Hey Guys,
I was wondering....
2nd hand interior parts or even new/aftermarket parts are hard to get here in Australia for these cars, and it looks like it costs a fortune to get new parts such as the targa roof trim etc, but I was wondering, if there's no cracks or damage done to the parts like door trims and targa trim....
Can i just take it off, remove the crappy fabric, and re-glue so nice new fabric and do it that way?
Because I cannot justify $500 on a piece of plastic with fabric on it.
I was thinking og cutting the fabric off the doors as well and using an adhesive to put vinyl on there as well.

 

some of the terms you use are different, but I think you're talking about recovering your interior door panels and your t-top headliner. Yes, you can absolutely recover both of those items yourself with new fabric. For the headliner, they do sell specific headliner material in fabric stores. it's a felt material with an 1/8" foam backing adhered to it. Using that will give you the closest matching results to original. It's tricky to get it to not have any wrinkles with a t-top headliner due to the contours, but it can be done if you're patient.

 

That is one of the reason's I moved over here (lol).

 

You most definitely can, I just went through this process myself a couple of weekends ago. It was a breeze!

All you really need is...

A.) at least 1 yard of replacement headliner material
B.) some nice strong spray glue. I recommend 3M's Super 90 glue.
C.) a stiff bristled brush
D.) scissors

A quick trip to most any fabric store should get you these items. And dont worry, you'll still look manly if your carrying around headliner material, lol.

If you are just going to change the material on the headliner itself, you should only need about 1 yard of fabric. Personally, I got 2 yards as I was changing from grey to black and redid my sunvisors and sailpanels at the same time.

In most cases, you can just remove and recover the t-top headliner, it just depends on the condition of the fiberboard itself. If its in pretty bad shape, you may want to look around for another fiberboard (junkyard car?), or I have seen some great examples here on TGO of people reinforcing the original material with fiberglass and resin.

Depending on the age and condition, the old material will probably pretty much just fall right off the fiberboard. One thing to MAKE SURE that you do is scrap off the old foam and glue. Use your stiff bristled brush, and most of it will just brush right off. Some areas you will have to brush a little harder to remove, but just dont go to far and damage the fiberboard.

I recommend glueing a little at a time and make sure its nice and smooth. I layed the material out over the board, and folded over the fabric at the front of the board spraying both the fiberboard and the under side of the fabric. Let it sit for about 15 seconds or so until the glue just starts to dry and gets nice and tacky. Then CAREFULLY and SLOWLY lay down the fabric, making sure that its nice and flat (and STRAIGHT! most headliner material has a grain from right to left). It will bond pretty quickly and be hard to pull apart if you get it wrong, so just take your time and keep smoothing the material after laying it down. Just keep working like this (I glued a quarter or so at a time) until the whole thing is covered. Make sure to leave yourself at least an inch of overhanging material on every side so that you can fold and glue down the material over the edge of the board. Once its all layed down and looks nice and smooth, give the glue about 10-20 minutes to fully dry, then start trimming excess material and cutting holes and such for domelight, sunvisor and seatbelt holes.

Then pop that bad boy back in and enjoy your brand new headliner!