Mike,

Just saw your thread for the first time. I replaced the whole interior
of my PA28-140 last year using parts from Airtex, I'd be happy to
answer questions if I can.

If I were to do it all over again I'd probably do headliner, carpet,
then side panels. As it stands, I actually did carpet, panels,
headliner. Also, I haven't looked at your previous posts but it wasn't
clear if you want to fly while you're redoing the interior. I did but
I'd probably do it differently next time. I lost count of how many
times I took the seats out. Ideally, you should take out all the
seats, remove almost all the plastic trim, remove the hat shelf shell
(you'll need to move it anyway for the headliner, it's easier to just
take it out), remove all the interior, remove the old insulation,
cleanup the old glue and cardboard (as much as you care to), THEN start
installing the new stuff. But that's the ideal world. I was a real
interior warrior, I did the whole thing from my tiedown, started in
July (bad idea, very hot), flew several times during the process, and
finished in November.

Anyway, about the carpet...

When I ordered my Airtex carpet, they included an extra set of "screw
ends" for the snaps which I used to replace just about all of mine
(some were missing, some were just plain old). I didn't have to ask
for these, they just came with the carpet. If memory serves, they were
stapled to the back of one of the pieces. Also, make sure you save at
least one of the PMA stickers attached to the carpet for inclusion in
your logs. That's pretty anal but might as well dot the i's and cross
the t's.

Replacing the carpet was probably the hardest job, with the headliner
being a close second. The problem is cleaning up the crud underneath
the carpet. Getting the old carpet out was easy but I spent a good
week and two cans of "goof off" with a scraper removing old glue,
cardboard, etc. The second problem was replacing the carpet under the
back seats. The new carpet was much thicker than the old stuff so it
took some work to get the metal trim back on, not to mention getting
all the screws to line up properly. In some cases I had to replace
with larger screws because the previous screws had twisted out of the
wood underneath. This would have been easier if I had removed the wood
base completely, that's how I'd do it next time. A third problem was
that my original carpet had cardboard material underneath the
pilot/copilot pedals and directly underneath the seats. These were
completely shot, so I replaced them with light particle board.
Finally, the snaps at the front of the back seats did not properly line
up with some of the "screw ends". This was a complete mystery to me,
either Airtex goofed or the plane was unusual. Since most of the snaps
matched I just left the unmatched ones unsnapped.

Regarding side panels, Airtex did indeed cut mine long so that it was
not necessary to run carpet up the side walls. When all was said and
done, the panels fit quite snugly (hint: remove the metal trim at the
bottom of the windows when you do this part or you may go batty).

Best of luck,
mark