well. the time has finally come. both my sister and i decided to undertake this project together. my little sister elyse is now the proud owner of a white 1989 2.8L firebird with t-tops. and a bad headliner.

so far we have striped them


repaired them with fiberglass cloth.(no pictures of this... sorry.) i was amazed at how much strength this added. i would recomend everyone who repairs there headliner do this. mine was litteraly broken in four pieces in the very center where the headlamp hole is. now that is the strongest part.

for cloth i purchased actual headliner fabric from jo-anns fabric. stuff is not as streachy as i would like. my sister being of a more artistic nature decided to express herself through her interior and chose fleece. veeeerrrrrry strechy, however not as thick as actual headliner fabric. she also did not go with black or grey but with aqua as can be seen in the following photo showing my sail pannal (nicley recoverd) and hers (equally as nice)

NOTE: i used a bunch of magazine pages as a drop cloth, after taking this photo i realized they were pages from an certain mens magazine. anyway.... i blured the image significantly.

so on to the next step...... after i cut out the fabrick and laid down the drop cloth i proceded to spray 3M super trim adhesive on both the fabrick and the liner. i waited 3 minutes till both were tacky and laid the liner down on the fabric. trying not to wrinkle it. then i folded it ofer the sides and clothepinned the hech out of it.


thats as far as i have gotten so far. pics of the final product to come later today or tomorow.

 

I just re-did my headliner with black fleece, have a thread about it if you are interested. Are you sure hers is fleece? The fleece I used is much thicker than the original headliner material and I'm happy with how it came out.

 

actually no. you are correct it is not fleece..... i don't know what it is.

 

It looks like velour perhaps...fleece definitly isn't that shiny. But how is the project working out for you two?

 

how much was the 3M spray? I used the craft glue in the blue can from Hobby Lobby for my headliner & it sux



alternative to black, also

 

thats not shine..... that is the design. crazyness.
projectprgress: both headliners are complete and ready to install. if it is not raining tomorow i will install mine.

 

Be sure to get some pictures of when its done. I had some trouble getting the sunvisors back in cause I couldn't find the holes for the screws. I think I didn't cut the hole in the headliner big enough, just something for you to keep in mind.

 

it's in now. had to drive all over town to find the retainer clips for the lamp trim. even thought of taping threads on it. and..... i kinda forgot to cut any holes for the visors. thats gonna be fuuuunn

 

I used actual headliner glue that I bought from my uncles Auto Upholstery shop...I think they sell it for $20 a can maybe there is a shop in yer town? My dad said he bought a can of headliner glue at Farm and Fleet though....(that's kinda like a Big R..it's a farm version of K-mart) maybe an auto parts store would have it...I didn't think they sold headliner fabric at stores...How much did it cost? I got is at cost for $10 a yard from the shop...

 

How do you take the headliner out? I heard you have to take all the trim off. I need to redo mine and have never done it before mine is sagging to hell.

The yellow foam that is between the fabric does that come with the new headliner fabric? What is the purplse of the yellow foam? I was thinking of buying a new one for 180.00 but if it will come out right if i do it my own that would be great. They should have a tech article on this.

 

Maybe too late now, but I found that after about 2 months in the sun, my new headliner material started to come loose from the base. I had to take it halfway out and get another can of headliner glue.

You need to clean the old foam off of the base as much as humanly possible, and really coat the back of your material AND the base with headliner glue. Having to re-do it was really aggrivating.

Troy
So Cal

 

WOULD IT BE BETTER IN THE LONG RUN TO JSUT buy a new one then that is allready redone with new abs etc?

 

There is a tech article on the headliners, if you go to the main page and go to the tech articles section on the left. The yellow foam is just cushioning, doesn't really do anything except fall apart which causes the sagging. I re-did mine with just thicker material and didn't use padding. I spent like $20 to re-do mine and while its not perfect its much better than the sagging and ripped look.

 

FAST RS (and anyone else that is curious): You can read all about headliners in this thread. In the future, please put the Search feature to good use. And as for adhesive, I've used 3M General Trim Adhesive with great results.

 

I redid mine last year and also used the 3m adhesive spray and no sagging yet. Can get at almost any autp parts store. Most important thing is to take a soft brush and get all the old foam off the board.