by FlyingHighNow 13 Replies latest jw friends
Has anyone got advice on what to do when your car headliner starts to lose its adhesive and then begins sagging? My car is eleven years old and it sags on either side and is now only adering down the middle. I dont have money to repair it like it should be.
What can you do to stop it from totally falling? I don't want to tear it out and turn it into a hillbilly mobile.
It was great until a few months ago. I don't know what happened.
Funny you should mention that! I work in an upholstery shop and one of the things we do is replace headliners. Headliner material is quite cheap and may be available at a local cloth and vinyl store.
We generally remove the plastic parts that hold up the sides and the sun visors in the front and any dome lights or consoles in the middle. You have to be careful not to break the tabs on some of these items that basically snap into place. While simple screwdrivers work most of the time, some manufacturers use star bit screws.
Anyway, once you can get the headliner substrate out, you have to clean it off. We use a piece of discarded furniture foam to get rid of the sticky bits once we have the cloth off. Then glue the new headliner back on with spray contact cement like 3M 77 (or is it 74? I can't remember right now).
Lay the material out and line it up with the substrate. Roll the material back and spray the glue on a one foot section of cloth and substrate. Let the glue set for a minute and then attach the cloth to the substrate. Proceed along the cloth and substrate until it is all attached. If you are careful, there should be no wrinkles in the new headliner.
Put the new headliner back in the car and put all the support parts back in place. If you get any dirt or marks on the new material, just carefully wipe with a clean rag and some mineral spirits. We charge around $125 for a passenger car. Hope that helps!
Dave
FHN What I do is use thumbtacks to hold it up. Make like three rows of four tacks. Depending on the make of your auto this should work for a good while. lw
If that wont work for your situation, use plastic trim from the local hardware store. order it cut to the width of the roof plus about four inches. Get three peices. It bends and you can hook it right into the upper trim of the roof of your vehicle. LW
Wow, thanks Primate Dave and Little Witch. Now I've got to see if I can understand your directions. I'm bad with directions.
One time I used 3/4" metal banding of the type used to bind lumber and machinery for shipping. I just cut it a little long and let it catch the over door headliner trim on each side. The stuff is sort of spring steel anyway, so it stayed up good.
Eventually I saved up enough to have it replaced by an upholstery shop. The metal bands were a handy place to store paper scraps and unpaid bills while they were there.
Twist pins usually work rather well.You can get a box for couple of bucks.
At a certain point in time any pressure against those headliners will make the glue give up.
I had a old beater work car........... worked all the slack out of the fabric. Opened up a desktop stapler (like you use it to staple stuff to a bulletin board) and carefully stapled all the slack fabric near the edge molding and trimed the excess with razor knife. Looked OK on the $800 Chevette and held up for a couple of years till it was sold.
~J
dude its easy.
1st- go to home depot, auto-zone, etc. and get the 3M spray glue. (theyre not that much $$) theres a few but ive used the aircraft something or other on my head liner.
2nd- carefully take the plastic trim from around the edges of the headliner. if you break one of the tabs on removal you can use good doubled sided sticky foam tape to hold the plastic pieces in place on re-assembly.
3rd- tape up newspaper on the inside of the windows so the overspray doesnt get on them. (unless your really good at aiming a spray can) or just remove the headliner and take it outside.
4th- spray the affected area in small incriments, let it sit a few min, then press the material onto the board. (repeat)
5th- put it back together and let it air out.
this is not very expensive and would take you no more then one day to do. or you can go the much easier and cheaper route and just rip the rest of the material down and paint it any color you wish.
These are all good ideas. Any of you guys live close to Grand Rapids and want to help me? I'll buy you & .
