Floor liners — are they worth it?

You can be excused if you haven't already heard about floor liners for your vehicle instead of regular, flat carpet or rubber floor mats. Weathertech, one of the leaders in this field, hasn't really done a lot of advertising, but word of mouth has entrenched them in the leader position. The company has been around since 1989, and since then other companies such as Husky, Lund, Aries, Northern Frontier and Toronto-based Tuxmat, among many others have joined the market.

Floor liners are moulded to fit tightly, thanks to a manufacturing process that starts with a digital scan of a vehicle's interior. This is then used to create a computer model to duplicate every curve, corner and contour of the floor. The result is a heavy duty, one-piece waterproof rubber liner that extends up on the firewall behind the pedals, up the sides of the floor to the bottom edges of the centre console and over the driveline tunnel if your vehicle has rear seats, as well as all the way over to the door opening and back to just under the seats.

Their tight fit keeps them from moving, and in most cases completely protects the carpeting and any electronics or wiring below the carpet from moisture and salt.

Yes, they can come at a premium price — a full set from Weathertech, for example, is about $250 to $300 — but that's a fraction of what it would cost to replace the factory carpet or any damage to equipment underneath it.

Of course, this doesn't take into account the subjective benefit of having a showroom-spotless floor by simply popping out the liners from time to time and hosing them down. You'll also save on the cleaning materials and elbow grease required to remove, say, deep salt stains.

Some front liners will come with holes that use the factory mat hooks attached to the floor carpet. The liners don't really need them to keep from moving, but they're often included anyway to prevent the hooks from keeping the liner flat. In heavy moisture situations, like we see every winter, these holes — even with a hook through them — can cause small salt stains and water intrusion. A small dab of flexible silicone caulking can prevent this from happening.

Another issue with lower quality liners is that sometimes edges will warp and not remain tight-fitting around the perimeter.

If this happens at the front edge of the driver's side liner, it can trap the accelerator pedal.

Often, fixing this can be as easy as leaving a weighted item on the affected area for a few hours (especially in the heat of direct sunlight), or by gluing on a thin plastic reinforcement strip at the backside of the warped edge.