I'm in the process of recovering my headliner and I'm wondering if I'm only supposed to be scrubbing off the brown foam or the green foam as well? When I start attaching my new materials, should it be completely green, or completely orange? I have the material but what kind of foam should I use? I have some fabric store padding that is essentially a sheet of cotton balls. Would this work? Thanks.

youre supposed to be brushing off the old headliner foam that deteriorated . in the past month i have recovered 2 and on both of mine the old foam was a grayish brown crap. i just used a shoe brush and brushed it all off revealing the orange headliner board. you might want to check out your headliner alittle better, it might had turned green from a moister leak or something that might have started to produce mold on the headliner board. i'm not telling you thats's what it is, but check out all your options. if worse comes to worse you can pull another headliner out of a junk car.

im not sure if you are using the right foam, but it might work. i ordered a headliner kit from classic industries because i couldnt come up with the right materials. it was about 50 bucks shipped, but very nice material. i would use it again and recommend it to anybody looking to recover their headliner in the near future. i'd post some pictures but i dont know how to nor feel like finding somewhere to host them. good luck

i just checked out your photo, it doesnt really look like mold,just brush it real good and see what it looks like afterward

Yup, it all has to come off. It should be a fairly clean yellow/orange color when it's ready to be covered. Check out the link in my sig for assistance.

The two I am working on right now are a yellowish colour. My neibour who is an uphostery guy got me new material. It has foam attached to the fabric. I glassed some of the weak areas from the back of the headliner and painted the side the fabric attaches to with Zinsster BIN primer. It's a primer that acts almost like a stain, it's thin and drys hard. Will stick to literally anything. Awesome stuff.

what about for t-tops?

huh, you painted yours? weird...
Yea, I scraped and chiseled etc until it was yellow, but that nylon brush would've taken me forever.... I had to use a wire brush and a knife... It now looks like a bear went at it or something... I think i'll want to fiberglass both sides, if I just try to glue onto this side I have a fairly good idea it'll deteriorate quickly... Then I should have a nice base to glue on with fiberglass cloth and resin...
yea, I think i'll use my "cotton" padding under the carpeting or something, and try and find some foam at a carpet store or something...
Thanks for the ideas.

Yeah I painted it to give the foam/fabric something extra to bite onto. If you do decide to paint yours don't use any other kind of paint cept the one I mentioned. Its normally used to paint difficult things like smoke/fire damaged houses. You can even paint over grease with it. I've never seen anything else like it.

Hey! Brainwave! You're in Canada, so this might actually be a product I could find easily, where do you think I could buy that paint? Home depot/Rona type of place?

I'm leaning towards the fiberglass cloth/resin idea over the whole thing because I have chunks missing from my vigorous wire brushing, and I don't want the overall product to be bumpy.. I might just fiberglass the edges, and try that paint however, depending on what type of foam I can get a hold of.


Stalin05 - hope you didn't think you were forgotten here, what was your question? Is the same approach used for t-tops? I believe it is, since it's basically the same thing, check CaySe's sig for his writeup, including many other peoples submissions, the one that mentions the fur, rckids' is actually pretty good, and is specific to t-tops.

Home Depot has it as well as most other places like that. There are different kinds of the Zinsster stuff. Make sure you use the BIN type.

It will be a lot of work if you glass the side that the headliner sticks to. A lot of smoothing out to do. I think that is the point of the foam on the headliner material. It hides the imperfections in the headliner backer. Try to find the fabric with the foam on it. If you want I can ask the guy next door where he got mine from. Took him about a week to track it down.

Well I already have a bunch of this material that I bought that looks really nice that I want to use. I guess I'll just see if I can find some foam padding that looks like it'll work.

It's not really that I want to smooth out the side that the fabric goes on, it's that the board looks like it's "falling apart" like there is fibre glass padding flaking down. So I think if I can fibre glass it I can have a solid material to glue on to.

Well i've got this project on the back burner as I get new wheels and ship out my old ones, and try to fix up my dashpad (stripping off the vinyl/glue residue the previous owner glued to it ..)

This the right stuff? Picked it up at Rona today, $9. I figured it'd be a lot more work and $ to fiberglass that whole side.... I'll just cloth/mat and resin the edges that are breaking....
I still have to find a good foam for this, i'm worried my material is too thin, and when glueing it to the foam the glue will soak through... I think it's a microfiber or something... I guess i'll find out.
Any idea's / suggestions about foam?

That's the stuff but I used a brush to apply it and it came in a regular old paint can. It's much cheaper that way. Mine took two coats to cover it good. A fair bit of the first coat soaked in. It's thin and dries smooth, no brush marks at all. Might want to bring the rattle can back. I doubt it's enough and you can get at least a quart for that price. A gallon is about $30. I had plenty left over from some houshold projects.

I think you will need the foam for sure. Otherwise the headliner adhesive has a good chance of bleeding thru. Don't use yellow or any other colour headliner glue either. Make sure it's clear. I have a can of weatherstrip adhesive in an areosol can but I'm not sure if I want to try it. Its clear and I got it for free. The 3M headliner adhesive is $23 a can at UAP/NAPA or what ever they call themselves these days. I think I will bite the bullet and buy the 3M stuff. Don't want to mess up my near perfect headliner at this point. Put far more work into it that I thought I would.

hmm, yea a quart was $14, so I figured this was enough... guess I can swap it...
I have 3m super 77, at $14 a can I figured that was pricey enough, $23 is downright crazy....
Well yea, I figured I would glue my fabric to foam, then foam to headliner.... I hope this 77 is clear, I have a feeling it's yellow though, guess i'll find out...

i got my headliner material at a local craft store jo-ann fabrics... you might wanna just go check some of those places out, they had like 7 colors..

i forsee problems trying to glue fabric to the foam yourself, at least with any spray adhesive that might make it wet, it will probably soak through
also id suggest using the headliner adhesive, its supposed to be made to withstand higher temperatures I guess

hey wait, you found "headliner fabric" ? and it's fabric WITH foam attached? geez, wish there was a Jo-anns in calgary... Maybe i'll have to look around for these places... damnit, I don't want to have 2x2yrds of this material just trashed... maybe it'll work for my sail panels at least...
Well i'll check other stores then, for stuff with foam attached... And I suppose i'll look for a headliner adhesive, but many members have used super77 in the past with good luck, and i'm not too worried about the heat here

in my infinite wisdom. I have recovered my headliner twice. The first time was a learning expereince, while it didn't look bad, flaws in certain areas bugged me.

So i set out on a jouney.

I went to a place called "crest chevrolet." they were moving to another monst of a dealership. I asked the service dept guys what they did for people who had bad headliners. He told me they recovered them in house. I asked with what fabric they used. He told me, "boy have i got a good present for you. He gave me a half used roll of black "headliner fabric." so i was given, they were going to throw it away, 25 yards of headliner fabric for free.

I went on my way home, and passed by the joanne fabric i bought the old frabric from, and got a different type of adhesive. I told myself, i want this fiberglass back board to fail before this glue does. So i went in there and found some foaming adhesive, and it gave me the best of ideas ever. I went to Home Depot and got spray insolating foam to reshape my headliner board. And got a very nice epoxy type glue to glue the fabric with.

I have yet to see any flaw in my headliner and wish for someone to even guess thats its not factory.

I did end up selling that headliner roll to someone local for like $25. But what did i care, i wuldn't need it for another 20 years.

My story might give you some cool ideas, like that spray foam...

spray foam? like that "great stuff" or whatever it's called?

How did you use that? as a base to build up a wrecked headliner, or as a glue for the foam backed headliner material?

hmm, interesting...

mianly as support, it adds rigidity to the fiberglass that over time get birttle and bedns way to easily. the foam gave it some backing...

i used another brush on epoxy to hold the materiod on.

Mine was saggin so much I had to cut holes in
it to see the road lol. Good if you wanted to roll
a bank.

I removed it and put it in the trash bin.