Apr 23, 2016
Like many early C4's, my car has a problem with the carpet pulling away from the door panels. This usually appears as a 'scalloping' effect where the carpet droops in the areas between the factory applied carpet staples.
Because I am not ready to shell out the cash to buy new door panels yet, I decide to see if there was a way to fix this on-the-cheap.
After removing the door panels, I found that a previous owner tried to address this problem by screwing the carpet to the door panels with some very small brass screws. The P.O. had then painted the screw heads black to hide them. I suppose the screws weren't any worse than the factory's use of staples but neither solution prevented the eventual scalloping of the carpet.
I went to eBay and purchased some black upholstery thread (Black Bonded Nylon sewing Thread #92 T90 for Upholstery) and some blunt tapestry needles.
After removing the brass screws from the door panels and cleaning up some bits of loose glue, from the front of the door panel I drilled a series of 1/16" holes spaced about 3/8" apart following the carpet-line. The picture below shows the holes from the back of the door panel.
Once the holes were drilled, I threaded the carpet (just below the carpet piping) to the door panels and pulled the thread tight. Now the carpet is pulled evenly to the door panel and the upholstery thread disappears into the carpet knap.
The cost of this repair was around $10 for the tread and needles and a couple of hours of my time. The fix is invisible and I'm happy with the results.