Need some Advice, Opinions, Tips

[Mr.SpeedFreak]

On headliner installation :headbang:

Everywhere locally has quoted me about $300 to install one, and aside from saving money I'd also just like to have the knowledge and experience of doing one myself. So any advice, tips, or experience you guys could share would be really appreciated!

Just a side note, these videos were posted on here by Tallhair and give a pretty good basic rundown on how to do it, but I'd still like to hear some personal experiences, step-by-steps, tips, etc before I decide whether or not to give it a shot

[video=youtube_share;b1j8QbkHLZc]http://youtu.be/b1j8QbkHLZc[/video]

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Here's the second part to the video I included with the original post:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJU6m1ZkwQg&sns=em

 

[440+6]

With the quality of work you've been doing to your car I'm sure you will do a great job on the headliner too. Personally I have never done one.

 

[BeastlyBirdie]

I've found a hair dryer to be my friend when installing them. Not as hot as a heat gun, and allows you to stretch the material a bit, and straighten any wrinkling.

 

[Rick@Laysons]

Are the front and rear windshields removed from the car?

If not, you may want to go ahead and pay that $300...because doing the headliner with the glass in is a real bioootch!!!

Anyways......once you get all the bows properly located in the new headliner tubes, and the bows set in the clips along the sides of the roofrails, check to make DARN SURE that the two little wire loops on the rear bow are attached to the roof in the proper location.

THEN...go to the front of the liner and pull the center snug and hook it over the sharkteeth. DO NOT pull it too tight...snug, but not tight. At the back, work from the center outwards about 6-8 inches hooking the material over the teeth alternating from side to side. Once about a foot or so of the back is secured, go to the front and do the same procedure. Once the back and front are secured on the hooks, start in the center of the sides and do the same thing. Sometimes it helps to have two sets of hands, but can be done by one person with patience and a little effort.

Once the liner is secured on all sides, check for wrinkles. Use a heat gun on LOW setting to GENTLY heat the material where wrinkles appear. The heat will relax the material and the wrinkles will smooth out.

The good part is that the headliners are not outrageously expensive, so if you screw one up, you won't have to mortgage the farm to get another.

This by no means covers everything completely, but should give you a good general idea of what you'll be working with.

Hope this helps.....

Rick

 

[Mr.SpeedFreak]

Are the front and rear windshields removed from the car?

If not, you may want to go ahead and pay that $300...because doing the headliner with the glass in is a real bioootch!!!

Anyways......once you get all the bows properly located in the new headliner tubes, and the bows set in the clips along the sides of the roofrails, check to make DARN SURE that the two little wire loops on the rear bow are attached to the roof in the proper location.

THEN...go to the front of the liner and pull the center snug and hook it over the sharkteeth. DO NOT pull it too tight...snug, but not tight. At the back, work from the center outwards about 6-8 inches hooking the material over the teeth alternating from side to side. Once about a foot or so of the back is secured, go to the front and do the same procedure. Once the back and front are secured on the hooks, start in the center of the sides and do the same thing. Sometimes it helps to have two sets of hands, but can be done by one person with patience and a little effort.

Once the liner is secured on all sides, check for wrinkles. Use a heat gun on LOW setting to GENTLY heat the material where wrinkles appear. The heat will relax the material and the wrinkles will smooth out.

The good part is that the headliners are not outrageously expensive, so if you screw one up, you won't have to mortgage the farm to get another.

This by no means covers everything completely, but should give you a good general idea of what you'll be working with.

Hope this helps.....

Rick

Hey thanks for all the info Rick! And yep the front and rear glass are both out of the car, basically completely disassembled as far as trim and mouldings go as well. That brings me to a few more specific questions:
1) I'm not 100% sure I have all the clips/ hooks I need. Is it only the 2 hooks at the rear bow? Does anyone have any pics of where exactly they go, and is there anywhere I can buy them new if they're missing? Are there any clips at the front windshield lip?

2) I've heard people talk about using cheap office-supply spring clips to hold the headliner in place before puncturing it in place with the shark teeth. Is the purpose of this just to allow you to work the hair dryer and smooth out any wrinkles before it's permanently in place?

3) Am I correct in thinking that nothing but glue holds the headliner in place on the sides? (Other than the drip rail mouldings, once they're all in place) And where are all the locations that should be glued?

4) How do the inner sail areas get secured/ where should the headliner material end? Is there any type of board backing in the sail areas?

5) At the front and rear windshield shelves, where should the headliner material end? Just over the shark teeth in the front, and just wrapped around and glued to the rear window shelf where the glass will sit?

Guess that's more than a few questions but if I could get them answered for the most part I think I'll be pretty well set to give it a try!

And thanks 440+6, I'm just hoping my enthusiasm won't outrun my skills on this one haha

 

[Rick@Laysons]

Lemme see if I have any pics on my home 'puter from when I done the headliner in my 70 RR, I'm headed outta work here for the nite.

Look for a post from me tomorrow.

Thanks,
Rick

 

[64SF]

Ricks post is exactly how I recently did mine (67 Satellite). It was the first one I installed. It was not a hard job it just takes time and patience. As an early poster said seeing what you've done on your car you can do this installation.
Also the spring clips from the office supply work great in holding it in place while stretching and I only had two of the rear bow hooks.

I also used the below link as a guide.

http://restorick.com/tech/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=7

 

[Mr.SpeedFreak]

Lemme see if I have any pics on my home 'puter from when I done the headliner in my 70 RR, I'm headed outta work here for the nite.

Look for a post from me tomorrow.

Thanks,
Rick

That would be awesome! Thanks again Rick! :icon_thumleft:

Ricks post is exactly how I recently did mine (67 Satellite). It was the first one I installed. It was not a hard job it just takes time and patience. As an early poster said seeing what you've done on your car you can do this installation.
Also the spring clips from the office supply work great in holding it in place while stretching and I only had two of the rear bow hooks.

Hey thanks 67! From everything I've read so far that seems to be the trick, just taking your time with it and being patient like you said. If I can get the rest of these technical questions sorted out I think it should go ok :shruggy:

I guess it's worth mentioning I did the complete interior in my Chevelle other than the headliner since it was in good shape, so at least I have that bit of interior experience. Thanks again for all the input so far guys! I'm gonna check for all my hardware and bows tonight and maybe have a look through my fsm to see if it's got anything useful

 

[Bruzilla]

I did mine a bit differently. The video I watched instructed me to cut about six inches off the ends of all the bow tubes, then install the bows in the correct order. I then attached the two holdback hooks in and then installed the headliner into the car. Once the bows are in their slots, and the holdback hooks are in place, bull the headliner forward and the bows will come up into place. That's pretty easy. I pulled the fabric in front over the teeth but just enough to hold it in place and keep tension on the fabric when I pulled it from the rear. Don't worry about putting holes in the front fabric because you're probably going to be pulling it forward even more and the initial area you hang on the teeth will get cut off as excess,

I got a bunch of those little paper clips to hold the material out of the way, and worked from the back to the front. I pulled the fabric tight and tucked it onto the teeth around the rear window. Then I started adding the trim pieces while I pulled the fabric tight both front and back and left and right. Once the rear of the fabric was nice and tight I started working up towards the front.

Here's a tip that worked for me. I had heard to cut six inches off the tops of the ends of the bow tubes, but when I tried to pull the fabric tight on the sides I found that the slits needed to be longer because the tubes were balling up against the curve of the roof and causing wrinkles. The fix that I found was to pull the fabric as far left and right as it would go, then gently tug downward on it. This would cause the tops of the tubes to rip a little further each time. Then I would be able to pull the fabric a little tighter, then pull down to rip the tube a little more. Once I got all the wrinkles out and the fabric was smooth I knew I had gotten it tight enough.

The next step was I used basic contact cement and a brush and applied the cement to the roof and the sides of the fabric. Once the contact cement had set I pulled the fabric tight, pushed it onto the glued ares of the roof, and used a bunch of those paper clips to hold it in place while the glue finished drying. The nice thing with the contact cement is if you don't get it right the first time you can pull the fabric up and try again. I repeated this all the way up, going from bow to bow.

Once I got to the front I unhooked the fabric from the teeth and pulled all the slack out of it and reattached it. It's harder to do with the windshield, but not impossible. In fact I thought it was fairly easy but that might vary by make and model. The trick here, as with the bows, is remember to keep pulling the fabric left and right and front and back to get the wrinkles out.

I let the glue sit overnight, then installed the trim pieces, dome light, rearview mirror, and sunvisors the next day and it was done.

 

['67Satellite]

I did it basically like Bruzilla did give or take a couple minor things. Bow tubes definitely need to be trimmed back or they will ball up. Its not too difficult. I had a few wrinkles in mine when i was done. Most of them have settled out just sitting in my cold garage. I still havent heated it at all. I think when the car heats up this summer it will end up being flawless.

 

[Bruzilla]

1) I'm not 100% sure I have all the clips/ hooks I need. Is it only the 2 hooks at the rear bow? Does anyone have any pics of where exactly they go, and is there anywhere I can buy them new if they're missing? Are there any clips at the front windshield lip?

On the 73/74 cars one end of the hook goes on the fourth bow and the other end goes in a little eyelet cut into the roofline just above the rear window. I've seen these sold on ebay although you could probably make a set out some heavy wire.

2) I've heard people talk about using cheap office-supply spring clips to hold the headliner in place before puncturing it in place with the shark teeth. Is the purpose of this just to allow you to work the hair dryer and smooth out any wrinkles before it's permanently in place?

I used the clips to keep the fabric hanging down out of the way while I worked, and to hold the sides in place while the glue dried.

3) Am I correct in thinking that nothing but glue holds the headliner in place on the sides? (Other than the drip rail mouldings, once they're all in place) And where are all the locations that should be glued?

Yep. Glue holds in on. I used glue around all the edges of the headliner, especially on the sides.

4) How do the inner sail areas get secured/ where should the headliner material end? Is there any type of board backing in the sail areas?

There were teeth back there to hold the fabric on where the sail panels go. I just pulled it tight and then installed the covers.

5) At the front and rear windshield shelves, where should the headliner material end? Just over the shark teeth in the front, and just wrapped around and glued to the rear window shelf where the glass will sit?

Once I had all the wrinkles out, I had about four inches of fabric over hanging at the front. The next day I installed the trim, mirror, and sun visors, and once everything looked good I took a razor blade and trimmed the fabric by cutting it where it came out from the trim strip. I don't know how factory that is, but there's no fabric showing beyond the trim strip and that works for me while being a lot easier than trying to get it to the right length to be just a skosh longer than the teeth.

 

[Meep-Meep]

I have done a few. After cutting slits in the bow tubes in the correct place to make for a nice transition of the liner, I pull from the front or the back and secure. You want to pull evenly and keep an eye on the seams so they are straight. After you stretch the material in the front to rear direction you will have wrinkles in that direction, which is normal. Now apply contact cement and pull the material side to side until the wrinkles go away and secure. You will need some way to hold the edges of the liner to the roof rail area and I found using old pinch welt makes a great tool for that. Most headliners I put in I didn't have to use any heat. Just careful stretching made them come out smooth. A second set of hands is extremely helpful here!

 

[kiwigtx]

I installed the headliner in my '70 Roadrunner in 1988, so my memory of the install is not that good, but the guys above are making a lot of sense. It is easy enough to do if you are patient, and your skill level is up there Speedy....you'll be fine :yes:
If I remember right, the location for the two rear springs for the bow will be obvious when you look - probably divide the top of the window opening in thirds, and there should be marks or holes there.

 

[Bruzilla]

Weird as it sounds, the best advice I can give you is approach installing a headliner like sex. You can read about it, have people tell you about it, and even watch videos of it, but until you actually start doing it you won't really have an understanding of it. And just like with sex, if you just go with it, and make adjustments as you go, you'll be fine. And once you're done you're going to find (hopefully) that all the apprehension you felt before hand was unwarranted.

At the end of the day, you're just putting up a piece of vinyl cloth, not building a race engine. The bows will do 80% of the work, all you need to do is get the last 20% right, and all that is is pulling and stretching the fabric to get the wrinkles out and attaching it using glue or the teeth. Pretty damn easy thing to do when you look at it that way.

 

[71airgrabberRR]

One other little trick I use is this: (it helps you to locate the screws for the sun visors, rear view mirror, dome light, etc.)

Before you start with the installation, take all of the little Phillips head screws that are used to hold these parts in place, and screw them into the correct holes where they belong. They don't have to be screwed all the way in, but enough to make sure they will not fall out as the headliner material is pulled across them.

Now is also the time to make sure the dome light wiring (if your car has a roof mounted dome light) is secured and in place.

Then once the headliner installation is completed, simply feel for the screw locations. Once you find them, simply take a razor blade and make a small incision in the headliner over the screw head. The incision doesn't have to be as big as the screw head is. You can then push the headliner material over the screw and you know exactly where the screw holes are for mounting these parts. It will keep you from destroying a very nice installation by searching for screw locations after they are covered by the material.

I made this mistake with a headliner on a 70 Challenger once. I screwed up a perfect installation by cutting a hole for the dome light in a wrong place. It was my first time at installing a headliner, and I was SO proud of how nice it came out....................... Then that happened. I felt sick to my stomach.

Then go ahead with the installation as mentioned by other members above.

I personally start by hooking the material on the back window opening first and pull it forward. That is why the 2 little wire hooks called "listing wires" are there for. As you pull the material forward, the listing wires allow the rear bow to only go so far forward. It ensures the rear headliner bow is vertical when installed with the proper tension on the material. The listing wires wont allow you to over center the rear headliner bow.

Then I pretty much do it the same way as Bruzilla does.

In several cars I have restored that had the original headliner material in place, I have found small metal "U" shaped clips along the sides of the fabric where the roof rail weather stripping goes. I'm pretty sure that most, if not all cars had them at one time when they were new. They help to secure the headliner in place on the sides as the contact cement sets up. On average I have found 2 or 3 clips on each side. They are randomly placed in areas of high tension of the material. This is normally in between 2 seams.

They are very similar to clips that you sometime find on paint can lids.

Installing a headliner is daunting at first. You can do it, just don't rush. It takes time to do it properly, some common sense and a LOT of patience.

After the headliner is installed, I like to roll the car outside and let the sun heat everything up. This also helps to pull out any small wrinkles. Believe it or not, they look better after the windows have been rolled up and the car has been exposed to the sun. (of course this doesn't work in the winter, LOL)

Once you have done it, you will always install your own from now on.

I hope this helps...................

 

[Rick@Laysons]

Well......somebody deleted my pics on my home computer!!!! arrrrgggghhhh...

But the other posts in this thread are VERY spot on! With the tips and advice already given, you should be able to whip that headliner out with no problem.

 

[Mr.SpeedFreak]

Thanks for all the great info guys! I'm definitely going to give it a shot now :icon_thumleft:

I still have a couple questions though (sorry! Haha), I dug through all the hardware that came with my car and it looks like I've got everything but the front windshield interior trim clips, but I'll get to that later.


All the bows, bow clips and both listing wires accounted for. Is there supposed to be some kind of clips over the rearmost bow for the listing wires to hook to or do they just hook over the bow itself?


And I'm not sure where these side clips go ? (headliner and all trim/hardware were removed and bagged as you see it when I bought the car) I would guess they clip the headliner to the body under the drip rail somewhere? Maybe the tube-like ones are the ones you mentioned in your post Airgrabber?


Basically the only other things I'm not clear on are:
1) how the short bows go in, and where exactly.(?)
And:
2) how the inner sail panel backing board is secured in place? I think this might be Charger-specific since the headliner is one big piece that goes down each sail over the top of the boards to the package tray. :shruggy:

Any pics of these last two questions would be awesome! But in general other than these last few little details, I'm feeling pretty good about giving it a try with all the great info you guys have shared, thanks again!

 

[kiwigtx]

Thanks for all the great info guys! I'm definitely going to give it a shot now :icon_thumleft:

I still have a couple questions though (sorry! Haha), I dug through all the hardware that came with my car and it looks like I've got everything but the front windshield interior trim clips, but I'll get to that later.
View attachment 162891

All the bows, bow clips and both listing wires accounted for. Is there supposed to be some kind of clips over the rearmost bow for the listing wires to hook to or do they just hook over the bow itself?
View attachment 162892

And I'm not sure where these side clips go ? (headliner and all trim/hardware were removed and bagged as you see it when I bought the car) I would guess they clip the headliner to the body under the drip rail somewhere?
View attachment 162893

Basically the only other things I'm not clear on are:
1) how the short bows go in, and where exactly.(?)
And:
2) how the inner sail panel backing board is secured in place? I think this might be Charger-specific since the headliner is one big piece that goes down each sail over the top of the boards to the package tray. :shruggy:

Any pics of these last two questions would be awesome! But in general other than these last few little details, I'm feeling pretty good about giving it a try with all the great info you guys have shared, thanks again!

Hi Speedy,
The two x hooks just go over the rear bows.
The small clips simply crimp the edges of the headliner material over the edge of the roof steel - random spacing to suit
The larger "S" hooks are ysed to secure the side rail inner cover trim - profile like an "L" - again at random spacing, and it looks like you are least one short - 3 each side minimum.
Also, I'm not sure where you plan to put those sparkplug wire terminals....probably in the engine bay would be best

 

[BigBlock61]

My best advise is for you to post lots of detailed pictures on how you do it so when the time comes I'll know how lol.

Also I think either northerndave or propwash posted how they installed their headliner and was specific on how to do the sail panels. Hope this helps.

 

[Mr.SpeedFreak]

Hi Speedy,
The two x hooks just go over the rear bows.
The small clips simply crimp the edges of the headliner material over the edge of the roof steel - random spacing to suit
The larger "S" hooks are ysed to secure the side rail inner cover trim - profile like an "L" - again at random spacing, and it looks like you are least one short - 3 each side minimum.
Also, I'm not sure where you plan to put those sparkplug wire terminals....probably in the engine bay would be best

Thanks kiwi! By x hooks do you mean just the "zig-zagged" end of the listing wires?
And no problem with the side clips, I have another bag with the same clips for the passenger side.
And are you talking about the four pieces under the listing wires in that 2nd pic? I thought they were the clips that attach at each end of the short bows??

Someone else's pic from DC.com:



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My best advise is for you to post lots of detailed pictures on how you do it so when the time comes I'll know how lol.

Also I think either northerndave or propwash posted how they installed their headliner and was specific on how to do the sail panels. Hope this helps.

Lol will-do bigblock! And thanks for the heads up, hopefully they chime in or I can dig through Will's buildthread haha