Any experience with World Upholstery or GAHH carpet kits?

[orientrot]

I'm finally getting around to working on my car again after a can of spray paint exploded in the rear foot well a few years back ruining a lot of my carpet and trim pieces. I've tried getting used pieces but invariably they all have one problem or another so I think just replacing everything is the best option. Has anyone had experience with the World Upholstery or GAHH carpet sets? Searching through old forum posts, it seems like GAHH was the preferred choice for seat upholstery but couldn't find much on carpet sets.

[UTn_boy]

As little as a year ago GAHH was the go to for literally everything related to carpet.  They still are, to a large extent, but for the early cars that have multi loop carpeting it's looking pretty grim now.  All of the places that offer carpet are now offering a multi loop carpeting that is much shorter in pile than the original.  It looks ok, but it's obviously not right (to my eyes).  However, since you have a 300SD you should have velour carpeting, but some of the early ones had multi loop.  If you have velour you're ok.  GAHH is where I'd buy from.  World Upholstery isn't a place I'd recommend if you value originality.....they're a good place to go to if you want cheap materials and carpet kits/seat covers that don't fit.  Even so, you still may have to send your original floor carpets to GAHH so they can match them up as far as the actual pattern goes.  It's hit and miss, but a small price to pay to have floor mats that fit correctly. 

I'm sure there will be some commentary from other members stating that World Upholstery has served them well, but in 25 years I've yet to see anything they offer that looked right or fit correctly.  So take that with a grain of salt, I suppose. 

[floyd111]

I was GAHH distributor for Taiwan for a while, and I've not bought from WUH yet. Aaron's comments are rights, as far as my experience. GAHH Velours is good, close to original, but 4-5 years ago their multiloop was already thin enough to give me pause, and colors were way, way off. Parchment turned out to be lightgreen. So, ask samples first. They will provide.

[UTn_boy]

I really need to do some research to find out who, if any, still have the correct multiloop carpeting.  I, too, have noticed that green tinge on the parchment color.  It irks me to no end that these places sell the wrong multiloop.  It looks ok......but it also looks cheap, too.  I'd rather have my faded and worn out multiloop until I could find the correct material. 

[orientrot]

Well, funny how this happens but despite all warnings, after asking this I was searching ebay for carpet and managed to find this (https://www.ebay.com/itm/Mercedes-280S-SE-300SD-450SE-1972-81-W116-Sedan-Carpet-Set-Palomino/303457173591?hash=item46a7750057:g:K9IAAOSwcuNeKNS8) "overstock" World Upholstery kit at a steep discount so I figured at the price it was worth the gamble.

The kit from GAHH runs $800 plus shipping and while you've convinced me that they are most likely better, that extra $400 can go towards coco mats to cover this set up. They say they have a 1 year manufacturing defect warranty so that will give me an impetus to at least get it mocked up before then.

The car they are going in is a 200,000 mile car that's not destined to be a show car. It will need a new rear seat cover at some point here and I will probably splurge to get the GAHH set given that it is supposedly actually perforated and isn't too different in price from the World Upholstery offering. Hopefully this carpet kit will turn out okay, otherwise you can laugh and respond "We told you so" to my updates.

[UTn_boy]

I can get over your using the World Upholstery kit. It serves the purpose you need it to serve, and it'll look better than what you have now.  What I can't get over, after viewing the listing, is them not knowing that velour wasn't used on early W116, and that palomino wasn't a color offered for the W116,.....much less comparable to Bamboo.  A company that sells interior carpets/seat coverings for specific makes should know these things.  Car owners won't always know these types of details, and they rely on companies like this to have a good working knowledge of what's right and what's wrong.  A bigger problem is that they've probably been incorrectly advertising their goods for so long now that they'll likely never change anything.  I mean.....what if someone, who didn't know any better, bought an incorrect carpet kit from them, had it installed, and entered the car into a high class judging?  The owner would be embarrassed, furious, shocked, or all of the above, and World Upholstery might tell the car owner that the judges were uneducated.  (I've seen this happen several times in real life).  Oh well.  We can't fix the world. 

[orientrot]

You should have seen the listing before they updated it. They had it listed as a different color and said it worked for SWB or LWB cars. Their eBay seems to sell some stuff they keep in stock but most of the listings are similar "overstock" right now. These were probably sitting on a shelf for a while after a cancelled order and this week was warehouse clean out week so whoever does their eBay listed these and lots of other stuff without knowing much about them other than a tag and had to go check the patterns or order history to see which wheelbase they were for. I think I got my rear parcel shelf from them in a similar "overstock" sale a few years ago.

Here's a set of their W123 loop carpet: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Mercedes-W123-Sedan-1975-1986-Carpet-Set-German-Loop-Bamboo/303438945796?hash=item46a65ede04:g:DkAAAOSw4TVeGM18

Looks like they have the same pile being shorter problem because that looks shorter than the original in my 240D.

[ptashek]

I've bought my seat patterns from WUH and three years later regret it. While fit is good, and colours match is near perfect, the material is substandard. The vinyl on my seats is starting to show signs of stress cracking, after barely 15k miles on the road, and the car living six months of the year in a climate controlled garage.

I won't risk it with another pattern upholstery place anymore, GAHH or otherwise. I've learned my lesson. Next year she'll be re-done in leather.

On the other hand, the pattern velours carpets I got from cabrio.de are good, and I'd recommend them.

[floyd111]

It's easy to imagine how that feels, to have sub-standard seat covers in a car renovation project that big. I would never have expected that paying those high prices. In this age of high tech materials, there should be no need for inferior MB tex, multiloop or other upholstery. That's either greed or sheer neglect. Good to know.

[dnaspazz]

Has anybody gotten a sample of the cambrio.de multi-loop? Wondering if they may be a better option...

[UTn_boy]

Apparently, all of the places like Cabrio, GAHH, World Upholstery, German Auto Tops, etc, get their multi loop carpeting from the same supplier.  Consequently, they all currently offer the lack luster multi loop.  GAHH told me that they're aware of the wrong multi loop carpeting due to many complaints, and that they're currently working with the supplier and the mills to acquire the correct multi loop carpeting.  When that'll actually happen is beyond me. 

[floyd111]

That's amazing! it's exactly what they told me 3 years ago!

[UTn_boy]

I got word back from GAHH yesterday that at the end of 2020 the multi loop carpeting will be the good stuff......I'll believe it when I see it. 

[orientrot]

Update: Kit has arrived, but spoiler alert, it's not all roses.

My initial impressions was that the color was darker than expected and that I wasn't super happy with it. It definitely photographs a little lighter than it is. I changed my tune once I actually pulled out a piece of my carpet that had a section that wasn't sun faded. The color still isn't quite the same but they are pretty close.

Here's a picture of the full spread:


There are definitely some inaccuracies in the kit.



First glaring one is the added knee bolster on the driver's side center console piece, but I was already aware of that from the eBay pictures and am not too bothered by it's addition.




Next one is that the piece for inside the center console is not the right shape or size at all. I test fit it in the center console and it would not lay flat. I'll probably complain about this if I end up keeping the set. You can also see in this picture how faded my carpets were and differences in the material. The new material certainly isn't bad, it feels fairly nice and looks very uniform in color, but it's also not super accurate to the original. In the original carpet, the bundles of fibers are a bit larger than the smaller bundles of the new material. This makes the pile look a little thicker but they were pretty much the same when viewed from the side. The vinyl edges are also much smaller and tighter on the original. Given the price I paid, I think that this is forgivable, and I also haven't compared it to other offerings so it may or may not just be what is available nowadays.



Here I plopped the piece of carpet that got the most paint on it on top of its replacement piece. You can see that this replacement piece also differs a bit from the original in it's shape. It may not actually matter when installed but definitely a cause for concern.



This picture shows the pieces that go at the front of the front seats. The shape is more or less identical minus the cuts on the original that would need to be made on this set for it to lay flat (I assume they left that for the installer to do), so it does seem like they had actual carpet pieces that the set was modeled from. They leave a lot of vinyl edging excess to be trimmed, but you can see that they did not attach it to the carpet piece properly on the front edges.



Here's another shot of just the floor mats and the 56"x65" piece of excess material they included for some reason. I need to remember where I put my other mats to compare their shapes, and I'd like to pull everything else and see how it compares. I know that the black section on the driver's mat is incorrect but it wasn't a deal breaker for me. The other issues, however, do add up to make me concerned about it's actual fitment, so I'm leaning towards trying to return it. If it does fit, it's probably still a good value but otherwise you all were right to recommend other companies.

[rumb]

The extra carpet if unbacked is for the knee bolsters and the sides of the center console and the package shelf. You can have a center console tray piece made with it also.

Even with what you discuss it's going to look nice with all new carpets.