Who here with T-tops has removed their headliners? Mine is starting to decay badly due to a few small leaks (and age) so I was thinking of removing it all together. Does anyone have any pics of this?

Interested to see what the result would be.

 

i had mine out once. i don't have any pics. its not that hard to get out but if you want it recovered, i'd have someone else do it unless you have lots of experience with headliners. if you want to details on what all needs to come out of anything to get the headliner out, let me know. you can probably figure it out easily though.

 

What all is involved? Also, how did the end result look? Would you say its better to have no headliner than a torn up one?

 

gotta pull the plastic 'sail panel' pieces loose, pull the dome light fixture out, pull rear plastic pieces loose,... nothing real major, just several little things. end result on mine is ok but i did my first headliner job on a t-top headliner, not real easy to get the material all on there right. definately better to have no headliner instead of a sagging one. mine was hanging down and if i took the tops off, it'd flap and blow junk all over me! decided i better take care of that!

 

How\did you hide the wires running to the dome light and back to the hatch?

 

i've got the headliner back in it now. it was only out for a week or so. you getting the impression i still don't have it in? sorry. they are nicely hidden above the headliner

 

I understand, I was just wondering if you did anything with them while you had the headliner out.

 

oh, nope. just let them hang or do whatever they wanted to do.

 

black duct tape should hide them pretty good

 

how do you get the dome light fixture out?, i can sort of see how its being helded up but i dont want to break anything .. i seem to always break or loose something

 

take off the lens (CAREFULLY) and you'll see it's held in by two washers... gently pull down on the housing and the washers should slip. keep pulling and be prepared to catch those little guys.

or leave the lens in and do it. either way...

 

i tried but the housing holds it up, im going to try that when i get a chance

 

To remove a rotted headliner, you don't have to remove anything... just grab and pull... it'll come out in about 6 million pieces, a vacuum finishes the job nicely. But I wouldn't recommend leaving the headliner out of the car. The inside of the roof isn't really well finished. There are sharp welds, various brackets, etc that look pretty lame if left uncovered.

An extremely rotted headliner board can be repaired, but its really not worth the time and trouble. I spent the better part of about a week with epoxy, cardboard, fibergloss cloth, and super glue repairing mine to the point where it looked about right. Then another $20 for fabric and glue. It looks good now, but I'll probably still buy an aftermarket replacement eventually.

 

our 84 z with t-tops didnt have a headliner in it when i bought it ...and it looked like azz...lol...if you need a new head liner board you can probably get one at a junk yard there are plenty of em there if all you want is one to recover that is........i have a 91 rs with t-tops im parting out if your interested i can check the headliner for ya and see how it looks ?

 

PMing you now.

 

Or... you can never worry about that crap fiberboard again and grab the ABS plastic setup from Hawks.

 

how much are those ABS boards ??
i bet those would be alot nicer to have for a car you plan on keeping that is

 

General, you don't have lexan t-tops on the car you're parting, do you?

 

no i believe they are the regular glass ill check to make sure thou .....
now heres a stupid question does it say lexan on em ?

 

i don't really know whether they say lexan or anything. the glass should sound a lot more solid when you tap on it with something metal, would be my guess.

anybody know for sure how much less the lexan ones weigh than the glass ones?

 

just went out and checked they are definately glass

 

ok, thanks.

 

Alan are you trying to get another tenth by wieght reduction?

 

basically, yes. actually, i'm trying to get anything i can, anywhere i can. i want this 3.1 to go as fast as i can possibly get it to!

 

i've had my headliner out for about a month. the fabric was falling apart and some edges of the board were exposed and disintegrating whenever i had the windows down or the tops off. i was planning on getting a used board from a guy on these boards, but a few days into communicating he stopped responding

having no headliner looks better than having a disgusting one though. about the dome light wires...i have the overhead console so i just screwed it back up there and the wires are still hidden. if you have just a dome light, i'd just stick some plastic tubing over the wires and secure them to the underside of the roof so they're not hangin down.

i'm so glad to have mine out, when it was still in, whenever i took the tops off all the fiberglass crap would swirl around the car, blinding me. my eyes hurt for like an hour after getting out, lol. the last time i took the tops off w/ the headliner in, i almost wrecked when i got on the highway, i had to jerk onto the breakdown lane and squintingly brake to a stopt. needless to say i never took the tops off again with the headliner still in

 

I don't have t tops but I don't have a head liner. It makes the car extra hot if you live in a warm area. It like sitting under an oven rack. It also has a nice tiny metal sound.

That head liner stop heat from radiating right into you.

Some people use fancy smooth push pins and make a pattern to keep a liner from sagging.

 

my headliner doesnt look that bad, but it has stains from the daym leaky t-tops, i would rip it off but then again i would have water leaking all over the place, the headliner sort of keeps my car from being an oven and holds the water in

 

well gumby, with the exception of the people who have t-top covers (or have made them) the sun is constantly on the heads of all us T-top people anyway, tinted or not...the suns rays will scream through the glass.

I re-did my t-top headliner a year ago, i'm about to do it again, because i screwed up, not because it looks "horrible" infact it's about 90% better than it was, the only reason it looks bad is i apparently suck at navigating turns w/ the material, and as a result, my corners aren't quite covered w/ headliner, however the rest of it is....while i'm at it, i can place some more of that fiberglass cloth over some more of the headliner for a lil'more structural integrity. Think the ABS ones are in the mid 100's, maybe 159 or 160. They look good, a friend of mine thinks they're the best thing since sliced bread, I almost agree, but to him he'd simply paint the plastic the color he wanted , interior or car color. This is what a ex-friend of his did w/ his LS1 3rd gen, i personally thought it looked tacky and stupid to have a headliner w/o headliner material, but that was just personal opinion.

Doing the fix up job isn't exactly difficult, cutting the headliner material to size is a lil harder, but after it's done, it'll look good for a minimum of a year i guess, some more, some less....and the board felt a heck of a lot more "secure, and sturdy" once it was covered in the fiberglass stuff, amazing in comparison to that stupid amount of yellow **** that was flying around prior to me fixign it.

 

That's rather silly considering they ship covered

 

not all the ones i've seen....infact, the good portion of the ones i've looked at always say, come prepared and ready to cover.