in Black for 97-06 Jeep Wrangler TJ

I just installed this carpet in my 98 TJ, and I have to say that while I don’t hate it, I certainly don’t love it either.

Full disclosure, this is the first time I’ve put a carpet in a car. I’m not a novice with heavy fabric though. I’ve installed house carpet several times and done some reupholstering. I read the instructions and watched a couple of online videos to see how it’s done. So it’s certainly possible that some of my issues are due to my own inexperience. On the other hand, if you’re at the same level of experience as I am, this is probably relevant to you.

First the good. The fabric looks very nice and seems durable. Time will tell. The edges are solid and the extra padding under foot areas is nice.

Now the rest of it, starting with the small stuff. There was quite a bit of cutting for chair rails, tie mounts, seatbelt mounts, etc. They were upfront about this, but it feels like some of the holes should already have been there.. The color was quite a bit lighter than I expected. The pic on quadratec was charcoal and the description was “charcoal” but the actual color was more medium to light grey.

My biggest gripe is that the carpet was made of flat pieces stitched together. When I read “proper fitment” in the description I expected that the carpet would be premolded to the shape of the jeep body. It’s really, really not. It’s fine on the flat spaces, but the curve on the back wheel wells was very off. I had to choose between having a large visible folded piece and slitting and overlapping. I went with the latter. In the front well there was a lot of rippling underfoot and the carpet did not match the curves around the edges of the well.

Second gripe – there are very large seams between sewn pieces of fabric, which leave large ridges in the carpet.

Third – the material just doesn’t extend far enough in several places. There’s exposed metal where three of the pieces meet in the back, and the front isn’t quite long enough to use the carpet hooks built into the body.

I used a clothes iron on lowest setting to work out some of the issues. I was able to get rid of some of the ripples and get a somewhat better match on the curves. It looks ok, but certainly not professionally done.

The adhesive is okay, but when the carpet shifts due to not fitting closely it pops off almost immediately.

Bottom line, I’m not really satisfied with it, but it’s good enough that I don’t want to rip it out and start over with something else.