I thought some of you might want to see a posting on how I made-out replacing the headliner upholstery in my ’82 Monte myself – here’s the run-down:

I purchased headliner material from a local fabric and foam store in Rochester, NY “The Foam Factory” (previously “Howard’s Fabrics and Foam” still operated by the Howard Family that have been in the fabric business in Rochester for many years). It was manufactured by a Glen Raven Mills in Glen Raven, NC (http://www.glenraven.com/automotive/index.shtml ).

By my rough measurement the headliner requires a piece of material about 48 inches by 60 inches. I got enough to do 2 cars, I think they ordered 3 1/3 yards of the 54-inch wide material for me – it was not cheap! I think the total with tax was about $80 for the 3 1/3 yards.

The plan was to do the headliner I had already removed from the one ’82 that was sagging badly and “practice” on that one – I could then put it in the not-so-good car and use the backer from the second car to do a better job on the one I wanted to keep.

Removing the headliner is a pain since you have to pull-off all the molded plastic trim around the side windows and the pieces that support it at the front and rear above the windshield and rear window. You actually do not need to pull all the molded trim from around the rear quarter windows. The stuff around the doors unscrews pretty easily and once you have it off you can unscrew the rear quarter window trim at the door edge and drop it down far enough to allow you to drop the headliner. The tough parts are the pieces above the windshield and rear window because you can’t see how to disengage the plastic clips that hold it up: Once you apply a little muscle to the trim pieces in an attempt to “loosen” them the clips break! I think you may actually be able to remove the piece in front by sliding it to one side or the other – when I put it back in I was able to re-attach it to the clips this way, although they are now loose since I damaged them trying to pry things off. The clips on the rear all broke on me and it is still dangling loose – I think there is a local automotive fastener place that will carry these clips but haven’t checked yet. I believe that I will need to replace the fasteners at the rear one way or another or else the material will go bad on me back there due to lack of support and eventually take the whole thing down with it again…

Once you remove the molded trim around the doors you can see the clips that hold the headliner up there – they are easy to figure-out as is the interlocking arrangement of side trim, windshield side trim and over-the-windshield strip. I wish I had taken a few digital pictures as I took the thing out – fortunately, I had another car to look at several months later when I finished the job!

You need to remove the sun visors, coat-hooks, and dome lamp before dropping the headliner. The dome lamp is attached with 2 push-nuts that are a little tough to work-off the studs – take your time to avoid damaging the dome lamp housing! Also pull the courtesy lamps fuse to avoid shorting the contacts since you will need the doors open when you drop the headliner! The connectors for the dome lamp bulb are snapped-in to the housing, you can release the snap-tabs on the contacts with a small screwdriver to allow you to completely remove the dome lamp.

The headliner backeron my car was already all broken around the coat-hook mounting holes and the sun visors so there was a lot of snapping and crackling of material when I started to lower it. The molded trim pieces around the rear quarter windows will sag a little when you unscrew them and keep the headliner from just falling-out. Before you get it all the way out you can peek-in on the drivers side and see that the wires for the dome lamp and/or rear de-fogger are attached to the top-side of the headliner with wide masking tape – you will need to break that lose gently before removing the headliner from the car.

You need to be careful maneuvering the headliner around the rear quarter window trim pieces to remove it but I found there was just enough room to work it down and out – it will drop right down on top of the seats!

Now you can gently maneuver it around and out through one door with the seat back down on that side – viola, the first part of the 3 part process is complete!

The next challenge was to get all the old foam off the original backer. The fabric will tear loose from the foam but the foam doesn’t want to let go of the backer! Make sure you keep everything clean and have lots of flat surface to work on – I used a 4-by-6 foot piece of 5/8 plywood on a couple sawhorses and it worked nicely…

I found a really slick way to remove the foam from the backer: I used a dull 24-tooth 12-inch hacksaw blade to “saw” the foam away from the backer a section at a time! (There may be some chemical that will dissolve the foam without hurting the backer - I tried a little lacquer thinner and it softened the backer too much to suit me, so I removed all the foam mechanically after peeling-off the fabric). The hacksaw blade is flexible enough to keep it parallel to the backer as I sawed-through the foam and then I used it as a scraper to clean-up all the bits of foam still sticking to the backer. You have to be very careful around the edges and corners where the backer was cracked and broken during factory installation and it does take some time to get most of the foam off the backer. If my repair fails it will likely be because of my inability to get the backer super-clean for bonding the adhesive – I think this is almost impossible to do without a solvent so I have my fingers crossed! The last nasty parts of foam I removed with some 140-grit sandpaper – just rubbing this lightly over the surface seemed to get rid of everything that was loose…

The only real screw-up I had was that I did not cut the material carefully enough and ended up with a corner under one visor that is a little “short”. The old fabric was so nasty that I did not want to contaminate my new stuff by using it as a pattern and, working by myself, it was hard to line-up everything just right to cut it. I left the full 2-3 inches on each side that was the difference between the 54-inch fabric and the width of the backer, but the material moved on me as I was cutting it to length! If I did it over I would use some of those big “butterfly” paper clips to hold it where I wanted on one end while I lined-up and cut the other…

The foam store sold me a spray adhesive (don’t recall the name but I kept the empty can if anybody wants to know!) for the job that they thought would do 2 cars. It was really barely enough for one since you need to apply it to both the foam side of the new material and the backer and you want to get real good coverage to assure a complete bond. It is hard to spray-on the adhesive without getting any on the fabric-side of the new material. What I did was first line-up the new material to the backer, then fold it back diagonally from one corner so that a minimum amount of fabric was exposed. Then I sprayed the backer and the exposed (mating) side of the foam down to the fold line. After the specified drying time I flipped the foam side of the fabric over, aligned it to the backer, and flipped the clean foam side of the fabric up, exposing the unglued side of the backer. In this process I missed a few spots around the edges but I was able to get them after I had the bulk of the fabric was aligned and stuck in place – after all the spots on the edges were glued in place I used a new paint roller to roll and press the material down uniformly all over and left it to dry for awhile. I then folded-over all the excess material (especially on the sides) and glued it to the top-side of the backer.

Before attempting to put the repaired headliner back in I cut-out and poked holes for the dome-light, coat-hooks and sun-visors using the cut-outs in the backer for guidance. I duct-taped the wires for dome lamp and rear de-fogger to the top of the roof and, reversing the removal process, I was able to get everything back up in place without too much hassle. The retainers over the doors were real helpful for holding things up while I aligned it and once the dome lamp assembly is back in place it is pretty much secured.

It was tricky fishing for the screw-holes to attach the sun-visors and I have not found the “right spots” for the coat-hook attachment screws yet but, aside from that and the problems I mentioned with the funky front-and-rear trim strip fasteners, everything went back in pretty good and I’ve gotta say it looks BEAUTIFUL!

I can now see that the headliner on the other car was repaired too and that the person who did it did not have such good luck with attaching the material as I did – my “secret weapon” was the paint roller which did a real nice uniform job of bonding the adhesive! The Monte Carlo sun visors are inferior compared to the ones used on older GM cars – both of mine were broken and I replaced them with a set from a ’74 Cutlass that fit perfectly, the color is wrong but I will dye them with some spray-on fabric dye and I’m sure they will look fine.