When David installed the roll bar in the car he never got around to trimming the carpet on the rear shelf. It wasn’t really noticeable because the carpet was sort of tucked underneath tight against the bar, but it was on my To-Do list. This was a perfect project for Saturday afternoon because I could do it in the air conditioned garage.
I tilted and pushed the seats forward so I could get at the carpet and when I put my hand down on the roll bar to climb in, my kind of stuck. When I pulled it off there was a glob of very viscous sticky stuff on the palm. I looked back where my hand was and you could see a streak of glue running in a couple places from under the fuzzy velcro pieces.
The all black interior strikes again. It gets so hot inside the car it surpasses the melting point of the adhesive on the back of the hook & loop fastener tape. We need an alternate way to secure our seat to roll bar anti-squeak measures. Sewing would work, but we have no sewing machine. And even if we did, it wouldn’t be anything heavy duty enough to go through both the heavy vinyl and the fuzzy tape, which is the same reason hand stitching is out.
So I did the best thing I could, I removed the offending vinyl cover and the high density foam piece that was stuck on the front of the bar. Now there is no need for anti-squeak measures at all because the seat back sits a full inch in front of the bar. And because the seats of the 2001 and up Miatas have the higher backs there is not much chance of my our heads contacting the metal roll bar if we ever get rear-ended.
Of course when you think of safety aspects of the roll bar, you would hate to have it protect you in one way and be a hazard in another. Not much chance of hitting your head is not the same as zero chance, so maybe it might be worth a few bucks to find a local upholstery shop to sew that velcro on for us.