Lay your board on a flat surface and spray the entire board down with your adhesive spray. I worked from one end to the other, working in sections to smooth out any wrinkles before the material stuck. Repeat this on the headliner. After a minute or so (I waited 45 seconds) lay down the headliner, again working in sections. I didn’t have anyone to help, but I would suggest getting someone to help.
Cut off the excess material leaving enough around the entire board to test ‘wrap‘ around different complex curves. Remember, you can always cut more off, but you can’t add more on. After you have test fit and cut the material to better fit the curves, spray the back side of the board in sections and lay down the excess material
After the material has been completely laid down I clipped the edges of the board with binder clips.
Hint: Cut an ‘X’ in the hole where your interior lights will reside with your razor knife and fold the triangles over the back of the board and stick them down.
The back side of the almost finished headliner.
Now comes the most difficult part of the entire process. Not only does this require lots of patience, it requires a few trips to the car to ensure your measurements are correct. If they’re not, you’ll have an uneven headliner at best, or you won’t be able to remount that silver rim I showed you earlier at the worst. Lets go.
First pull out the glass portion of the sunroof. This gave me a bit more room to work with from below and above. Also, I remounted the headliner and secured the front with the sun visors and interior lighting system. This puts the headliner in its stock position allowing you to accurately find the hole for the sun roof.
Here, I began to remount the rim THROUGH the material. I realized that masking the bolts was going to be impossible without removing the whole sunroof, so instead, I made the bolts work for me. I started on the rear most bolts first, for some reason they were easiest to bolt in. Work your way around making sure that the material is stretched evenly across the void before bolting it down. Once the holes from the bolts are there, they’re not going away unless you start all the way over again.
After the rim is bolted down, trace along the inside of the rim with my marker for an extra reference for later. (This is why I mentioned grabbing a marker that could be hidden well.) Make a long cut across the middle of the material in the ‘hole’ but stay about 4 inches away from the rim for safety’s sake. This is to release some of the tension in the material. After seeing that everything lines up, I cut more ‘reliefs’ in the material.
Now between these two steps I took the whole headliner and metal retaining ring out and reinstalled the whole thing in the order I did the previous time to check the fit. Luckily for me, I had measured pretty well, so everything lined up again.
I brought the headliner ‘assembly’ inside and laid the retaining ring down as if the floor was the roof. I then laid the headliner over it and lined up the visible bolt holes in the material over the ring. Once I had it lined up, I placed the bolts in the holes to ‘hold’ the material there. I then cut the majority of the material out, leaving about an inch and a half left to wrap around the rim.
Take the left over material and fold it under the rim and clip it in place using binder clips. DO NOT rush this step. This is the only chance you have to realign the ring, so if you must, undo the clips and start again.
Here I folded as much material under to get an idea of what my headliner might look like. Also to do a quick symmetry check. If you’re doubting your measurements at all, take the whole thing back out and test fit the headliner and make sure the retaining ring will line up with the unit.
Once you’re ready, flip over to the underside and start spraying and sticking. Only take off clips in the area that you are working with, and as soon as you’ve glued down a section, put the binder clips back on. Again, work in sections and work slowly.
Done!
Installation is opposite of removal.
Refinishing Your Interior Part II: Relining The Headliner Board
