G’day everyone!
Been a minute since I’ve updated, life has escalated for me in a big way lately so I haven’t had much time to attend to car related stuff.
After a decade of bachelor life since my divorce in 2010, this past weekend I finally moved my longtime girl and her 19 year old son in with me after we got her house sold. Needless to say, things have been pretty chaotic around ‘ol Rktpwrd’s pad since then. Moving, cleaning, reorganizing, integrating, renting and returning the moving truck, you name it, there’s been a lot on our plates. Literally overnight I’ve gone from rattling around this old place by myself, to having a very full and busy house. Her and her son, plus a big German Shepard and a fat ‘ol friendly cat! Certainly an adjustment period, but not nearly as bad as I thought it might be.
It’s actually quite nice having a full house and the house itself feeling more like a home.
They’ve been here a week and are mostly settled in now, so I’m starting to find a little more free time again. Figured I’d take this opportunity to finally update on the headliner install.
Boy, you weren’t just whistling Dixie! The actual installation of the headliner spanned roughly just over two weeks, and required removing and reinstalling it twice, along with copious amounts of cursing and frustration. I’ll expound on this more shortly. The first attempt at installing the headliner was less than successful, and very frustrating to be honest. After I got it up and in place, it didn’t fit very well due to the two little studs that mount the dome light skewing everything else off and putting buckles in the board. You can see one above the passenger side here pretty clearly.
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Also, with this headliner board being for an AstroRoof application, there’s really nothing to support the board around the opening. It was sagging pretty badly at the front and sides as seen here:
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A closer look at the passenger’s side:
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It’s a bit difficult to see in this picture because it’s so dark, but there was another buckle manifesting itself a little further back too. The little bit of silver visible is the sound deadening I installed underneath, you obviously shouldn’t be able to see it:
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I also found a pretty major oversight in the holes and cutouts the manufacturer put in it, the large cutouts they provided are definitely supposed to be there, but they are for the coat hooks. Once I had it up and in place, I discovered that they had completely neglected to provide any holes to reinstall the upper seatbelt mounts! They’re supposed to go where my finger is pointing.
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Thoroughly disenchanted with the whole thing at this point, I decided that it needed to come back out of the car and some improvements and modifications made. After undoing all the hard work I had done to get it in there, I begrudgingly pulled it back out and compared it very closely to what was left of the original by overlaying it on top of the new one:
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As you can see here, the new board is not only missing the holes for the upper seatbelt mounts, but it’s also not formed correctly here. The AstroRoof is an entire assembly that installs to the underside of the roof, and thereby hangs a little lower than non AstroRoof cars, requiring pockets for the seatbelt mounts in the headliner to make up the difference in height. The new board doesn’t even have these moulded in
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I contacted Highway Stars, the retailer of this board with the glaring oversight, and received a disappointing but not unexpected “thanks for bringing this to our attention, we’ll look into it” response. Thanks guys, really appreciate it FFS.
Also while I had the board out, I realized that I’d also have to add in the hole at the back for the rear taillight fibre optic housing. This was an option on Calais models, so I don’t fault them for not having it punched out on the board:
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To correct the issue with the dome light studs skewing everything off, I decided to just remove them entirely and use conventional short screws to remount it. This is the dome light area overlaid on the new board. The studs went through the 2 widely spaced holes towards the back:
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I approximated as best I could where the upper seatbelt mount holes needed to be, then carefully cut out the holes with a hole saw and an Olfa knife...
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...then drilled a hole for the taillight fibre optic housing with a step bit.
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Right side up, with an overall look at the changes so far:
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To address the lack of support around the AstroRoof opening, I picked up some heavy duty industrial strength Velcro. The headliner board did come with a 4’ length of it, but I had already installed it in the middle of the board thinking that that’s where it would need it.
However to install the Velcro around the edges where it DID need it, I first had to trim back the overlapped and glued material on the backside so I’d have nice clean flat spots to attach to. This was a bigger PITA than you’d think, I can attest that the glue holds EXTREMELY well.
Before:
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And during:
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The process was to cut and scrape off as much of the material as possible, then use the shop towel visible in the picture soaked in wax and grease remover to sit on the dried glue to soften it up, then scrape that off. Once that messy job was done, next I cut the Velcro to length and attached them where needed, mainly the sides and front of the opening. No pictures of this because it’s pretty straightforward.
Time for attempt #2 on getting it installed, and pleased to report it went much better this time. Took my time and went about it slowly and methodically, and cleaned up and installed the rest of the interior panels as I went along. One doesn’t really realize it, but there’s a TON of interior components that have to go back in when reinstalling the interior in our cars.
Perimeter trim, sun visors, “A” and “B” pillar trim, upper seatbelt mounts and their covers, coat hooks and their trim, upper and lower rear panels, rear seatbelts and back seat rest, back seat bottom, dome light, and the list goes on.
I also had quite a few electrical components and connections to contend with, the dome light obviously, but also the lighted passenger visor, the AstroRoof switch, and the rear taillight fibre optic cables. All in all though, I think it turned out very well, the Velcro around the perimeter and the elimination of the dome light studs made all the difference in the world. See what you think:
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This signifies a fairly major milestone in the build, as it’s the first time in 3 years that the complete interior has been installed in the car. The sun visors are looking pretty old and ratty next to the new headliner material now, so getting them professionally recovered with the leftover headliner material over the winter is pretty high on the priority list.
I’ve also got a slight problem with an intermittent electrical connection at the AstroRoof switch that I’ve gotta track down, but that shouldn’t be too hard to fix.
I mentioned a couple of times the rear taillight fibre optic housing, if you guys aren’t familiar with this rare option, here’s what it looks like when it’s installed:
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It mounts to the roof just forward of the rear garnish moulding in the back seat area, just above the rear seat passenger’s heads. It’s connected to the taillights via fibre optic cables that run through the inside of the sail panels and through the trunk. When the taillights, brakes or signal lights are applied, they’re able to be monitored through the 2 small red lenses in the housing. It might seem like an odd place to put this housing, until you realize that the driver can clearly see it in the rear view mirror! Pretty cool, albeit a bit gimmicky little option, but it came with the car, and I like it.
Anyways, that’s all I’ve got for you guys for now, hopefully y’all enjoyed the update.
D.
