My headliner has started dropping in my 97 z28, how hard is it to repair yourself?

 

I don't know if you can repair them, especially ay home. MAYBE an upholstery shop could do it, because I think it would need a special glue, one that won't soak through the material. The one in my '96 started falling apart back around '10.

I first bought on of the replacement headliners that was plastic, rather than the cardboard, the OE liners are. I had two problems...first, even though the vendors call them "pop-in replacements", I couldn't get the plastic liner to stay against the roof. It was too heavy. I used the 3M trim tape all over the backside of it, and it wouldn't stay in place. Then, the upholstery started coming off the plastic......

I called the place I bought it from, and they immediately sent out another one, and from that standpoint, it's been OK for the last 4 years. However, I still had issues keeping it in place. I finally gave up, and drilled several holes through the headliner and carefully into the support braces of the roof, and popped in several interior colored "push-in retainers".

 

I had mine recovered by a shop, he did a nice job but had a hard time. If you want to do it Jo-Anne fabrics has bulk headliner material. Here's a link to my post on how to remove the liner from the car without damaging it. https://ls1tech.com/forums/pontiac-f...l#post15317334
Good Luck

 

^ do this. Other than the removal it will be a bit of a PITA to brush/scrape off the old foam crap before you can install the new one.

 

If you have a good upholstery shop around it shouldn't cost you much. I think it was $130 out the door for having my headliner redone and the visors.

This was with the roll bar in the car so it was even worse for the guy working on it.

I'm not very crafty so I feel like that is something better left to someone who does interior work, at least in my case.

 

It'll probably be better and easier if you replaced it outright.

You don't mention if you have T-tops but there's some offerings on ebay and over at classicindustries.com.

 

I think it was about $250 to replace the headliner in my 1991 Cadillac Brougham, and that car had a huge factory sunroof which made it a lot harder.

I wish I had spent the extra $75 that shop was going to charge me and did the thing in ultra-suede. I'd do that if you are going to bother replacing it.

 

What he said. A1 Apholstry was always around 100 all said n done. ..for that price why in the world would you wanna mess wit it

 

I had a small shop redo mine, and they only charged me $70. They matched the color and used the same padded fabric as stock and it came out pretty good. It's been up there for about 3 years now and no sign of drooping. Look around locally, see what you can find.

 

I did mine myself...went to fabric store to find something similar to OEM, took headliner out and ripped off the OEM stuff and glued new stuff one.

The store also has a specific headliner glue. I also added large body panel push clips as well in strategic places to make sure if the glue fails, that the clips would still hold it up.

The OEM material is a thin fabric with a foam style backing glued to a fiber molded pieces. It's similar to ply-wood how there are flacks of wood compressed flat. Instead of wood flakes, it is fiber strips.

 

Yeah, I was tring to push mine between the cage hoop and the roof when the 18 year old backing gave up.

 

Thanks guys for the info. I will look around for some local upholstery shops. Just curious, but how terrible does those headliner tacks look.

 

That backing gets really dry and adhesive won't keep the fabric glued down.
I bought this one and it fits really well:

http://www.hawksthirdgenparts.com/93...rs-accessories

Because of the plastic backing it'll out last me more than likely.

 

Not all that bad, as I found "push pins" that are the same color as the headliner, and I also made sure to measure carefully, and space them to look like GM intended them to be there. My GMC 4x4 (winter beast) uses them to retain the headliner, and that's where I got the idea from.


That's similar to the one I bought, except I don't have a t-top car. How's yours at staying tight against the roof? As I explained above, mine wouldn't....

 

They sell them for hardtop cars as well. I haven't had any trouble with it dropping and mine's a hardtop. The plastic backing is stiff enough where it stays put. You could try heavy duty velcro.