{"id":2167,"date":"2012-10-21T12:01:25","date_gmt":"2012-10-21T19:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tlcfaq.com\/main\/?p=2167"},"modified":"2015-05-01T14:12:14","modified_gmt":"2015-05-01T21:12:14","slug":"weathertech-all-weather-mat-kit-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tlcfaq.com\/main\/2012\/10\/weathertech-all-weather-mat-kit-review\/","title":{"rendered":"WeatherTech All Weather Mat Kit Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Article by:<\/strong>\u00a0RobRed<\/p>\n

Applicable Models:<\/strong>\u00a01998-2007 \/ 100 Series Land Cruiser or LX470<\/p>\nLast updated: May 1, 2015 at 14:12 pm\n

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I’m driving a 13 year old Land Cruiser. It’s worn but in\u00a0great\u00a0shape\u00a0overall. It’s previous home in Oregon and the owners diligence to factory recommended\u00a0maintenance gave it a great start in life. My updates and continuous fiddling should keep her on the road for a long time. One area of the 100 series that you can’t save (if you use the\u00a0truck) is the interior. It will wear. The leather seats, in particular the drivers, as well as the carpeting will see the hands of time\u00a0move\u00a0forward and one day leave you with the sense to patch or repair. In my case I’m pretty\u00a0fortunate, the drivers seat is still in decent shape and the carpets are still very serviceable. The previous owner had the good sense to use the Toyota factory carpeted floor mats which has preserved the carpets pretty well. My beef with the\u00a0carpeted\u00a0floor mats, though they look nice, is they have no control of debris or dirt coming into the truck. They get pretty crappy – pretty quick when you’re out in the back country using a Land Cruiser for it’s intended purpose.<\/p>\n

In previous vehicles I have always run rubber floor mats for ease of cleaning. Recent years vehicles I have run OEM all weather floor mats\u00a0providing\u00a0even more protection than plain ole rubber. When I\u00a0acquired\u00a0my 2000 Land Cruiser in 2011 I\u00a0immediately\u00a0sought our the Toyota OEM all weather mats. Scouring the\u00a0Internet\u00a0and local dealers – none to be found. Becuase some less than skillful drivers managed to get there floor mats\u00a0caught\u00a0in the\u00a0accelerators\u00a0of their Toyota vehicles, Toyota opted to recall their OEM floor mats from all sales channels and redesign them. Well a 12 year old vehicle is not on the top of the list so no revised LC mats. I suspect in some warehouse, somewhere in Japan, a million new LC floor mats are stored because they have been classified as dangerous.<\/p>\n

This situation leaves the aftermarket to fill the gap. I scoured the web to locate a suitably tough \/ all weather mat set and kept coming back to WeatherTech. WeatherTech was founded in 1989 (McNeil Automotive Products) and has developed a good market presence both in consumer and OEM applications. I felt pretty comfortable with them as a brand and soon found\u00a0myself\u00a0on their website placing an order.<\/p>\n

The order process is very straight forward and the website lays out the options very well. First I needed to choose a style of floor mat; Floor Liner DigitalFit or\u00a0their\u00a0All Weather Floor Mats. The DigitalFit style liners have high sides that are custom measured and fit the vehicle precisely through digital laser measurements of interior surfaces. These “liners” have a rigid core for strength and have channels that carry fluid and debris, away from shoes and clothing, into a lower reservoir. The lower reservoir uses additional channeling to minimize fluid movement while driving. Once fluids become trapped in the reservoir, they are easily removed from the over the door sill.<\/p>\n

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DigitalFit Style Liner – Shown in Prius<\/p><\/div>\n

For me I didn’t find the style of the DigitalFit liner as\u00a0appealing\u00a0as a conventional floor mat. Frankly I\u00a0doubt\u00a0I would ever take advantage of the additional protection offered by the tall sides and special channels so I looked and the other option and I choose the All-Weather mats.<\/p>\n

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Website Order Entry<\/p><\/div>\n

Both the DigitalFit and All-Weather products have all three rows of protection available and a cargo liner as well. I have the third row removed and a drawer setup in the cargo area so I purchased the front and second row All-Weather floor mats. Though the front floor mats are cut and shaped to fit the\u00a0Land\u00a0Cruiser well the rear All-Weather floor mats are a “trim to fit” system. I was a tad\u00a0disappointed\u00a0at this situation as these floor mats are what I consider premium priced.<\/p>\n

The All-Weather floor mats\u00a0are made out of an odorless compound, that have deeply sculpted channels designed to trap water, mud and sand. \u00a0WeatherTech states that the “proprietary engineered resin ensures that these mats\u00a0will not\u00a0curl, crack or harden in sub-zero weather.” \u00a0The All-Weather floor mats also have anti-skid ridges and a non-stick finish to aid cleanup. The All-Weather floor mats are available in black, tan or grey to match the LC\/LX interior.<\/p>\n

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All-Weather Drivers Side<\/p><\/div>\n

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All-Weather Passenger Side<\/p><\/div>\n

For the second row All-Weather mats I needed to trim them. As I said I was disappointed that I needed to do this on a $100 set of floor mats but I soon got over it as it was a 5-10 minute process. I laid out my carpeted second row mat to use as a visual template to see what I needed to trim. I also laid out the All-Weather mats in the truck to\u00a0gauge\u00a0fit. \u00a0I grabbed a fresh razor knife and went to work. The All-Weather mats do have score lines to aid in the trimming process and they are easy to cut through.<\/p>\n

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Laying out the Rear Mats<\/p><\/div>\n

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Overlaying the stock Carpeted Mat<\/p><\/div>\n

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Difference in Mat Coverage<\/p><\/div>\n

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Sections Cut from Rear Mat<\/p><\/div>\n

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All-Weather 2nd Row<\/p><\/div>\n

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All-Weather 2nd Row \/ Driver Seat Forward<\/p><\/div>\n

Though initially I had some reservations and not thrilled to have to trim the rear mats myself I got over that very quickly and have been enjoying the quality and usefulness of these floor mats. They stay in place with everyday use and are super easy to clean if they get soiled. The 2nd row mats don’t quite have the same coverage as the OEM carpeted mat – it has a wider base that gives coverage all the way to the door rear door sills. I think that WeatherTech has lived up to the build quality promised, the order process was painless and delivery was a reasonable 5 business days (ground shipping IL to CA).<\/p>\n

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WeatherTech All-Weather Floor Mat in Use<\/p><\/div>\n

— END—<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Article by:\u00a0RobRed Applicable Models:\u00a01998-2007 \/ 100 Series Land Cruiser or LX470 I’m driving a 13 year old Land Cruiser. It’s worn but in\u00a0great\u00a0shape\u00a0overall. It’s previous home in Oregon and the owners diligence to factory recommended\u00a0maintenance gave it a great start in life. My updates and continuous fiddling should keep her on the road for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2276,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[311,25,264,263],"tags":[32,266,265,333,26],"class_list":["post-2167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-100-series","category-accessories","category-interior","category-tests-and-reviews","tag-100-series","tag-carpet","tag-floor-mats","tag-interior","tag-uzj100"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tlcfaq.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/IMG_5759.jpg?fit=3264%2C2448&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BcdW-yX","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tlcfaq.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tlcfaq.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tlcfaq.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tlcfaq.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tlcfaq.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2167"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/tlcfaq.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2957,"href":"https:\/\/tlcfaq.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2167\/revisions\/2957"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tlcfaq.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tlcfaq.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tlcfaq.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tlcfaq.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}