Headliner repair

[PETE385]

Just did mine.. $84.00 ....I removed head liner and put it back in.. Ray's upholstery shop glued new material....

[turbodude]

Has anyone reused the headliner fabric? If someone mentioned this I missed in the 11 pages of posts I just got done reading . The fabric in my sagging headliner is in good shape, so I want to reuse it. Can one buy the foam padding separately and glue both down? It could be more trouble than it's worth....

I recently purchased a 98 5-Speed M-Sport and have been sorting it out over the last couple of weeks. I've been coveting a ti for a couple of years after owning e28s for about 7 years (also have had a 76 2002 & a 2000 540iT).

[Mopho]

Might be a little tricky using the old material. For one thing, it is not as forgiving as a new material will be. Remember, it's 13 years old ! I remember repairing a cloth seat one time, got it all back together, and then it split because the material was old.
Someone here will have an answer... Good luck, and I want to see how you do it. Mine is fine too, just sagging in the corners...

[roadrash]

Reusing the fabric seems like a lot of extra work. You'd have to affix the fabric to the foam... and then the foam to the headliner, so you're doing twice the amount of gluing, which means that there's twice as much opportunity to screw it up. ;-)

[familytruckster]

Can't reuse the old material, it's gonna be stretched and will not fit correctly.


I pulled mine out and had the local place redo the headliner, pillar covers, and sunroof switch panel. Was 160 bucks....With me doing the removal and install. Little pricey, but it's done.

[roadrash]

So... SIX YEARS after the initial inquiry... I purchased headliner cloth yesterday. LOL I won't start the process until I deal with some hail damage repair, and the timeline for that will depend upon my "job situation," which is a bit up in the air at the moment. So, still kind of "on hold" with the headliner.

[DDubbs]

I just repaired mine thanks to this thread. Bought 3 yards of poly suede on blowout at JoAnn fabric for $21 and a $10 can of spray adhesive. Take my advice and buy two cans, I barely made it with a little help from some cheaper stuff on hand. I recommend two people to help wrangle the fabric so you can work it into the corners and have it come out taut.

I recommend taking the sunroof panel and a handle into the store and see what they look like next to the fabric you're picking. I bought the beigey weave of the stuff recommended by Hghway1. Great material but it looked terrible with the upholstery. Don't trust your memory when working with color, get the two right next to each other. Makes a big difference.

The advice on how to remove the sunroof panel seems to work. I haven't done mine yet but I was able to get the fabric panel loose from the carrier above and see the 17mm nuts that hold it on using his instructions. Couldn't find the torx in the front so I let it go and concentrated on the rest of the panel.

In other news, got my A/C working thanks to another thread on this forum. Replaced the condenser and drier and paid a shop to recharge. Blows ice cold for the first time in four years. BMW mechanic sold me the car in the winter, I never knew it didn't work.

Happy trails to all.

[Beyondcr]

I just bought a roll of fiber glass, I am going to attempt to lay the fiberglass and paint it matte black. If it dose not work out I will just get another base board and put fabric. I kinda like the look without the headliner and base board just wish I had a place for the dome light, tie-wrapping it on the sunroof track tube dose the job for now =)

[roadrash]

You're not going to believe this, but... I'm about to head outside to remove the headliner. Or at least try. LOL Wish me luck!

[roadrash]

That wasn't too bad... only took about 1:45, and that includes taking notes and pix for a future write-up. :-)

Now I have to figure out what I want to do about the sunroof. Hmmm.

[Mopho]

Fun fun, funnnn. Now the hard part. Putting it back in.
I'm glad all the stuff like the headliner is holding mine up. That way I can procrastinate indefinately......................

[roadrash]

Originally Posted by Mopho

Fun fun, funnnn. Now the hard part. Putting it back in.

Yeah, I'm not really looking forward to that. At least when I put it back in, it won't be literally crumbling in my hands and raining sticky foam bits into my face.

[roadrash]

For those of you who recovered your headliner... how did you handle the section in the front center where the sunroof motor panel is? I don't think it's possible to remove that metal frame without bending it. Did you cover just up to the edge and then count on the sunroof motor panel to hide it... or did you wrap the liner material around the metal?

I'm leaning towards wrapping it around first, since the only thing that has to fit into the hole is the light assembly. I figure I could always remove the excess later if it were in the way, but more material can't be added later. ;-)

[roadrash]

OK... another question.

I had to replace my sunroof panel with a used one in order to save money. It'd have been much more expensive to repair the few dents in the panel than to just put a different one on. The problem is that while the exterior colors match... the replacement panel is from a car with a gray interior. So, the vinyl liner of the sunroof panel is gray where the original is black. I know this is a minor issue, but it'll drive me insane to see that slice of gray every time I pop-up the sunroof.

So... any thoughts on how to paint, re-cover, or otherwise recolor that vinyl bit that's glued under the sunroof panel?

[John_in_VA]

Originally Posted by roadrash

So... any thoughts on how to paint, re-cover, or otherwise recolor that vinyl bit that's glued under the sunroof panel?

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