I brought my new 2013 Milano Red Fit (base, AT) home from the dealer yesterday. Waiting for me was the set of front and rear WeatherTech floor mats I had ordered a few days before, as the FedEx guy had come while I was out. I ran into some mysteries when trying to install these--which seems like it should be a no-brainer--and decided to document what I did here, because surely others will wonder exactly the same things.

I realize that the subject of aftermarket floor mats has been hashed out thoroughly in several other threads. I have read those, as I was searching for answers to the questions that arose in my mind as I was trying to figure things out. They did not provide the answers I was looking for, because WeatherTech is doing something different than they have in the past--or at least that's my assumption, based on the fact that nobody has previously discussed WT's new twist, which I will get to shortly.

I chose the WeatherTech over Honda's own because I had a set in my previous car, a 1992 Honda Prelude, and loved them. They lasted forever without losing their pliability. For the Fit, I ordered the 2012 version, because they're not listing 2013 yet. They should be identical, though. I ordered the "All Weather Floor Mats" (as shown here: 2012 Honda Fit | All-Weather Car Floor Mats by WeatherTech - traps water, road salt, mud and sand | WeatherTech.com), not the "Digital Fit" kind.

My first observation is that I immediately regretted getting them in gray instead of black. I knew the Fit's new interior color for 2013 is gray (was black in 2012), so gray seemed the obvious choice. What I had not noticed on my test drive, however, is that the carpets are black. So, as you'll see in the upcoming photos, the light gray rubber mats really stand out against the black carpet. They don't look like they belong, IMHO. Also, after just 24 hours of use, the light gray rubber is already looking dirty just from the ordinary street dirt my shoes have brought in. If I had this to do again, I would definitely go for the black instead. Oh well. Live and learn.

Next observation is that the passenger side and rear mats just drop into place with no difficulty, nothing to figure out.

So what's so tricky about the driver's side? Well, both Honda and WT are paranoid about floor mats shifting out of position and ending up interfering with the car's pedals, thus causing loss of control of the vehicle--and a lawsuit. So each of them has concocted a solution. The problem is that their solutions are, so far as I can tell, basically incompatible with each other.

Here's WT's new (or at least I assume it's a relatively new trick) way of anchoring their product. They call it "MatGrip." It consists of two plastic pieces:



On the back of each of these (not shown) is a pointed screw.

Here's WT's instructions for use:



Sounds simple enough, right? Well, it isn't.

First, screwing these into the carpet as they suggest is just not possible, unless you happen to have been born with gorilla arms. I suppose you could punch a small hole in the carpet and THEN screw them in. In fact, if Honda had given me bare carpet to work with, that's probably just what I would have done--and it probably would have worked out great.

But here's where we run into Honda's efforts clashing with WT's. The driver's area floor pan of my car looked like this when I got it home:



(In this and all or most of the following images, you can see only the outboard-side anchor. Sorry. The sun was such that the inboard side was in shadows. But it's identical.)

First there's that bluish plastic. That peels right off, just like the plastic covers on the screens of electronic devices, leaving us with this:



But what is this sheet of black plastic, anyway? I honestly don't know if it came from the factory this way or is something my local dealer installed. I also couldn't tell at first whether this was considered part of the carpet. I gingerly tried peeling it up and found that it was glued in place. After a little reading in other threads in this forum, I concluded that this was not part of the carpet, and that if I could get it up, there would be an intact carpet underneath it. That proved to be correct.

But first I had to deal with those anchors thingies. In another thread in this forum, somebody had posted this picture taken from Honda's instructions to dealers on how to install the OEM optional rubber floor mats (which are something different from this thin, flimsy rubbery thing glued to my carpet). Here it is, as posted by the good people at College Hills Honda:



As the illustration suggests, I was able to open these easily by slipping a flat-head screwdriver under the forward edge:



You then just slip the thing out of the back hole in the carpet:



With those out of the way, I could tackle the rubber mat. It was glued around the edges and a few dabs and lines in the middle, but I found that the mat peeled up quite easily without damaging the carpet (as I had feared might happen upon removing it):





Here's how it looked after I had peeled the whole thing off:



There's quite a bit of glue remnant, but I decided not to worry about this, since it's going to be covered up by the WT mat anyway. Actually, I suppose that you could just leave the thin rubber mat in place and put the WT mat over it. I decided not to do that, because I think that the grippy texture of the back of the WT mat will cling better to the bare carpet than it would to the rather slick surface of the rubber. But what do I know?

So now how to anchor the WT mat in place? There seem to be two alternatives. First, you can reinstall the Honda latch-anchors. You can't put them over the WT mat's edge. But you can at least have the top part of it stick out through the holes WT provide for anchors, like so:



(Note that you have to remove a very thin piece of rubber from the WT mats to do this. But it's obvious where to cut, and it's so flimsy that you can do it with a knife or a screwdriver or just a ballpoint pen.)

The latch-anchors are very secure to the carpet using this alternative, but there's really very little securing the WT mat to the anchor. It may look in picture above like it's solid, but it's definitely not. It feels like it wouldn't take much shifting around of one's feet to dislodge the very tenuous connection. In other threads, people have discussed using two-sided tape or Velcro tape to attach the WT mats to the carpet. I have not tried that yet.

The other alternative is to abandon Honda's latch-anchor thingies and instead use the "Mat Grip" things that WT provides. However, this has its own set of problems. They need to go right where the rear holes were cut in the carpet to get the Honda latch-anchors in. But that's exactly the problem: the process of somebody cutting those holes means that there's not good surrounding carpet to hold the MatGrips in place! This is what I meant earlier when I said that Honda's and WT's proposed ways of keeping the mats in place are incompatible with each other.

Here's how it looked when I just dropped the WT MatGrip thing into the rear hole in the carpet:



Looks nice, but it's just sitting there, with nothing but gravity holding it in place--not even friction from surrounding carpet.

Then I can drop the WT mat down and hook it into the MatGrips:



The upside of this alternative is that the MatGrips' hooks mesh nicely with the holes in the WT mats. The downside is that the MatGrips are basically just sitting in a hole in the carpet. I imagine that they could pop out without much lateral or front-back force being applied to them. I don't know yet, as I have just finished doing this, and haven't spent any time living with the installation yet.

But I'm trying it this way first. If it doesn't work, I'll go back to trying it without the MatGrips, with the WT mat holes just sitting over the protrusions on the Honda latch-anchors. If the mat shifts unacceptably both ways, I might have to resort to Velcro tape or some other solution.

If the Honda factory (or was it my dealer?) had not cut those holes in the carpet to install the latch-anchors, I think WT's MatGrips would probably work quite nicely, if you were to punch small holes in the floor for the screws to drive into.

Have others faced this same dilemma? If so, how did you resolve it?

 

Can you somehow glue the MATGRIPS in place where they are? some sort of construction adhesive on the bootom like NO MORE NAILS should do the trick. Aslo it looks like there are a zillion little spikes gripping the carpet underneath the mat. Is there that much movement?

 

I just got Husky all weather mats, fit perfect almost like having boot trays in the front and covers the back completely. The fronts have indents to cover the original anchors.

 

1. Yes, presumably so. I may try that.

2. Don't know yet. As I said, new car yesterday, mats installed today, so very little time to see what happens.

 

Can you undo the door sills and lift the carpt up and insert the WT MatGrip in the original holes instructions for all weather mats

 

My 2013 Fit Sport came with retianing clips so I simply ordered a set of WeatherTech liners that we designed for the clips. Arrived yesterday and fit like a glove. WeatherTech makes a great product!

 

The floor covering in my 2013 seems more like polypropylene fabric than "carpet".

My preference was the factory all weather floor mats which are functional and "FIT" perfectly.


IMG_0349 by mrnoyb, on Flickr

 

Thank you for posting this! I got the WeatherTech mats for my 2013 Fit also, and had similar issues with the driver's side mat. Your trick with the screwdriver for getting the anchors out was very helpful.

As far as the MatGrip screws go, you're right that they don't screw directly into the carpet. For me, the tips bent right away, and arm strength just wasn't enough. But there is a way that doesn't involve glue!

I poked a small hole on each side, in the space on the carpet between the two holes left by the original anchors. It's a little tricky because there's nothing supporting the thin layer of carpet, but a very thin, sturdy metal bar in my toolbox did the trick. A screwdriver (either type of head) did not. A careful use of an x-acto knife might work though. Then it worked to screw in the WeatherTech MatGrips, though it did require a lot of pressure. Don't be afraid of ripping the carpet by pushing too hard without resistance underneath--it seems to be pretty sturdy. The MatGrips are a lot more secure there than in either of the holes left by the original anchors, and the mat is still in the right place.

I'm curious--did you have any issue with the rear mats interfering with the sloping ridge in front of the middle seat? My mats seem a bit too wide.

 

Hey thanks for providing this great information and pictures on weatherTech floor mat. I hope that these are fitted properly in my car.

 

I have a 13' with WT Liners. Fitment Is flawless. They keep the car very clean. I suggest contacting WT and swap your mats for the liners.

 

If I have already installed the fit clips, can I just order the liners?

 

How much did you spend on that?