A NEW Option from One of the Best in Floor Liners

The Softer Side of WeatherTech, these new 3D Floor Mats are more cushiony than their Digital Fit cousins, while still providing complete coverage of your vehicle’s floors. If you want the full interior floorboard protection WeatherTech is known for, but don’t want your floor mat to be too rigid or tough, but want it to have a little give or cushion, then these new 3D Floor mats are perfect for you.

Bullet Point Breakdown of the NEW WeatherTech 3D Floor Liners

        No time to read this whole article? Just want the quick and dirty dets? “Too long; didn’t read” your fav acronym? Don’t worry. We hear ya. Here’s our Midwest Aftermarket Bullet Point Breakdown of the WeatherTech 3D Floor Liner:

• A Flexible Mat designed to fit the shape and contours of your floorboard
• Ups resale value of your vehicle by protecting your upholstery
• WeatherTech’s advanced surface channels and rigids direct spills and muck away from your carpet and down into a reservoir
• Waterproof, easy to install and remove, simply pull the 3D floor mats out to spray them clean with a hose
• Let them dry and reinstall--it’s that easy
• 100% Recyclable material floor mats--no PVCs, cadmium, or latex here
• Anti-skid texturing and teeth lock the mats in place, preventing any slippage
• Protects your vehicle floor from every day spills and mishaps
• Designed and manufactured right here in the USA
• A custom fit floor liner masquerading as a more traditional floor mat
• All the pros of the softer, more flexible floor mat, meet all the benefits of a custom floor liner
• A hybrid floor mat / liner that is truly 3 dimensional, protecting your entire floor board of your vehicle
• A great offering for those of us who experience cold and harsh winters, especially
• Finally, a floor mat that won’t curl when it gets too cold out

The Skinny on the New 3D Floor Mats from WeatherTech

So you heard that WeatherTech was launching an exciting new line of no latex floor mats, and you probably immediately thought, what makes these so special? What separates the new 3D Floor Mats from the original WeatherTech FloorLiners? What’s the difference?

Well, we’re here to break it down for you so you can pick that mat or liner that is best both for you and your floor boards. But let’s start with what makes these products similar and both really great at protecting your vehicle’s floors.

Ultimate Spill Protection

One of the big ticket selling points that first brought WeatherTech to our attention back in the day was their spill protection system or liquid retention reservoirs. First, I love all the terminology, but let’s break it down old school. Since both WeatherTech’s Digital Fit liners and 3D mats are designed to fit the contours of your vehicle’s floor, they cover a lot of area. And since both these protects are made from waterproof, non-absorbant materials (HDTE for the FloorLiners and TPE for the 3D Mats), liquid spills don’t get soaked into the liners / mats and then get into your carpet anyway underneath. No sir.

The liquid mess stays on the mat / liner. Furthermore, the channels and rigids designed into these products funnel the water and soda and mud or whatever messy spills you get on them back into designated liquid hold areas or reservoirs.

When it’s time to clean up, you simply wipe up the excess, remove the mat or liner, spray it off with a hose, let them dry, and reinstall. It’s really that easy. And the whole time, WeatherTech’s creating a barrier or armored layer that prevents spills from damaging your upholstery. Effectively, both the liner and the mat lock fluids in, within the bounds of the mat, instead of letting them run off into your upholstery and damage your interior.

Laser Fit / Custom Made

In case you’re wondering how they do that, how they make these liners / mats cover your interior floor board perfectly, let me start with this intense word: science.

Yeah, science. And laser beams. But yeah, science. Each vehicle floor is digitally measured using lasers. The scan is put into computers and using CAD like software, engineers and designers over at WeatherTech HQ create mats and liners that are designed to fit your vehicle’s contoured surfaces perfectly.

It’s just that brilliant. And these products, since they form that perfect barrier, actual protect your vehicle’s resale value by preserving the original upholstery of your vehicle’s interior.

In other words, these babies keep your floors in top condition. Unlike traditional carpet mats and stock floorboard protection that absorbs spills or lets them run off to the sides, both Digital Fit and 3D Floor mats had side walls that keep the mess where it is supposed to be--on the mat instead of your floor.

That’s some intuitive design right there.

The 3D Floor Mat Difference

Okay, so that all sounds great, but aren’t those all features that WeatherTech’s perfectly fit Floor Liners already have? What sets the 3D Floor Mat apart from the original Digital Fit floor liners?

Great questions. Let’s lay it out for you in technical terms for prospective buyers and then plain American English for all the rest of us potential buyers and owners.

While both products do a great job of protecting your floors and both are 100% Made in America, the actual material composition does vary. In other words, they are made out of different stuff and in a slight different way.

Don’t get me wrong, both are similar and environmentally friendly, and both are made via injection molding, similar to those used in most thermoset rubber mats and guards. But what goes into the mold is what makes the difference in this case.

Digital Fit FloorLiners are made from HDTE or High Density Tri-Extruded Materials. These are essentially plastics blended with TPO or thermopolyolefin, making a rubber-like material that is rigid when cooled but able to be molded when heated to extremely high temperatures. 

This material, HDTE, does great for floor liners that need to have a solid and rigid core / strength to them. The material choice for FloorLiners by WeatherTech means they are very durable but also hard or rigid.

Some customers want a mat that has a little more give. Furthermore, one of the biggest known issues with some rubberized hyper rigid mats (not necessarily WeatherTech, but some similar style floor liners) has to do with curling or cracking under extremely cold temperatures.

The Dreaded Curling Explained

Numerous owners of similar style liners who live in colder areas of the world have experienced this issues with some rigid mats and floor liners. When the weather gets really harsh with ice and snow and the temperature drops below zero, some mats have been known to develop tiny cracks that can expand over time. The more rigid the material, the most likely this could occur. And once it starts to happen, the cracks continue to advance over time. Finally, these floor liners can start to experience what we commonly call curling.

Curling is when the edges of the liner start to roll up on themselves or curl up. This is often due to those tiny cracks we were just talking about before. You see with pretty much every material (save for good ol’ H20) on this planet, when the temperature goes down, the molecules contract or move closer together. Turns out HDTE and other rigid materials are no different. When the bottom of the mat starts to contract and the top of the mat too, typically you don’t have any issues. They should be shrinking ever so slightly and uniformly. In other words, you wouldn’t even notice the difference hardly unless you could pop from 100 degree weather to negative 10 instantly. Then maybe you’d notice the one mat was just a little wider than the other or something like that. But they would still provide the same great protection.

The issue only comes up when you have cracks or tiny holes where the mat has lost some material. Now when that top layer of the mat starts to contract along with the bottom--guess what--the top contracts more because there’s less material there. Does that make sense? So when the top contracts, there’s less material on the top than the bottom, which is also contracting, and the two are connected, so something’s gotta give. And the mat starts to roll up on itself.

Now cracks are most likely to occur over time on the top because that’s the part of the liner that’s gonna take all the damage. And you’re more likely to get cracks when rigid material is already really cold (or contracted) making it more brittle and easier to damage. This is why these issues typically don’t happen in warmer areas. You’re less likely to have these little cracks first off. Second, you aren’t going to get any extreme contractions from really low temperatures if where you live it’s 60 to 100 degrees year round--lucky jerks!

Just playing.

Point is, the more rigid the material, the more likely this could occur.

So WeatherTech engineers went back to the drawing board to try to design a mat that was just as good at protecting your vehicle’s upholstery fabric and carpet but won’t ever possibly run into any issues with cracking or curling. And what they found was that using a different material, thermoplastic elastomer compound, in a different combination could produce a mat that still contoured to your vehicles floorboard offering superior protection but would have enough give that cracking would be incredibly unlikely.

And the 3D Floor Mat from WeatherTech was born.

These anti-skid floor mats have all the great features of its predecessors’ designs, but they have this one great additional element--they will not curl or crack in extremely cold climates.

So what’s our true final word on the 3D Floor Mat verses the original Digital Fit FloorLiners from WeatherTech? Both are great products that will protect your floor boards. If you’re looking for something with less give that is a little more rigid and solid, then you’ll probably prefer the Digital Fit Floor Liners. If you want something that has a little more give, is more cushioned, then you need the 3D Floor mats. And if you live in a part of the world that is known for extremely cold temperatures, then you should probably go with the 3D Floor mats just in case to make sure you don’t experience any curling or cracking over time.

At the end of the day, it’s mostly about personal preference here. Both mats and liners will protect your vehicle’s floors for years to come. They just are made from slightly different materials, and to that end, one has a bit more longevity in harsh winters than the other.

Personally, I find the slight give of the 3D Floor Mats to be a bit more satisfying and even luxurious, but you should go for the one you like most. We’re excited to be offering these great new floor mats from WeatherTech. If you have any questions, just hit us up.

Our Promise of Exceptional Service and the Lowest Prices on the Interwebs

When you’re ready to order your WeatherTech 3D Floor Mats, we hope you’ll get yours from us here at Midwest Aftermarket. We only promote products we believe in and sell them at the lowest prices, shipping quickly to you for free if you’re in the lower 48 states. We have an excellent return policy and strive to get you the right product in perfect condition the first time.

What are you waiting for? Give us a call or place an order directly through our website. We’ll get your product out to you ASAP so you can enjoy your vehicle and make it your own. If you have a vision of what your truck or Jeep could be, let us help you achieve that image, that goal. We put aftermarket right at the tip of your fingers on your smartphone, web browser, and even via various apps, making ordering the parts you need super easy.

Let us help make your aftermarket dream possible. Let us help you build your dream machine. We want you to drive the truck or Jeep of your dreams right now. So when you get it installed and love it, make sure you share us some pics on social media so we can live vicariously through you. Because we too are aftermarket enthusiasts, truck and Jeep owners, who love and own many of the products we sell. In other words, we don’t just work aftermarket--we are aftermarket.

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