i have no experience with fiberglass. and was wanting to do this to my headliner as well. but along the lines of having it painted rather than clothed. how big of a pain in the *** is it, minus the sanding. and does any one have any pictures of their finished product? i would like to see how it turned out. if any one has a step by step of what to do for a beginner, the glass part. not the removal of the headliner, would be great.

semper

 

I would also like to see this

 

IIRC someone had asked this before and people were saying that the fiberglass would not be a good idea because to install it you have to bend the headliner to get it in. the fiberglass would not bend.

 

If it's a hardtop, you better make it pretty thin so it will flex like above, if it's a ttop car, those slide in if you jimmy it around a little and would work nice. I just recovered mine in cloth and it looks good.

 

i have a hard top. the only bending really, is on the back plastic pieces where the seat belts are. there really isn't much bending from there. but i though it would look sweet airbrushed. if any one can tell me how to do the fiberglass deal, that would be great. cause i have no clue about what to use, what i need,etc..

 

woulden't it be two big to get in the door, or the trunk? that would be a big *** piece. and it would be way heaver than the existing cloth. and all that weight would be really high. moving the center of gravity up a couple of inches at least. not good for handeling.

 

a properly made piece will weigh almost nothing, maybe a couple oz's more than the pressboard and fabric. hard to imagine even a ten pound differential moving the center of a 3300+ lb car up by inches. fractions of a millimeter maybe. you would have to yank your interior to mold to fit, and I can tell you working with epoxy overhead is not an enviable job... OTOH, it could be beautiful and unique if you put a little time into it, and if you made a mold afterwards, perhaps even recover some of your costs...

 

I recovered a headliner with rawcloth and it turned out pretty nice. Unless your headliner is a total mess, just recover it like I did: link.

 

My headliner was/is a mess, and I've been in a long process of piecing it back together with glass. In my experience, after scuffing off the paper top coating on the headliner board, it absorbs fiberglass resing quite well. It helps improve the rigidity, but can also make it more brittle. I've been using pieces of wood and clamps to hold areas flat while glassing it with fiberglass material, and it seems to be working fine so far. After that, I plan on using a lightweight filler to clean things up a little before I recover it.

If your headliner is in great shape, you could just use a lacquer sandable filler-primer to smooth things out before you paint it.

If you try it, good luck.

 

i dont even have a headliner and cant tell a diff

 

It would be a very time consuming progress. I glassed my whole board before I tweeded and did the 3d Flames and stuff. Just glassing it, took about 2 hours, And your talking about hours of sanding and filling and smoothing to get it ready for paint!

 

I guess this should be obvious, but pull the headliner out and turn it upside down when you do this..

I saw a guy on t.v. do one of these, he used fleece cloth and fiberglass resin (he also mounted a ridiculous amount of tv screens in it, but that's beside the point).

You will of course have to sand it smooth and fill any perfections like SLOWFIVEOH stated.

But even if you're just recovering your headliner, pull it from the car and do it upside down. And make sure you let the glue set at least overnight upside down before you put it in the car. Gravity will keep the thing from sagging before the glue dries. Then flip it over and glue down your excess material.

Mathius

 

Trying to repair that factory fiberboard was a genuine PITA. I thought about
the fiberglass method, but wasn't convinced it would be flexible enough.
(Good-on-you for anyone who's accomplished this.) After the Rube Goldberg
panel repair, I tried to glue new headliner material on. Took about a year
to separate, and sag onto my punkin head. Tired of futzing with it, I sprang
for a replacement unit from Classic Industries (about $120 if memory serves
correctly.) Best money I ever spent.

 

BS on the fiber glass not working I did it first to a T-top car then a hard top both slid right in from the hatch. why would you need to even think of bending the headliner? your side panels can be removed if you are that worried.


as for the glass you just cut the mat bigger than the board so it can hang over the edges (plan on extra) some brushes 1 1/4" works fine maybe a nice wide one to cover the large area fast.

mix as directed not to tough using 1/4 hardener to 1/4 resien so on. a cooler area usually takes alot longer to dry. you want the mixture to work past the fiber glass so I cover the area first then go back and stand the 1 1/4" brush handle strait up and kinda tap the air pockets with the brissles which get the air out befor it drys .

try a couple runs on a chunk of cardboard so you get a feel for how long it takes to dry (or turn to jelly on you) read the container at the store so you can get some cheap plastic containers and stuff to do the mixing and clean up.