What is smartest headliner replacement?

[Redsquall]

Several of my head liner panels have weird marks or stains or cuts. What are some of the smartest ways to make it like new again? DMC has brand new panels in a kit for $550. I suppose there is manually cleaning the panels and installing fresh headliner fabric to it – but does that end up looking close to factory? What are other good options? Thank you

[powerline84]

I felt like the originals were pretty flimsy when I pulled mine out so i went with the fiberglass panels and had Mike's (dmc midwest) upholstery guy do it. I am glad I went that route. I believe it's a thousand dollar job by a vendor. However I think it is something that can easily be done by yourself if your panels are in good shape and you have the time to do it. I also felt like my panels stunk . Many others report that's where a lot of the negative smells come from in these cars .

[David T]

Most of the vendors don't bother with the original cardboard backers and instead use a fiberglass substitute. Too much work to remove the old materiel and glue. That said, this is a job you can do yourself if you don't mind the time and the odors. Strip the old stuff, clean up the backers, get new fabric and glue it on. Depending on how careful you are you can do a very nice looking job. Be sure to get fabric with foam bonded to it to give it the original, plush feel. The stains you see are probably form water leaks.

[Redsquall]

Most of the vendors don't bother with the original cardboard backers and instead use a fiberglass substitute. Too much work to remove the old materiel and glue. That said, this is a job you can do yourself if you don't mind the time and the odors. Strip the old stuff, clean up the backers, get new fabric and glue it on. Depending on how careful you are you can do a very nice looking job. Be sure to get fabric with foam bonded to it to give it the original, plush feel. The stains you see are probably form water leaks.


David, are these brownish water stains just because I need to replace the robber which is old and could let some water in or do you think there’s some other kind of rusting problem going on because the stains are a light brown?

[CriticalB]

David, are these brownish water stains just because I need to replace the robber which is old and could let some water in or do you think there’s some other kind of rusting problem going on because the stains are a light brown?

My car had similar brown water stains. I think a PO recovered the headliners himself b/c there was about an inch of excess material that wrapped around under the door sill where it wicked up rain water. It may not be rust, rather just dust and dirt mixing with the water there and getting drawn into the headliner. When it dries, the dirt stays behind, usually around the edges of where the water got to.

Even if you get the kit, there will be excess material you should trim along the top of the door under where the inner seal will lay down. This will keep the edge of the fabric from getting wet.

[Redsquall]

My car had similar brown water stains. I think a PO recovered the headliners himself b/c there was about an inch of excess material that wrapped around under the door sill where it wicked up rain water. It may not be rust, rather just dust and dirt mixing with the water there and getting drawn into the headliner. When it dries, the dirt stays behind, usually around the edges of where the water got to.

Even if you get the kit, there will be excess material you should trim along the top of the door under where the inner seal will lay down. This will keep the edge of the fabric from getting wet.

Interesting, do you think I could just take off the panels and do some kind of wet vacuum cleaning on them to try to get them back to normal? Is the backing material something that can get wet like that? Thanks

[iflights]

If the headliners are original, as noted earlier, the backing boards are simply cardboard. I found they don't have the rigidity at 37 years old that they had when they were new, and removing them with the intent to recover and replace, and still keep them looking good, may be a challenge. Using any liquid to clean original headliners would just inject liquid into the underlying cardboard, likely making the problem worse or short term.

I went with fiberglass backed headliners already covered with fabric from DMCMW. There are few investments that make the interior look so incredible with such little effort.

[David T]

The vendors decided a long time ago it wans't worth the effort and time to clean up and reuse the old cardboard backers. They all offer fiberglass replacements. For those of you who want to do it all yourself "on the cheap" and your time doesn't mean anything to you, they can be cleaned and reused if you are careful and they don't break up too much when you remove them. Cleaning off the old foam and glue is a messy, time consuming job. As for stains, as long as they aren't soft they should be OK. Most craft stores sell a foam backed grey materiel that you can use. Also some have dry cleaned the old materiel, glued foam to it and then glued it to the backers. Most owners go the easy way and just buy all new and put it in. Take a picture of any markings on the insides of the doors before reinstalling the headliners. You will probably need a couple of new plastic "fir trees" (clips).

[Redsquall]

Thanks guys! Besides DMC, who is the next best vendor? Just looking at options. Thanks

[eight8toy]

Honestly if your boards are still in decent shape then sand them down a bit and then go to JoAnns fabric store (or whatever is in your area) and look for the grey headliner material they sell. It has foam backing and then get a can of sticky spray glue and attach them to the boards.

This was one of the first things I did when I got my car. The old headliner was stuck in several spots but a gentle bit of sanding smoothed it all just fine.

I suppose you could try to spray paint the old boards before installing new headliner with some sort of sealant paint that would prevent further water damage?

[DMC1890]

Any thoughts on getting rid of the 'aroma' of the original panels?

[dn010]

You can also lay a few sheets of fiberglass / epoxy down on the original boards if you're worried about how rigid they are and might help with masking odors. Mine are original and they recovered well, although like they say somewhat of a PITA to clean up. Plenty of how-to threads, here is mine.

http://dmctalk.org/showthread.php?13191-How-To-Headliner-recovery

Call me 'cheap', but $550 (plus core fees of $50) for a new headliner set? -$40 I spent on upholstery = at least $560 savings (not including the $ to ship the kit!) for only an hour or two worth of work.

[Jason]

I "restored" my headliner panels by gently scraping them clean and then painting them with fiberglass resin.

[AirmanPika]

I'm glad I caught this thread. I need to recover my headliners again (the foam from my recovery from 10 years ago didn't hold up so well). I didn't have problems with the boards themselves so I think I'll go the resin route too to beef them up a bit.

[DMC1890]

I'm partway through the process now. I find that scraping the old foam and glue off is a bit tedious. The underlying board is still plenty stiff, but feels damp to the touch. I do intend to coat the board with fiberglass resin, mostly to deal with the musty smell. As was commented earlier, your time needs to be almost worthless to do this (which is true in my case). If I fail, I've only lost about $60, and DMCH is only a 30 minute drive to get the $550 new panels.