Thursday, February 16, 2017

Headliner Replacement

Today's project is the replacement of the old, falling down headliner. Overtime the factory foam backing deteriorates allowing the fabric headliner to separate. Looks terrible and can block your view.

This is what I'm starting with:




Having no headliner is an option that comes at the cost of increased noise, decreased temperature control, and possible condensation issues. Since I'll be daily-driving this beast for awhile I prefer to have the comforts associated with a functional headliner.

Time to get to work.

Step 1: Remove the headliner.

Pretty straight forward here. I chose to remove the speakers, overhead lights, and sun visors first. Next, starting from the rear of the vehicle, remove the plastic trim working your way forward. No hidden screws however the metal clips holding the trim to the A-pillar are much stronger than the tiny plastic nubs holding them to the trim. As such every one broke away from the trim regardless of how I attempted to remove them. I'll run some metal screws to hold the trim in place later if necessary.

With everything removed the headliner will slip out of the back gate. Have to be careful here as the headliner consists of a very thin fiberglass support structure to which the material is glued. I didn't have any issues removing and transferring to a couple of sawhorses.

Step 2: Prep the headliner support.

I started by peeling as much material from the fiberglass support as possible. The factory material didn't have much holding it in place. The next step is to remove all residual foam/adhesive from the support. This is important to ensure the new adhesive has a solid, clean surface to adhere to. I used a stiff bristled brush and vacuum. A little patience and elbow grease got the job done.

Step 3: Glue on new fabric.

With all the old fabric and adhesive removed its time to add new material. For this job I ordered four (4) yards of grey headliner material (Amazon Link) which is a yard more than necessary but I want to do the sun visors to match. A little extra never hurt either. I also ordered two (2), 18 oz cans of
3M 38808 Headliner and Fabric Adhesive. I began by positioning the material over the support. It doesn't have to be perfect as everything is covered by the plastic trim. I left a little extra length on the front to fold over. There is no trim along the windshield so having the material flow around the support makes for a cleaner look IMHO. After laying the fabric out, the first half was folded back and  adhesive applied to both the support and foam backing of the fabric. This was allowed to sit a few minutes to get tacky. I then slowly rolled the first half into place gently smoothing from the middle to the edges as I went. You really only get one shot at laying this stuff down - any repositioning results in the foam tearing away. Repeat for the second half.

Step 4: Re-install headliner.

Reverse Step 1 from above. The A-pillar trim seems to sit back into place pretty well without the metal clips. We'll see how long that lasts. Everything else is pretty easy.

Step 5: Cover sun visors.

I used Matt's video as an instruction and he extra materials to match the headliner. The whole thing went much quicker than I thought it would. 

Step 6: Install LED's in the overhead lights (optional).

While I had the overhead lights out I wanted to see if I could make some random LEDs I had laying around fit. It isn't pretty but all soldered up solid. They work and look great. Now just need to do the other dozen or so lights throughout the interior...

Pretty happy with the finished product.





Project Cost: $78
Total Build Cost: $3,896







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