Hey yall..so heres what Im doing..Ive got my ttop headliner outta my car and in this other guys shop. Ive teamed up with this guy(used to work for him before) he is a boat builders him and his dad has been building boats their whole lives. So anyhow I got my headliner all cleaned up and stripped down. I hot glued and stapled some little wood frames on the back side and made a sturdy fram for it. Been doing body filler then sanding over and over and a coat of fiberglass resin. Fixed all the bad places and got the warps out of it.Getting it to be a good plug to work with.after its as perfect as I can get, its getting gelcoated then waxed good. Im gonna lay up some fiberglass over the headliner on the side that faces the interior of the car of course to make a mold of it. After it cures well pop off the mold and hope it comes out great. Im getting some twill weave carbon fiber from my work for it.

The mold will be polished and waxed then sprayed with clear coat. Then lay the carbon fiber in it, resin, then 2 or so layers of fiberglass. After its done kicking off well seperate the carbon layup from the mold.So hopefully if it all comes out right Ill have a carbon fiber exact replica already clear coated! I did the spots for the visor brackets just sanded flat with a paint paddle and filled in the area for the dome light because I plan to run recessed LEDS up in it.So far Im still working on getting the headliner into a suitable plug before the gelcoat goes on.

leave me comments on what ya think and if anybody else would be interested in me laying up a headliner for ya if my mold comes out perfect enough. some ideas were carbon fiber-black or white, or maybe fiberglass then have painted if someone wants it whichever way.Im gonna do mine in black cf to match the black vinyl I got from work with the same pattern in it i got my ttop shades already redone in it. sunvisors and sail panels will also be done in the same vinyl too.lata

Im anxious to get pics of it prolly like yall will be and im workin on getting a camera so plz be patient thanks!

 

My question is...WHY? Besides that, it sounds like you are combining layers of CF with fiberglass. Again....WHY?

Just so you can "Look...CF headliner." Good for car points, I guess, but that's about it.

 

cool project, post som pics

 

I know its been a while since I started this post...well its been a while since Ive worked on it too haha. Bills and work took over my hobby time so my part is still sitting collecting dust. Now its in the stage of it has been gelcoated so the next step is to block it out and sand it to get a polish on it. But it somehow got stepped on and broke a part which really got my spirits down on it. Though it is fixable and I am getting it back out this week to continue progress on it.

Im still working on getting a digital camera and will try to snap a few pics this week. I know...im slack

 

sounds good to me. there are some carbon fiber haters here for sure, but i always thought it would go well with the 3rd gen firebird look. In fact, it kind of seemed thats what the original designers were going for with that grid pattern on the dash and console. I think a CF headliner will look pretty cool.

 

Yeah thats what I was thinking too about the pattern used in the car. Well change of plans...seeings how my part has been sitting around in my friends shop too long, Im gonna change it so I can go ahead and get it done and outta there. Now my original is still on the wood frames and I repaired that broke place. But Im not gonna be polishing the gel to make a mold off like I planned. Instead I just taped the edges with batons underneath to get straigter lines and hit everything with the DA and 180 sandpaper. Next Ill wax it real good then lay some fiberglass on top so when I pull it off, that will be the part I use. Im getting more of that carbon patterned vinyl and just epoxy it on the part. Its gonna take a bit more thinking to figure how to incorporate the led lights in there. But Im working on it a bit every day this week. Ill get a pic of progress so far tomorrow.

 

Shiney carbon fiber = really bad reflections in the car at night. at least that was the case with the the mitsubishi evo I drove a while back.

 

normally a vaild point, but this is a t-top car, so not much area to worry about. The peice behind the tops could be a problem, maybe a flat finish would be better.

 

I pulled the part that was fiberglass friday. Got it sanded and straightened the lines of the edges a bit and test fit it up in there. It did fit and mostly I am pleased but the straight part that runs under the t bar seemed to flare out too much and would leave about a inch and a half gap between the edge of the headliner and tbar. Tomorrow Im gonna try to cut it and bend those two sides that run parralel with the tbar in a bit and just reglass the corners. The vinyl I have doesnt reflect at all so no worries there.

 

ok, now you lost me. Why are you doing carbon fiber if you are covering it with vinyl? Why not just fiberglass? or why not just resin on the original headliner? no strength required for a t-top headliner.

 

originally the idea was to make an exact replica of my old headliner out of carbon fiber. But in order to due that I needed to make my old one into a suitable plug for the new part to make a mold off of. I work with building boat parts so I know how this works haha. After I had the old liner gelled and begun sanding, one day it got stepped on by accident and broke it. So that deterred my from going through all that trouble and it had been sitting around for about 8 months.
So to speed things up and get it out of my buddies shop we decided to just quick fix the break, putty and tape up the bad spots, wax the mess out of it and just lay two layers of glass on it. That part has been pulled off and thats what Im using for my actual headliner. I will wrap it with the carbon patterend vinyl that I used for my ttop shades as well. Today I sanded all the rough stuff off the part, got my holes marked/drilled for my visors mounting brackets, and spraypainted the backside black in case it can be seen when mounted in the car.

 

Today I got the headliner finished and installed. I am very happy with how it came out! We got the vinyl glued to the fiberglass part and wrapped around the backside which was a big pita. The four radii at the inside corners where the hardest. The trick was to stretch the vinyl and flip it over the back side instead of cutting it into the corner. Managed to get the corners to stick though with only one slight wrinkle.

I had predrilled holes in the liner to match up with places on the roof straight up the middle to screw to. So I screwed my visor brackets up first, then drilled through my preexisting holes and right through the first layer of sheet metal on the tbar. Screw it in with ss screws and finish washers that I had scuffed up and spray painted black. I havent got pics of it all done yet, I will snap some tomorrow and post em. Heres some pics of my original headliner and then with glass layed on it.

 

Heres pics of the headliner installed. I only ended up with a minimal gap between the headliner and the front of one of the ttop shades just enough to see daylight. But I think it turned out great. And the screws with finish washers look great imo. The little piece of wood is just in place cuz I didnt have my other visor bracket with me. I have plenty of vinyl left over to make new visors. We have some thick paper at work that is a bit thicker than construction paper. I was thinking of cutting out the patterns of the old visor and gluing it so its two pieces thick and having the vinyl stitched around it. It will be just like the old visors and yes Ive already checked with a lady at work about her sewing machines stitching through the paper. Let me know what yall think. I see the flash of the camera really shows the dust on it well haha.

I have an idea of using the same vinyl to recover the sail panels also, just need to find a suitable fabric to sew to it for directly over the speakers.

 

From the pictures that looks pretty damn good. Since you used the vinyl, the shininess wasn't a problem.

 

Are those pics with the vinyl on? Because if they are, it actually looks incredible. I tried fiberglassing my own headliner once, but mine was cracked in half so it didn't really want to comply.

Also where did you get said vinyl?

 

yeah that is with the vinyl on. I didnt reuse my old headliner, instead I used it to shape it how I wanted it and kinda reshaped the spots where the visor brackets attach. If you see in the first couple pics, that is my old headliner after that got waxed up real good and fiberglassed over. So after the fiberglass cured, we popped it from my old liner so the fiberglass part is what I covered with the vinyl. I work at Fountain Powerboats and that some of the material that is used to upholster their seats and stuff. It is black carbon fiber patterned vinyl with a 1/4inch foam backing.

 

The only thing that came out a little funny was the curve of the ends where the a-pillar trim meets it. It was hard to get the shape to match since my old headliner material was just crumbling away so I kinda did the best I could with the putty. Though the foam backing of the vinyl helped take up some of the gap. Later on down the road I could take it back out, strip the vinyl, and reshape the curves and whatever else then make another glass replica off of it. And try to do a better job at wrapping the vinyl. Man three of us were sweating bullets trying to get it all to stick and wrap those inside corners before the glue dried and without pulling the foam off the vinyl.

 

Want to make another? I keep looking at the pictures, and I'm falling in love. Throw me a price, and shipping to 10579. PM it.

 

I would love to get a hard top one done..

The PO of my 87 bird had it reupholstered, but the fabric SUCKS and rips when i touch it with my finger..

 

If I choose to make another I would take mine apart, fix the curve on the ends to match the trim better and make a mold off it. That way I could lay up as many as I want. Also I have just about any color vinyl available at work. Though I would have to run it by my friend since it his shop, business, and material Id be bumming Good thing is that he is a firebird/trans am fan also and we talked about the idea of making fiberglass body parts a while back.

 

If you would be able to make these and sell them, let me know asap!

If i cant get one of those I'll end up getting an oem replacement from classic industries...

 

I still havent devised a plan yet to incorporate lights into it this way. I intend to use leds of some sort and will just wire them up to the dome light wires. Have to look and see what kinda light products are out there that will still leave a clean look.

 

or just forget the light...

 

yeah haha I do have the rear view mirror with the lights in it. though if I could find maybe a little strip with like 5 leds Id put one at the front and one at the rear to give a more white light when needed.

 

Either way i would still love to get my hands on one.

 

Make it happ'n Cap'n . Give a rough estimate on your costs.