loose fabric above my head
09-23-2009, 08:20 PM
#4
Banned
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Sandy VJJville
Posts: 3,584
It's pretty easy to get the headliner board out of a Camaro. If your car is a hardtop, remove the A-pillar trim, the rear sail panels, the dome light, and the visors. Once that's out, the headliner board will practically fall on your head.
Strip the old material off. Now comes the messy part. Scrub all that loose foam stuff off of the board. If you don't, your new material won't stay up for more than a couple days, tops. At this point, you can either decide to take your board to an upholstery shop and have them reupholster it, or you can do it yourself. A headliner that's already out of the car won't take a shop more than an hour to do. It's damn near a walk-in job.
If you do it yourself: Select the material you want from your local fabric store. They should have headliner material. Ask someone if you don't know what you're looking for. Pick a shade. Whatever you want is what's best. Get yourself some good spray adhesive. Something with a web spray is what you need to look for. Don't cheap out on this. It's what makes all the difference in the world. You should be able to get by on one decent sized can, but get two because running out sucks.
Lay out your headliner board on a wide, flat surface. Put your headliner material on top of it in the way that it should sit when finished. Pull the headliner material halfway back exposing half of the headliner board, and the underside of half of the headliner material. Spray the adhesive on the headliner board and on the backing of the material. Let it sit for a couple minutes and get tacky. Have a smoke, drink a beer, just do something for a few minutes.
The glue is contact adhesive, so it adheres to the surface of the material, and then it sticks to itself. Spraying on just one surface will not work. Sticking it while fresh and wet will result in only a temporary hold. A permanent hold is achieved after the glue gets tacky and can bond to itself.
Ok, your glue has set up and gotten tacky. This shouldn't have taken more than three or four minutes. Starting from the fold in your headliner material, slowly roll it onto the headliner board working your way to the end and stretching the material a bit as you go. Be careful not to get any wrinkles as they're pretty tough to get out. Repeat this process for the other half of the board.
You should now have the board completely covered. Now flip it over so you see the back side of the headliner board. Trim the excess material around the edges of the board, but leave yourself about two inches to fold over onto the backside of the board. Once you trim the material, spray the backing of it (the part sticking out beyond the edge of the board) and spray about two inches of the edge of the headliner board. Let it tack up again (Beer break!) and come back and fold the edges over. Stretch it a bit, because that will make your headliner nice and tight and prevent it from sagging.
Pop out the holes for your dome light and visors, and you're ready to stick it back in the car! (Installation is the reverse of removal.
)
Strip the old material off. Now comes the messy part. Scrub all that loose foam stuff off of the board. If you don't, your new material won't stay up for more than a couple days, tops. At this point, you can either decide to take your board to an upholstery shop and have them reupholster it, or you can do it yourself. A headliner that's already out of the car won't take a shop more than an hour to do. It's damn near a walk-in job.
If you do it yourself: Select the material you want from your local fabric store. They should have headliner material. Ask someone if you don't know what you're looking for. Pick a shade. Whatever you want is what's best. Get yourself some good spray adhesive. Something with a web spray is what you need to look for. Don't cheap out on this. It's what makes all the difference in the world. You should be able to get by on one decent sized can, but get two because running out sucks.
Lay out your headliner board on a wide, flat surface. Put your headliner material on top of it in the way that it should sit when finished. Pull the headliner material halfway back exposing half of the headliner board, and the underside of half of the headliner material. Spray the adhesive on the headliner board and on the backing of the material. Let it sit for a couple minutes and get tacky. Have a smoke, drink a beer, just do something for a few minutes.
The glue is contact adhesive, so it adheres to the surface of the material, and then it sticks to itself. Spraying on just one surface will not work. Sticking it while fresh and wet will result in only a temporary hold. A permanent hold is achieved after the glue gets tacky and can bond to itself.
Ok, your glue has set up and gotten tacky. This shouldn't have taken more than three or four minutes. Starting from the fold in your headliner material, slowly roll it onto the headliner board working your way to the end and stretching the material a bit as you go. Be careful not to get any wrinkles as they're pretty tough to get out. Repeat this process for the other half of the board.
You should now have the board completely covered. Now flip it over so you see the back side of the headliner board. Trim the excess material around the edges of the board, but leave yourself about two inches to fold over onto the backside of the board. Once you trim the material, spray the backing of it (the part sticking out beyond the edge of the board) and spray about two inches of the edge of the headliner board. Let it tack up again (Beer break!) and come back and fold the edges over. Stretch it a bit, because that will make your headliner nice and tight and prevent it from sagging.
Pop out the holes for your dome light and visors, and you're ready to stick it back in the car! (Installation is the reverse of removal.
)
09-26-2009, 11:12 AM
#6
Registered User
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Kentucky
Posts: 233
I've removed my A pillar trim a few times to install a few gauges and my scanmaster. I broke one of the clips once, but it wasn't an important one that caused the pillar to hang. Still looks original, just start at the back and yank it off pulling in an upward direction. The front most ones will not break, just the back three are of concern.
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