Installing headliner

Ive sanded the inside of the roof top to a nice smooth surface. The inside was covered with glue and pieces of foam from the old dried out headliner. Its time to replace this with a nice foam backed & perforated vinyl headliner.

The original color was off white, a little greyish. The material was perforated in a straight pattern and had a thin 2mm foam back. in the middle the two pieces were heat seamed together. If you can still find factory headliner, I doubt if it looks good, this material does not like age and long storage (un removable wrinkles). And not to mention the price (1200+ dollar) for the short version.

Unfortunately aftermarket vinyl does not offer the straight perforation, only in a diagonal pattern, but the good part is that the better quality vinyl is available in a 4mm foam back and with marine quality, that means it wont attract fungus. There are several options available for replacing your factory headliner: Sourcing from an online marine/classic car supplier or buy it from a Landcruiser specialist like SOR, CCOT or Cruisercorps. CCOT only has a short size, SOR short and long and are more expensive, Cruisercorps only sells the short, but were so nice to offer me a custom sized piece of 102 inch. (+17 inches longer that a SWB) for the same price!!!! Great service and product at Cruisercorps.com !

Installing was not so easy as it looks:
First cover the gutter with masking tape to prevent spraying on parts that you don’t want to glue. Then lay out and position the headliner and fix one half with tape. Make sure the sowed and pre shaped corners are in the right position. Then fold back the other half of the headliner and evenly spray both rooftop and headliner. You have to glue it with special 3M contact glue in a spray can. 3M is said to be the best option.

Let it dry for max 5 minutes, then start softly rubbing the headliner from the middle, towards the front. Make sure you dont create wrinkles, then do the same for the other side.

If everything is glued, fold the excess material firmly in the gutter and cut it with a very sharp knife/razor blade as far as possible in the corner. If you’ve come this far, you can wipe the sweat of your forehead. 🙂

Next time I will show you how it looks installed with the factory (yellow zinc) hardware used.