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Headliner


crc
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The original headliner in my 90 Cut.Int started to sag this past winter and back then I asked all the detail shops around town how much it would cost to replace it. The average came around $230-250 canadian. I replaced the entire fabric and glue about three months ago and it took about 5 hours of work and $50 worth of supplies. The headliner is still smooth without a hint of sagging even after the heat wave we had this summer. The difference is amazing because the old fabric had about twelve years worth of crap deeply embedded in it. I recommend that anyone who has already worked on their interiors to not ignore what is above their heads.

 

The most important thing is the glue you use. 3M makes some excellent, industrial strength fabric glues that can well bond with the headliner board. For an extra professional look you can buy foam-backed headliner fabric that also has the added bonus of acting like a heavier sound absorber, making the acoustics of the interior of your car slightly better.

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Im doing my headliner right now. So far ive spend 8.99 on a can of extra strength headliner adhesive spray from a company called Permatex(comes in an orange can with blue cap). My started sagging REALLY bad after i had teh car painted. The only thing that held the fabric up were the interior body panels,lol. I ordered a few samples of material from this company in California and i finally settled on a certain fabric. Now i just gotta find out how much it'd be because its for my doors also.

~I never thought about that sound insulating idea. I was going to put a 1/4" foam padding but now that you mention music, im thinking about some dynamat...hmmmm... :think:

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>You might as well get a new one, unless you know how to fit it through >one of the doors!

 

That's exactly how I did it :)

The general rule is pretty much anything in the interior of your car can be removed or put back through your doors. Working on the headliner while it is still inside is messy as hell.

 

Didn't they bother to tell you to remove anything from the interior before they baked the paint on your car? The tempertures inside those booths shoot up fairly high depending on curing time.

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When I dyed my headliner, I had to take it out of the car.

It was a PITA, but possible. If I remember correctly, on my car, the only things holding it on were the sun visors, the rear lamps, the 3rd brake light and about 6 strips of velcro. Once it was off the ceiling, I had to take it out through the front passenger's door by carefully rotating and maneuvering it so the the front of the headliner exits the passenger's door first. It WAS a bitch, but once I knew how to get it out, getting it back in was no problem. The only problem was the dye job came out like shit! I used some spray-on fabric dye and it just didn't cut it. The dye worked well for my seats (although the seats were all stiff afterwards), but didn't fly on the headliner, it too was stiff and you could see some creases and, it just was yuck. So anyways, next time I'm doing it, I'm going to use a big piece of black velvet and use some of that 3M super-duper spray-on adhesive and hopefully it comes out nice :)

 

-MaD-

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  • 4 weeks later...

The headliner in my '89 Regal started coming down during one hot Louisiana summer.

 

My son and I took it out fairly easily. Most of the upper interior panels have tab-and-slot connectors, or velcro patches, and maybe a few screws (if the panel doesn't come right off, look for a hidden screw).

 

Taking off the sunvisors and interior lamp bezel left the headliner itself held in place by velcro. By laying the seatbacks flat and me lying on the rear seat, we lowered the headliner and worked it out of the passenger door.

 

We then pulled the fabric off the headliner shell, and scraped every bit of that useless foam off the shell and the fabric.

 

I made the mistake of using Duro spray adhesive (the people who make Super Glue), and had to repeat the whole episode a few weeks later.

 

This time we used 3M spray adhesive, and it stayed up. Except for a few places that sagged. I haven't taken care of those yet (two years later), but I may resort to making a small cut in the fabric and spraying the glue into it.

 

It's an interesting father-and-son project, because it really takes teamwork!

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