Restoration Porn: Headliner Install

[dtw]

Edit: This thread started off innocently with me asking the question down below. However, I have ended up chronicling my entire headliner install herein. I hope that it helps you make the decision to tackle this yourself, punt it to a pro shop, or leave it as-is. Any questions, let me know!

After a maddening evening of trying to trial fit my headliner (nonsunroof coupe), I realized it was much harder than it should have been. After a little research I found out there are three-different sized headliner bows - I never even noticed!!! Can anyone tell me what order they go in? Thanks!

[joefrantz]

Dave

Working from front to back:

The two that are the same length go in the first two positions . The shortest one goes in the rear most position, and the one that's left goes in the third position.

Joe

[dtw]

Joe - THANKS! I searched posts back to '02 trying to find this and came up with nada. And, your advice IS different from the order I was 'guessing' and was going to try if no one responded. Thanks once again for saving me the headache.

[joefrantz]

Dave

Good luck with the headliner.
You'll find that even with the bows in the right slots, its still pretty tough to get them to "stand up" in the proper way. Make sure that they are centered in the pockets, then get them positioned as close as you can. Once you've got them "standing up", but not necessarily perfect, clamp the front and rear edges at the center of the windshild and rear window. This stabilizes the bows and allows you to adjust their position without all of them falling over like dominos. Once you've got the bows where you want them, and centered in their pockets, then continue with the for/aft stretch.

Joe

[dtw]

Joe (or anyone else who has BTDT),
The third bow was extremely hard to install, while the other three required almost no effort. Here's how it looks now. I think I may need to remove 3 and 4 and re-set 3. Thoughts?

[joefrantz]

Dave
It looks from the pic that #3 may be twisted toward the rear. If that is the case, try removing 1 & 2 and pulling forward on the headliner at the center directly in front of #3. If #3 is twisted toward the rear, this may pop it up. If that doesn't work, try to get your fingers between the bow and the roof and pull it into place. You might also need to relax the tension on the clamps on the rear window

Do you still have the foam liner on the inside of the roof?
When this happened to me, it was because the bow was having a hard time compressing itself into the foam. You just have to apply a bit of smooth muscle. Also, check the sockets on either side, and make sure that the bow is riding in the vertical detents above the socket. They usually pop out of the detent when they twist like that, and pulling them back in can make moving the center a little easier.

Joe

[dtw]

Joe, I think I got it now , thanks.

For everyone who is trying out this nightmare job: Joe's bow order is correct, but you may swear it is not. Even after quite a bit of fiddling, I could not get the fabric to lay right on the 3rd bow as seen above. I had heard of a different order (short, long, short, medium), so I tried that. Definitely not right. Then I tried Joe's order again. Would not fit. Then I took the fabric off the bows and installed the bows 'naked'. They were a snug fit but they did lay down right with a bit of tweaking. #3 was still the toughest one. I reattached the fabric and installed #3 bow first and got it laying down perfectly. Then I installed the other 3 bows (#4 first, then #2, then #1) and clipped it front and rear, starting from the center and working out to the corners. The end result is below. I'm almost fully stretched now, and starting to make my corner cuts. More updates to come, I'll just turn this into a full headliner install thread so my misery can help others.

[dtw]

Progress continues. I'm 'this close' to being ready to glue. Only obstacle now is pulling the remaining/kinks and wrinkles out of the material. These are artifacts from the fabric sitting folded up in a package on my shelf. The worst of them is pictured. After last night's tensioning session, this is barely visible. I went to work on these flaws with a spray bottle of water and my wife's hairdryer. After working over the affected areas with the heat and water, you can see the flaws 'give' or relax. Then it is time to pull the material tight - carefully. The material is very soft and pliable after heating, so I was careful not to pull too hard or too much.



As tension on the headliner is taken up over the course of a few days, it will be getting nearly tight enough to play the drums on. I realized that my front and rear headliner sections were getting a 'wavy' pattern where the clipped sections were the peaks of the waves, and the unclipped sections were the troughs of the waves. I added additional clips and pulled the leading & trailing edges uniformly tight. As you can see, it takes a LOT of clips.

[dtw]

Well, the headliner has been pulled about as tight as it is going to go. There are still a few light artifacts in the headliner, but they are very small and can only be seen from certain angles. I'm hoping that after a few hours in the sun, they'll continue to relax and disappear. If not, no big deal - they are very hard to see. So, with that, I started gluing.

We start at the middle/front. Originally I planned to use Stoddard's brush-on upholstery adhesive, which I affectionately call 'gorilla snot'. For the headliner, my friend Jamie (jpnovak) suggested I try 3M's spray-on product. Picked up a can for $20 (youch) and tried it out on some other trim on the car. Turns out it is just like brush-on gorilla snot, but in spray form. Works fine! Here's the first coat:



This glue works a little differently than what I'm used to using. You spray on several films of the glue on both surfaces, and let them tack up before gluing. In this photo, I'm almost ready to stick the headliner on. Still too runny.



This is the first corner I've negotiated in my '72 in a LOOONG time. Sorry, bad joke. This is the driver side A-pillar. I'm also installing my pillar trim. The A-pillar trim was glued in a few weeks before; I left a generous unglued portion at the top so I could wrap the A-pillar trim over the finished headliner. In this pic we see the fruit of my labors - it turned out darned nice.



You do not want to run out of binder clips in the middle of the gluing session. I've got dozens of clips in various sizes. Be careful, remember that on the leading edge of the headliner, you've got to also glue the 'back' or 'interior' side of the windshield seal channel. The headliner must seat against this surface, rather than be stretched across the two points of the 'L' the channel forms, or your windshield seal will not seat properly.



Here's the completed half of the windshield area! I only had time for one side tonight. In this pic I've trimmed my excess material to the trough of the seal area, as per factory-style install. Later after the glue has had a chance to set up, I will remove the binder clips and install the little tensioning clips.



More to come...

[jpnovak]

Sweet! Keep up the good work.

Wait, what are you doing gluing instead of wrenching on the new 2.7?

[Avery]

Yes...binder clips, many binder clips are a must. The job just takes a lot of time, stretching here, pulling there, repositioning. The high tack glue is a must so you can stick and unstick the liner as you go. Installing the windows could (read could) add new wrinkles.

[dtw]

Jamie,
Thanks! Your tips have helped. Well, the 2.7 build was going fine, until I got my chain boxes, cams, and thrust plates installed. At that point I was not happy with the centering of the cams in the thrust plates. I took the chain boxes off and took them over to the machine shop; they're going to take .020 off of them and we'll see if that improves the cam positioning. I also swapped out the gas in the 3.2 and have been running it, trying to wake the engine up.

Felmir - Wow. Your car looks really really good. Nice '72!!! If I work on the car tonight, I'll hopefully start cutting and clipping the headliner on the C-pillars. Any tips you can provide on that part of the job would be appreciated.

[Avery]

I installed the liner in 2002 so its been a while. I'd do it again... I've seen some shoddy jobs by pros who just did not have the patience to get it right.

The secret is the headliner maker. No amount of fitting is going to cure the poorly made headliner. After that, its probably more of an art than anything else. You have to want to do it perfectly. Its just a matter of continually moving and shifting..."herding" the wrinkles out. It takes time and you will get it. I just took a picture of the liner and its still looks good. I left out the interior lights and pass visor (ala RS). Being an incurable DIYer, I'm proud on how it turned out. You will feel the same.

I installed the windows too. That was not that hard BUT getting the bright trim straight is hairy....(yeah...the Lexan rear window is cracking from getting beat on by the sun)

[500_19B]

I will be tackling this later this summer, although I have a sunroof car, which is a little different (slightly easier from the sounds of it). These pictures and comments are very helpful, thanks!

[dtw]

In this update, I'll show a few more pics and share my final tips on completion of this monster. As of this writing my headliner is fully installed. If I can keep from poking any holes in the wrong places (for 1/4 window latches, dome lights, visors, etc), then I will be home free.

In this pic, I have glued in the rest of the left side of the car. There are a LOT more cuts to be made on the rear of the car than the front. This can be intimidating. After making sure everything forward of the B pillars was square and tight, I made the cuts to clear the B pillar. Then I made the cuts for the upper corner of the rear glass, then traveled down the C pillar making cuts as necessary. Be careful when gluing in the rear section, there's a lot going on back here and it is easy to get 'off track'. For this reason I glued in small sections while keeping other sections clipped and straight. Then I could make sure the small section I just did was correct before proceeding. The glue remains pliable a long time and will be forgiving of careful re-work if you need it.


Another photo of the rear. Note that in this case, I've trial-fit my rear deck/shelf upholstery, using a small philips head screw driver to pin the panel at a mounting hole for reference. I did this to make sure the headliner was laying down properly at the rear shelf. During the actual install you'll need to remove your rear deck panel.


I am really coming unglued. Sorry!! Breathing all these fumes makes you a little punchy. A few things going on in this pic - trial fitting the B pillar trim while gluing up the headliner under the roof section. Plenty of gorilla snot applied, but not tacky enough yet to clip. Note that the B pillar trim is rolled back several inches to give me room to work with the headliner.



As noted above, it can be difficult indeed to get everything lined up in the rear of the car due to all the transitions and curves. On the left side, when I got everything lined up before gluing, I used a Sharpie and drew a few reference lines. When I glued, I used these lines to be able to tell if I had repositioned the fabric correctly after applying the glue. My confidence level was greater on the right side and this was not necessary.



Here's the completed B pillar. Observe how the headliner fabric drops down into the B pillar. I left plenty of fabric down there and glued it in to help keep things tensioned up - you'll see how it is tricky to keep the fabric straight and tensioned at the pillars. Pulling a flap down onto the pillar itself and gluing it down really helps in this regard. When the glue is dry, you can trim off the excess, but I left a good inch adhered to the pillar here. When the black vinyl pillar trim is installed over the excess, it is invisible. See also here how the pillar trim is rolled over on itself at the top of the pillar to complete the transition. Clean!



One last pic. You can see in this pic, my only wrinkle. A very slight tweak at the corner. This has been smoothed out quite a bit now, but it is almost impossible to install this area without a slight tweak. Maybe when I have done as many as Hans, I will do a better job! I'm extremely happy with the way this has turned out.

Tips:
-Really let the glue tack up before clipping the fabric up. The 3M instructions say 5 minutes. 3 works, but 30 seconds does not.
-Keep a bottle of solvent and some wipes handy to clean your hands. You don't want to get sticky gluey hands and start making a mess of your headliner
-Don't skimp on the clips. I am using at least 5 dozen clips and about 4 different sizes. Office Max is your friend.
-Don't install the factory retaining clips until 24 hrs after gluing. The solvents in the glue really weaken the fabric; I suspect the clips will tear the fabric if you try to install them shortly after gluing.
-See above - the glue solvents really weaken the fabric. Don't pull on the fabric very hard after coating it with glue. All your stretching should be done 24 hrs before gluing.
-Mask well. The spray-on gorilla snot goes everywhere. I found that denatured alcohol takes the glue off of upholstery with minimal risk. Lacquer thinner was necessary to take it off paint.
-Stay on your game. Make one wrong cut at the end, and you've got to start over.

Would I do this again? I guess so - but it is not pleasant. If you're doing this to a car that's already 'together' unlike mine, removal of the headliner will probably cost a lot in collateral damage. Seals, trim, etc. Big local shop wants over $1k for this install and now I see why. I've been working on this for a month and probably have 20-30 hours in it.

Y'all let me know if you have any questions...now it is on to the carpet installation!

[zmayne]

Wow, makes me feel relieved that the previous owner of my 69 T had a hedliner installed.

[techweenie]

Thanks, Dave, for this detailed review! the last one I had installed took the guy maybe 5.5 hours and looked great (the car was an empty shell, and a sunroof, which helped alot), but compared to your result was probably 90%. Like most things in life, each additional percentage point reaching 100 costs an increasing amount of time, effort and care.

[sleepy911]

I have been doing upholstery for almost 20 years and I do a lot of Porsches. Headliners are definitely an art form. I've seen good upholsterers who always fought bow headliners and still couldn't get them to look good. Patience is the key and like any good artist knowing your canvas. The funny thing I read on this thread is that headliner models are easier. I can do a shell non sunroof in less than a day complete show quality. That little sunroof pushes the job a little longer. All the bows on a standard really help position the headliner, you don't have that luxury with the sunroof car. Anyway nice job it looks great!

[whackit]

What's the consensus on who makes the best headliner?

[Turboo934]

The Factory,Porsche!!!