Headliner install
Posted: 08 Jun 2018 12:28
Datsun 510
I can speak for other headliners as I only bought one. I purchased it from headliner mart on eBay and I found it to be of excellent quality. Properly designed and measured, and the material is a beautiful, plyable patterned vinyl. I accumulated a bunch of supplies before hand and put a great deal of thought into planning how I was going to execute the installation, watched plenty of videos, and searched many forums for info so I was well equipped with ideas about how I was going to do it, having selected the info I felt was correct. There are many adhesives one can choose from, but it’s important that it’s appropriate for headliner installation, will withstand heat, moisture, cold, and will last a lifetime. A good move is to call up a pro and ask them what product they recommend. They are to my knowledge, all one form of contact cement or another, an important point because it needs to be repositionable, which, if you have followed the directions properly, will do so, only locking into place and becoming permanent only after clamping and leaving for the cure period. There are also three forms of adhesive one can use. The first is a brush on, second is an aerosol can, and the third is a liquid sprayed on with a pneumatic spray gun. Most professional shops will use the latter as they do many of such installations one after the other and it saves them time and money, but for a guy doing one in his garage, that’s an unnecessary complication. I chose to use a combination of aerosol and brush on liquid as I wanted the flexibility to take my time with the installation. I chose a 3m adhesive as they make excellent products and will last a lifetime, put up with heat, humidity, and cold. The choice is up to you and it’s a contentious issue with people all throwing their opinions at you about how you did or didn’t use the correct adhesive, so I won’t be naming the product I used.
In my case, my car was missing one of the bows so I had to fabricate one out of 1/4” mild steel rod, which I took time with to ensure the curvature and angles were correct. It’s important to note that the bows are different depending on where the are in the car, front to back and are color coded with paint on the ends, so before you rip out the old ones, take note of which bows go where. If memory serves there are 5, but maybe it’s six. My missing one was not like the others so I curved it at my discretion and I believe I got it right. Once you have labeled each bow as to location, you can removed the old headliner, keep the bows aside for later and begin removing the old adhesive and cleaning everything up for the new installation. I had stripped my car to the bare shell and had the entire chassis chemically dipped, and pickled for rust prevention in Vancouver, removing everything that wasn’t metal, rust included, so stripping adhesive was a moot point for me.
Supplies needed:
*Headliner (obviously)
*Adhesive (your best educated choice)
*Pack of popsicle sticks (100 or so, from a craft store or dollar store)
*Bull dog clips (goes by many names, but they are a simple spring steel clamp used for holding together sheaves of paper, get 100 or so from an office supply store. I found that if you measure the thickness of the pinch weld around the doors with headliner material and a popsicle stick together and choose your clamp size based on the combined thickness of all three together, that will work the best).
*pack of acid brushes, or small disposable paint brushes
*heat gun, or at the very least a hair dryer (this will be used at the end to tighten up any minor wrinkles in the finished installation, and there will be some).
*The instructions included with your headliner will be quite helpful, as it will describe some important steps, most notably, where to snip the bow pockets on each side, (this will become clear shortly).
Procedure:
*Clean and prep and surfaces that will receive glue for bonding the headliner, (around door openings, front and rear windshields, A, B, and C pillars etc).
*install jute padding for sound insulation using heat resistant adhesive between where the bows will be on the inside roof of the car. You can mark a line from the bow installation holes on one side of the car to they other for reference. There should be at least 2-3 inches between jute pads to allow room for the bows as they either come close to the roof skin or touch the roof skin when installed, and padding will inhibit proper fitting of the bows. It’s not necessary to have the entire inside roof metal covered in jute, just long pads between the bows. Use a spray adhesive for this, spraying a coat on both the jute pad and the roof skin and allowing a set time as per the manufacturers instructions, before fitting pads. Unlike the headliner, once you press the jute pads into place, that’s where they will stay, and will not be repositionable.
Determine which end is the front and which end is the rear of your headliner and insert the appropriate color coded bows into the liner pockets. Follow the headliner instructions to determine where to snip the pockets to allow the bow to be free from suspending the liner and allow the liner to then stretch down to be glued around the window and door openings. You can use some discretion here based on what you think is best. But stick fairly close to the instructions. Generally they suggest 2-3” from the end of each pocket if memory serves. Before I snipped anything I inserted the bows and hung the headliner to check if their recommendation looked correct and used my judgment, making only small adjustment to their recommendation.
This step will highlight something to consider when installing. The bows are free to move around a bit between the jute pads you installed on the roof and when stretching the liner from front to back when you are preparing to glue it in, the bows may flop down from a vertical position and you don’t want that. There has to be enough room between the jute pads to swing each bow into a vertical position where it will stay, but not enough to allow the bow to flop down and out of position when installing, so examine this step before gluing any part of the headliner into place. Starting at either the front or the rear, swing the first bow into the vertical position, maybe gluing small squares of jute into place on either side of the bow between the large pads to hold the bow In place, this will become clear as you actually install. Continue with next bow, and the next until all are locked in place and the headliner is hanging from all the bows. It’s when you begin stretching that bows can fall from vertical and when you begin gluing this would become difficult to fix which is why I recommend securing each bow into place with little jute pads on either side on the center of the roof.
When you’ve got that all sorted and are confident that the bows will stay when you begin stretching and gluing, you can begin. Spray the back of the liner in a swath across the front windshield and rear window area and on the corresponding sheet pinch weld. Personally, I did only a foot at at time using a brush to get glue only where I wanted it. If you’re going to spray your adhesive on the inside metal I recommend masking off where you don’t want the glue to go and peeling it off immediately after spraying, waiting for the glue to set up, then stretching and placing the liner. I used a brush only on the sheet metal so I could work a foot at a time, I wanted to work slowly.
Keep in mind that you want the headliner to be glued fully into the pinch weld right to the edge, the excess will be trimmed when the vinyl is placed in position , pressed firmly into the crevice, and then start clamping. The vinyl must go right to the edge of the pinch weld before trimming. Some say wrap and glue the vinyl around the edge of the pinch weld to the other side but I think that’s a bad idea because the vinyl has a tough time making that 180 without pulling away due to its reluctance to turn that sharp a corner, not to mention that it would be much more difficult to install your windshield with weatherstripping over that increased thickness.
If you put enough thought into how/where you want to stetch and glue like I did, your likely to come to the same conclusions. I started the gluing front center/rear center, then left side center to right side center, stretch snug and pressing into place as I go, trimming and clamping, more clips and clamps are better than not enough and I put a popsicle stick under the clamps on the vinyl side to spread the clamping force between the gaps in the clamps. As I progressed I generally had about 1” between clamps, and on tighter curves, or areas of higher tension I had clamps touching each other, you can’t have too many clamps! It’s important to progress symmetrically, stretching evenly as you go, which is why I started center fore and aft, then center side to side, then divide those sections in half, and start at those centers, moving them to the opposite side, so you won’t end up with large ripples of gathered vinyl at any point which would be a major problem. I thought I had taken more pics of the process but I’m including the ones I have and I’ll try and annotate them here as well. When you’ve gotten everything stretched, glued, trimmed and clamped all the way around, go over every square inch and make sure you have an airtight bond, with no air bubbles, separation etc. if you find areas that aren’t bonded well, peel it back, apply a thin layer to both sides, let set up, then stretch back into position and clamp again. The vinyl is easy to stretch, forgiving, and if you have followed the glue manufacturers instruction well, you will be able to peel back, stretch, and reclamp easily. These glues are formulated with this in mind, and only become permanent after many hours or days of cure.
After you have completed all this, there will inevitably be some minor wrinkles in the finished product, don’t be concerned, I would leave them until you have reinstalled the pinch weld door stripping and let everything cure for a few days, then let the car sit in the hot sun for a day, you’ll likely find they will sort themselves out, or take a heat gun or hair dryer set to its highest setting and gently heat the vinyl in these areas with a sweeping motion from a distance until they relax and disappear, which if they are minor wrinkles, will disappear before your eyes.
Voila! Your done!
Just to reiterate some salient points, think about how your going to proceed, before proceeding.
Take your time, the pros will shoot glue around the whole car and the whole headliner and tackle it all at once, but this will be pretty intimidating for someone that’s never done it before as was the case for me. So I did mine a section at a time, with a brush and spray, applying, pressing, trimming and clamping, and it turned out perfectly, so don be afraid to take it slowly, the last thing you want as a DIY’r is to have to to take it to a pro after you’ve messed it up, because you got ahead of yourself. In the end, it wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be and I’m ecstatic with the result.
I can speak for other headliners as I only bought one. I purchased it from headliner mart on eBay and I found it to be of excellent quality. Properly designed and measured, and the material is a beautiful, plyable patterned vinyl. I accumulated a bunch of supplies before hand and put a great deal of thought into planning how I was going to execute the installation, watched plenty of videos, and searched many forums for info so I was well equipped with ideas about how I was going to do it, having selected the info I felt was correct. There are many adhesives one can choose from, but it’s important that it’s appropriate for headliner installation, will withstand heat, moisture, cold, and will last a lifetime. A good move is to call up a pro and ask them what product they recommend. They are to my knowledge, all one form of contact cement or another, an important point because it needs to be repositionable, which, if you have followed the directions properly, will do so, only locking into place and becoming permanent only after clamping and leaving for the cure period. There are also three forms of adhesive one can use. The first is a brush on, second is an aerosol can, and the third is a liquid sprayed on with a pneumatic spray gun. Most professional shops will use the latter as they do many of such installations one after the other and it saves them time and money, but for a guy doing one in his garage, that’s an unnecessary complication. I chose to use a combination of aerosol and brush on liquid as I wanted the flexibility to take my time with the installation. I chose a 3m adhesive as they make excellent products and will last a lifetime, put up with heat, humidity, and cold. The choice is up to you and it’s a contentious issue with people all throwing their opinions at you about how you did or didn’t use the correct adhesive, so I won’t be naming the product I used.
In my case, my car was missing one of the bows so I had to fabricate one out of 1/4” mild steel rod, which I took time with to ensure the curvature and angles were correct. It’s important to note that the bows are different depending on where the are in the car, front to back and are color coded with paint on the ends, so before you rip out the old ones, take note of which bows go where. If memory serves there are 5, but maybe it’s six. My missing one was not like the others so I curved it at my discretion and I believe I got it right. Once you have labeled each bow as to location, you can removed the old headliner, keep the bows aside for later and begin removing the old adhesive and cleaning everything up for the new installation. I had stripped my car to the bare shell and had the entire chassis chemically dipped, and pickled for rust prevention in Vancouver, removing everything that wasn’t metal, rust included, so stripping adhesive was a moot point for me.
Supplies needed:
*Headliner (obviously)
*Adhesive (your best educated choice)
*Pack of popsicle sticks (100 or so, from a craft store or dollar store)
*Bull dog clips (goes by many names, but they are a simple spring steel clamp used for holding together sheaves of paper, get 100 or so from an office supply store. I found that if you measure the thickness of the pinch weld around the doors with headliner material and a popsicle stick together and choose your clamp size based on the combined thickness of all three together, that will work the best).
*pack of acid brushes, or small disposable paint brushes
*heat gun, or at the very least a hair dryer (this will be used at the end to tighten up any minor wrinkles in the finished installation, and there will be some).
*The instructions included with your headliner will be quite helpful, as it will describe some important steps, most notably, where to snip the bow pockets on each side, (this will become clear shortly).
Procedure:
*Clean and prep and surfaces that will receive glue for bonding the headliner, (around door openings, front and rear windshields, A, B, and C pillars etc).
*install jute padding for sound insulation using heat resistant adhesive between where the bows will be on the inside roof of the car. You can mark a line from the bow installation holes on one side of the car to they other for reference. There should be at least 2-3 inches between jute pads to allow room for the bows as they either come close to the roof skin or touch the roof skin when installed, and padding will inhibit proper fitting of the bows. It’s not necessary to have the entire inside roof metal covered in jute, just long pads between the bows. Use a spray adhesive for this, spraying a coat on both the jute pad and the roof skin and allowing a set time as per the manufacturers instructions, before fitting pads. Unlike the headliner, once you press the jute pads into place, that’s where they will stay, and will not be repositionable.
Determine which end is the front and which end is the rear of your headliner and insert the appropriate color coded bows into the liner pockets. Follow the headliner instructions to determine where to snip the pockets to allow the bow to be free from suspending the liner and allow the liner to then stretch down to be glued around the window and door openings. You can use some discretion here based on what you think is best. But stick fairly close to the instructions. Generally they suggest 2-3” from the end of each pocket if memory serves. Before I snipped anything I inserted the bows and hung the headliner to check if their recommendation looked correct and used my judgment, making only small adjustment to their recommendation.
This step will highlight something to consider when installing. The bows are free to move around a bit between the jute pads you installed on the roof and when stretching the liner from front to back when you are preparing to glue it in, the bows may flop down from a vertical position and you don’t want that. There has to be enough room between the jute pads to swing each bow into a vertical position where it will stay, but not enough to allow the bow to flop down and out of position when installing, so examine this step before gluing any part of the headliner into place. Starting at either the front or the rear, swing the first bow into the vertical position, maybe gluing small squares of jute into place on either side of the bow between the large pads to hold the bow In place, this will become clear as you actually install. Continue with next bow, and the next until all are locked in place and the headliner is hanging from all the bows. It’s when you begin stretching that bows can fall from vertical and when you begin gluing this would become difficult to fix which is why I recommend securing each bow into place with little jute pads on either side on the center of the roof.
When you’ve got that all sorted and are confident that the bows will stay when you begin stretching and gluing, you can begin. Spray the back of the liner in a swath across the front windshield and rear window area and on the corresponding sheet pinch weld. Personally, I did only a foot at at time using a brush to get glue only where I wanted it. If you’re going to spray your adhesive on the inside metal I recommend masking off where you don’t want the glue to go and peeling it off immediately after spraying, waiting for the glue to set up, then stretching and placing the liner. I used a brush only on the sheet metal so I could work a foot at a time, I wanted to work slowly.
Keep in mind that you want the headliner to be glued fully into the pinch weld right to the edge, the excess will be trimmed when the vinyl is placed in position , pressed firmly into the crevice, and then start clamping. The vinyl must go right to the edge of the pinch weld before trimming. Some say wrap and glue the vinyl around the edge of the pinch weld to the other side but I think that’s a bad idea because the vinyl has a tough time making that 180 without pulling away due to its reluctance to turn that sharp a corner, not to mention that it would be much more difficult to install your windshield with weatherstripping over that increased thickness.
If you put enough thought into how/where you want to stetch and glue like I did, your likely to come to the same conclusions. I started the gluing front center/rear center, then left side center to right side center, stretch snug and pressing into place as I go, trimming and clamping, more clips and clamps are better than not enough and I put a popsicle stick under the clamps on the vinyl side to spread the clamping force between the gaps in the clamps. As I progressed I generally had about 1” between clamps, and on tighter curves, or areas of higher tension I had clamps touching each other, you can’t have too many clamps! It’s important to progress symmetrically, stretching evenly as you go, which is why I started center fore and aft, then center side to side, then divide those sections in half, and start at those centers, moving them to the opposite side, so you won’t end up with large ripples of gathered vinyl at any point which would be a major problem. I thought I had taken more pics of the process but I’m including the ones I have and I’ll try and annotate them here as well. When you’ve gotten everything stretched, glued, trimmed and clamped all the way around, go over every square inch and make sure you have an airtight bond, with no air bubbles, separation etc. if you find areas that aren’t bonded well, peel it back, apply a thin layer to both sides, let set up, then stretch back into position and clamp again. The vinyl is easy to stretch, forgiving, and if you have followed the glue manufacturers instruction well, you will be able to peel back, stretch, and reclamp easily. These glues are formulated with this in mind, and only become permanent after many hours or days of cure.
After you have completed all this, there will inevitably be some minor wrinkles in the finished product, don’t be concerned, I would leave them until you have reinstalled the pinch weld door stripping and let everything cure for a few days, then let the car sit in the hot sun for a day, you’ll likely find they will sort themselves out, or take a heat gun or hair dryer set to its highest setting and gently heat the vinyl in these areas with a sweeping motion from a distance until they relax and disappear, which if they are minor wrinkles, will disappear before your eyes.
Voila! Your done!
Just to reiterate some salient points, think about how your going to proceed, before proceeding.
Take your time, the pros will shoot glue around the whole car and the whole headliner and tackle it all at once, but this will be pretty intimidating for someone that’s never done it before as was the case for me. So I did mine a section at a time, with a brush and spray, applying, pressing, trimming and clamping, and it turned out perfectly, so don be afraid to take it slowly, the last thing you want as a DIY’r is to have to to take it to a pro after you’ve messed it up, because you got ahead of yourself. In the end, it wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be and I’m ecstatic with the result.