2/3/06
Headliner Repair

I know some of you are dying to see something Ferrari related or at least an automotive repair instead of my trip to Australia, so I’ll show you how I made a repair to my headliner on the Falcon. Sorry it’s not a Ferrari, but it’ll have to do!

The rear headliner to the Falcon wagon was beginning to drop, so I decided to fix it before it got any worse. The only tool I had was a Leatherman Wave Multitool (highly recommended), but was sure I could fix the problem. My daughter assisted, and can be seen here eyeing all the screws and fasteners, trying to figure out a way to hide them from her Dad.

Drooping headliners are a common problem and you see it quite often on cars older than 10 years. The problem is the glue and foam disintegrates from heat and moisture, causing the cloth to fall and hang down.

As I peeled back the cloth that was still secure I found a lot of crumbling foam and old glue. The right way to do this repair would be to sand off all the old glue and foam, and glue on a new piece of headliner material with a thin layer of foam, but since I was in a caravan park in Meingie, South Australia, a shade tree repair was needed.

I scraped and rubbed off all the loose foam and glue from the panel, and cleaned the headliner cloth as best as I could. I folded over the headliner to only do one side as I wanted to leave the other side alone in case my repair looked horrible.

After spraying the panel with adhesive, I let both surfaces dry and stuck the old headliner to the board. The headliner no longer has the soft foam backing, but is now stuck firmly to the panel. As I tried to get the material to lay back where it once was, I discovered why the headline failed. The fabric shrunk in the indented area of the roof panel pulling it away from the panel. Once a section pulled away from the roof panel, the rest of it followed. You can just make out the section at the top of this picture that is not stuck to the panel because there is not enough material. With new glue, this section should hold long fine.

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