Headliner Information

Headliner Information

Anyone have any experience replacing the headliner on a 98-02? My 2000 Prizm has a dealer installed sunroof and whoever installed it was a real hack. They did fine getting it in there, and the outside is great, but it leaks into the headliner, which they pulled way too tight to begin with. Now the headliner is sitting on my head when I drive. I called a local shop here and they said it would be a few hundred to replace. Does that sound right? I'm thinking of having it done in synthetic leather, either black or real dark gray. I might also relocate the sunroof switch in the process and move it off the roof, cause right now the switch is broke, and I don't like that I have to mess with the fabric if it goes out again after i get the roof done.

The headlines is held up by the dome light, rear view mirror, visors, oh shit handles and plastic trim planels that is around it. Once you remove that stuff the headliner would fall down. Then you can pull the fabric off the molded foam skeleton and replace it with whatever upholstery fabric you want within reason. When I say that I mean you might want something with some stretch in it and not too thick so it can conform to the depressions for the sun visors and at the same time not be too heavy so that it'll sag over time if the adhesive fails. Also this is the adhesive you want to use; http://www.repaintsupply.com/pd_general.cfm 3M 08088, it's harder to find but I usually get it from OSH or a automotive paint supply store. I've tried other crap like 3M Super77 and it dosent work, it just fails over time due to the heat and humidity in a car.

That doesn't really sound too bad, I'm just worried about the sunroof. Its not the same roof that they had at the factory, its a dealer installed Vermuenden Hollandia sunroof. and after seeing the wiring they did and the headliner falling down, I'm a little worried what I'll find when I pull it down. The headliner fabric is tucked under the sunroof trim too, so I'll have to figure out how that comes down

Might want to take some silicone caucking and seal around the edges a little better.

I bought the car new from Paddock Chevrolet in May of 2000 in Buffalo, NY, they had the sunroof put in. I love the sunroof, but it doesn't have a sunshade, which sucks. These cars are like greenhouses, and I'm not all that impressed with the AC. so it gets warm fast. I helped it out quite a bit by making my own sunshade. I cut a chunk of cardboard that fits in it perfectly, then covered it in fabric to match the headliner, even put a little sunshade handle in it, we make them where I work. Helps on a long highway drive when you don't want the sun on your face the whole way.

Well, now I have water coming in somewhere and its soaking the headliner, and sagging it pretty bad, so this weekend the headliner is coming down. I'll post a pic of what it looks like up there. I'd love to find a way to put a sunshade on my sunroof while I have the headliner off

Even tinted doesn't keep the heat out as well as just having a sunshade. Mine is matrix glass, so it can't be tinted on the inside, but I used some static cling tint on the outside before, and it stayed on really well for about a year, but even that wasn't as nice as just having a sunshade.

Well, I pulled the headliner out on Saturday. Only took about an hour to do. Most of the trim panels just pull off, just have to unscrew the holy hell handles, the visors/clips, rear view mirror, and unbolt the top of the seatbelts temporarily. What I found was about as bad as I expected, plus a few surprises. If you check out the pics below, you can tell that my problems all started when they cut out a giant hole in the headliner board for a little sunroof, so quite a bit of fabric had nothing to hold on to. Then they cut the roof support completely out of the car to install the sunroof. Since the domelight screws to the roof support, they laid an 18" chunk of the roof support on top of the headliner for the dome light to screw to. So instead of helping hold the headliner up, the roof support was laying on top of it pushing down. To fix it I need to find a prizm/corolla w/o a sunroof at the junkyard and let the upholstery guy cut it out properly. then the roof support will be stuck to the roof w/ epoxy for the dome light. Also, you can see in the pics, I have moved the switch for the sunroof to the center console. Overall an interesting project. Here's the pics, there are 7 in all.

That's a lot of rust. You should coat that with rust protector or clear coat.

most of what appears to be rust is actually the foam backing from the headliner fabric. The only part that has any real rust is the part that was directly above the roof support when the car got painted, and that I do plan to touch up