Making a Factory looking Fox Body Headliner
As promised this is a tutorial for Making your own Headliner. I just finished mine and I am pretty happy with the results.As stated in my previous post, I am not usually one to complain but when it comes to my hard earned money and a pretty basic product, I have a very low tolerance for what I consider to be a rip off! I checked several online Fox Body part's retailers and $200 for a non-factory headliner is a freaking JOKE! This product should be around $100 and even that is pushing it! It cost around $50 in supplies to make this headliner and I had enough left over to make another if needed. Which down the road I might do considering the circumstances.
This tutorial is for making a headliner for a T-top style Fox Body but I am pretty sure it can be applied to making a headliner for any Mustang/Capri. The trickiest part of this project was finding a material that matched the factory headliner vinyl. It may be easier to find the cloth to make a headliner for a standard roof car.
Things bought:
1) Shower/Tub Backing board $19.95
2) 2.5 yards Charcoal Vinyl $14
3) 3M Super 77 spray Glue $8
4) double sided duct tape $8
The original headliner board was what seemed like a piece of compressed card board, which received a lot of water damage over the years from the normal T-top leakage. This is the reason I chose something water proof for the new headliner backing material. I shopped for quite a while and found a product that was both water proof and flexible. The stuff I bought is a tub enclosure backing board I found at Home Depot. The .20" thickness was slightly thinner then the original board coming in at .225" but if this board was any thicker I don't believe it would have been flexible enough. Here is a picture of the label of the product you are looking for. It cost $19.95 for a 4' x 8' piece and this is the only size it came in at the store I was at. There is enough product here to make 2 headliners.
The second step of the build was to find a mid grade charcoal gray vinyl seat cover material to use to cover the backing board, seeing as I couldn't find a place that still sells the PVC style material that the car came factory with. I just took a small snip off my old headliner from under the interior plastic molding, that way I knew the color was not dirty from exposure to the elements. It took almost a week to locate a place that sold a similar vinyl to the original. I finally ended up going to the Garment District in down town Los Angeles to find a matcher. If your car has a color other then the dark charcoal, you are in luck and shouldn't have any problems finding a close match but I went through 20+ stores to find a dark charcoal vinyl! I guess it is not a popular color anymore. I am guessing you could also use leather instead of vinyl but it would have cost around $100+ just for the leather and that is if you could find a piece big enough to cover the entire headliner board.
After buying the materials to make your new headliner you will need to strip out your old headliner. Remember! You need to make your new headliner board by tracing your old headliner board! Be very carefully not to damage it too bad when pulling it out.
Some people might not need this next information but it may be something the T-Top car owners might want to consider while you have your headliner out.
The main reason for changing my headliner aside from the shrinkage issues around the dome lights and front window molding was, I had a metal on metal noise coming from the inside of my headliner while driving the car. The noise I discovered was a piece of riveted strip metal that had fallen off the rear interior T-top roof support and it was rattling around inside the headliner interior. The metal strip was providing support for the rear roof body panel and keeping the exterior body metal from collapsing behind the T-tops. The green circles in the picture shows where the strip was mounted inside. It went all the way across the roof line against the rear T-top support. You can see the small amount of rust where the thin metal strip was riveted.
To fix the metal strip problem I had a couple of choices. I could remove the entire T-top support cage by drilling out all the rivets, then re-rivet the support strip back in after cleaning the strip/interior area up and then re-rivet the cage back in. The problem with this was, it was gonna take a ton of extra work and there was also the chance that the cage doesn't go back in correctly or down the road the support strip just falls off again.To me it wasn't worth the risk. I instead left the cage in and when I was at Home Depot, I picked up a product called Qwik Steel. This product is basically a putty JB weld that works killer in areas you would like to weld but can't because of fire or heat damage risk. I have used it before on other projects and have been very pleased with the results. I broke out my trusty pen Dremel tool with a wire wheel style tip and cleaned all the rust from inside the cage. I then from the top pushed down on the roof panel and used silicone to seal the seam. I then used the Qwik Steel to create a weld where the strip use to be and then let it dry. After it dried I used a can of rust prohibiting primer to spray inside the T-top cage area.
(The next step is optional) After the primer dried, I took a roll of Peel and Seal I bought from the local Lowe's and used it to sound proof and kill the ring of the roof area behind the T-tops. You can use a better grade stuff if you have it but for what I was doing I wanted something cheaper and thinner then Dynamat. I used shears to cut it into small squares and installed it that way. Because of the cage layout it made it too tough to try to install in long strips.
Now that the roof is prepped we are ready to start making the headliner!You will need a large work area like a big dinning room table to do the next steps. You will need to trace your old headliner board onto your new headliner board. Keep in mind, alignment is extremely important here especially for the T-top cars. If alignment is off too much it will make it difficult to install in the car. Also do not trace the sun visor mount points on your headliner board yet! The location of the sun visors will need to be done after the new headliner is installed in the car. I put mine in first and found out the hard way they weren't exactly in the right place!
The next job is to cut out the board pattern. I found that a regular pair of scissors was not enough to cut the plastic sheet so I went to Home Depot and bought a set of industrial ones made for cutting heavy plastic and light metal. The new snips were around $14. I didn't include the price of the tools I bought in the price of the headliner because I figure a tool I don't have is an investment. With the new scissors it was actually fun to cut LOL!
The next part of this is a decision you will need to make as far as what type of glue you would like to use to mount the vinyl/cloth to your board. Here are the recommendations of the company that makes the board.
I tested a small section of vinyl and plastic with some 3M Super 77 spray glue I had used before for a another project I had done and it should work fine for a T-top car layout seeing as there isn't any real large sections of fabric that isn't being supported in some way by a panel, molding or dome light. If I was going to do this on a standard roof car though, I would choose a stronger glue. Remember to leave the unglued vinyl in the T-top glass area until the next step.
The next step is to apply the double sided duct tape in 1/2 strips to the headliner edges in the T-top glass area. I got my tape at Lowe's. This tape will secure the vinyl to the T-top frame work to make it easier to re-install the rubber strip that holds the headliner vinyl and covers the metal frame edges. It will also make a much smoother edge to look at under the strip. The picture below shows the taped areas after I cut the excess vinyl away from the T-top glass area. This step is very important!
The finished headliner
This is the headliner installed in the car. I still need to clean up the molding, it is dirty from saw dust and being kicked around my work bench for the last week or so.
Another angle. I decided at the last minute not to re-install the Sun Visors because I am not a big fan of sun visors in the first place and the factory ones are worn out and fly around when I jump on the gas. I just put a square of the new vinyl with double sided tape on where the visors would normally mount. I wish I had never cut out the holes for them.Just remember my message from above. DO NOT cut out the holes for the sun visors until after you have the new headliner installed in the car. They will not line up!
Be sure to post any questions you might have here or just send me a PM, I will help any way I can.
Thanx for reading,
Robert
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