Help me please headliner gurus

[Hurricane77]

I’ve always thought I’d like to try to coat the factory headliner pressed board backing with fiberglass resin. That would make a nice smooth surface for the adhesive to bond to rather than flakey board.

I've been considering the same thing. Mine for my project was mostly there's just snapped a bit at some of the corners - or at least it was until an avalanche of snow off my roof crushed my parts storage shed. Haven't got in there yet to do a damage assessment - it's full of snow 🙂 But I thought I could do exactly as you're thinking. Use fiberglass resin to bond the pieces back together and reinforce the whole headliner a bit

 

[TonyO]

I've been considering the same thing. Mine for my project was mostly there's just snapped a bit at some of the corners - or at least it was until an avalanche of snow off my roof crushed my parts storage shed. Haven't got in there yet to do a damage assessment - it's full of snow 🙂 But I thought I could do exactly as you're thinking. Use fiberglass resin to bond the pieces back together and reinforce the whole headliner a bit

It won’t add much weight either.

 

[Bonnewagon]

I did mine last summer. My headliner was in pretty good shape but even that is crappy to work with. I think you could make a decent headliner board out of a very big sheet of corrugated cardboard. It just can't have any big folds or creases. The stock board is not much better than that. As per suggestions on here I applied fiberglass resin to one side and it stiffened it up drastically. The fabric glued nicely to the resin side and so far it is holding up well. Just cut it roughly to shape and then fine tune it as you go.

 

[Longroof79]

Do you still have all the garnish moldings around the perimeter of the headliner?
There's also a plastic strip that goes between the front and rear headliner sections and snaps into place, unless the previous owner ditched all those parts. It makes you wonder what these knuckleheads are thinking when they tear down the headliner without having a replacement.

 

[Nick1979]

Do you still have all the garnish moldings around the perimeter of the headliner?
There's also a plastic strip that goes between the front and rear headliner sections and snaps into place, unless the previous owner ditched all those parts. It makes you wonder what these knuckleheads are thinking when they tear down the headliner without having a replacement.

Getting a few ideas off the thread the cardboard and fiberglass is sounding like a good idea. I have all the perimeter trim just none of the clips and I'm missing 2 of the rails. The guy I got it off of was 90 years old and must have been out of his mind, he made it an automatic on the floor, put a giant wing on the back and painted the whole front of the car with orange and white checkers and went ham with black rattle can paint all over the car I'm trying to sort it out but it has almost no rust on it besides some scabs where paint came off

thats the picture from the original ad

 

[Bonnewagon]

He did WHAT???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

 

[Max Headroom]

About 25 years ago, I had a 68 camero with no headliner in it. I baked in the summer and went crazy from the noise when it rained. Did I mention that I was flat broke at the time? Well, I was flat broke at the time. I put some insulation up aginst the actual sheet metal roof and then had a friend cut and bend some real thin (28 guage?) sheet metal to glue a liner material to. It didn't look factory but the metal bends much better than luan or other wood and it retains its shape where cardboard or fiber board won't. After it was fastened in place (think I used some real small pop rivets) I used 3M spray adhesive to glue the liner material to the metal. I ended up cutting the large metal sheet a little short at the back and front and cut narrower pieces that shaped to the contour of the car easier than trying to manipulate the whole sheet. It came out looking ok and after about a week I stopped noticing that it wasn't stock.

Just a thought.

 

[Ribbedroof]

FWIW, a bunch of late model SUVs use magnets to hold the headliners up in the center areas. Explorers use a dozen or so, seems like I recall seeing some on GM stuff too. I have some at work, I'll try to remember to get a pic next week. Those attached to plastic corrugated signboard (light and waterproof) as suggested earlier would probably be the easiest. Years ago, I did make a headliner for a 67 F100 out of double thick corrugated cardboard and some light carpet, but it really didn't have much in the way of curves, so it was pretty flat.

 

[GP403]

not sure it’s relevant. But here’s how I did the trim on my ABS backed headliner.

It does involve the trim pieces, much like this.

Cars & Concepts T-Top Headliner Repair - GBodyNation.com

Performing some much needed G-Body Cars and Concepts T-Top headliner repair.

gbodynation.com

 

[Nick1979]

FWIW, a bunch of late model SUVs use magnets to hold the headliners up in the center areas. Explorers use a dozen or so, seems like I recall seeing some on GM stuff too. I have some at work, I'll try to remember to get a pic next week. Those attached to plastic corrugated signboard (light and waterproof) as suggested earlier would probably be the easiest. Years ago, I did make a headliner for a 67 F100 out of double thick corrugated cardboard and some light carpet, but it really didn't have much in the way of curves, so it was pretty flat.

I heard about magnets and people glueing them to the roof and using it to hold up the headliner sounds like another good option