can/has it been done?? home made headliner...

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I had my old one recovered by a friend that does interiors for $0. He used a modern foam backed black cloth that has tiny lines in it. I think it came out great as is a better insulator. I also insulated the roof with reflective foil sound deadener.

The second one I did myself (different car) using 3M headliner spray glue, and foam backed material off of EBAY. The only hard part was removing all the loose foam from the old cardboard and fixing the corners which had water damage. 6 years later it still looks fantastic. So don't be afraid to tackle this job. You can do it!
 
Without givin some serious redneckism a try?????????
Not in my world.....

There's a difference in my undercoating the inside of the roof and lady's day at the craft store!!!!!! ha.

No really it would be good for a lot of members with 72 uppers ( I won't call them beak cars as I have no problem with them) if you devise a method and materials for this. That type headliner has caused me to cuss, before they came up with the repop ones. One of the reason I don't like that model, plus the plasic A pillow trim. etc... I don't mind the beak nose!!!
 
The thing is is I'm not afraid to give it a try and also very not afraid to fail and post it all right here how things would not work. I'm not a fan of the dart sport beak-nose car, but I don't turn my nose up at them either.

There's a difference in my undercoating the inside of the roof and lady's day at the craft store!!!!!! ha.

No really it would be good for a lot of members with 72 uppers ( I won't call them beak cars as I have no problem with them) if you devise a method and materials for this. That type headliner has caused me to cuss, before they came up with the repop ones. One of the reason I don't like that model, plus the plasic A pillow trim. etc... I don't mind the beak nose!!!
 
I figure if I can get the framework of it symmetrical and stable the liner covering might hide the rest?
 
I have my green plastic to use for mocking up the liner and we'll pull out the actual black that I'll be using once I get things sorted.
 
Okay I got all the pieces cut and semi test fit in but the real test will be when I tape this all together and see if it origamis out correctly? Only time will tell. Keep that number handy for the ABS one people because this is just a college try nothing more.
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I used a flap sander to massage a couple long edges just to tighten things up. I'm sure this would have came together easier if my template wasn't CRAP ! but I would have had a much harder time with it had the car not been gutted.
I was able to tuck the back in the rear seal, but since I don't have the front windshield or seal I was starting to have a ruff go. I did leave it with a good fealing. I want to give it more tape (reinforcement).
A couple things at this point - $14 for 4×8 wood and $6 for tape. Also I used the metal cutting blade that was already on the jigsaw as it seemed to work very well on the thin wood.
If this next test fit goes good I'll attach the 4 piece with something better than tape and glue on a headliner material. Witch also should further reinforce?
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Okay I believe I did the right thing here by letting it go before I force things too much yesterday. So as I brought it in here to give another stronger tape jobs I noticed that I may have been overzealous and tape the seams too far towards the tail end. I got some old chunks out and in fact I don't think they were attached but to the intersection. so I recut that piece of tape and retapped it off to the intersection, the three way in the back. This is probably why it wasn't folding in there easy enough for me so hopefully this will go good because I got a good feeling so far from that first fit. Hopefully in the end if this works next person won't have to go through all this duct taping and test fitting and just be able to get to the true attaching the pieces together and put the liner on it and sticking it in there. Again having the front windshield out being able to slip this in and out easily is made this tremendously easier. Again if this works the next person shouldn't have to do nothing but put it in with only a test fit or two.
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I move those relief Cuts back to where they should be which should make this thing stop fighting me so hard. It was trying to make the side flaps kind of Warp. I taped it really really good on the back side, but I just put very little tape on the finished side because I want to leave as much surface room of wood for gluing on a material if such a time comes.
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opps doubled the first pic....
 
Here it is all trimmed in with the old green plastic. Well the next step looks like the down to Jo-Ann Fabrics get some headliner material and some glue and get busy. I have some little relief Cuts in the corners and little trimming up front but nothing to be concerned about whatsoever. Okay now should I razor blade this all apart, lay out on thin paper so I can fold it all up into an envelope and send it to people? LOL
Of course some of the pictures make it look a little distorted, but it's not. it's pretty uniformed and actually by eye I can't see where it looks out of shape whatsoever.
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I think it's the way the tape goes off in different directions that makes it look cockeyed in the pictures. Or the Angles? And it really does look pretty respectable in person.
 
Looking good ! is it the college way or the redneck way. either way, it's your way and I will enjoy the winter transformation of the Scrapper.
 
Of course all the duct tape that is seen while it's up there will be gone and just the stuff on the back side left. Then again I would have never even started with the duct tape a little late but on the backside probably wouldn't hurt. I'm going to maybe some kind of like leather strap kind of hinge to the back side of the two sides of each of the runs. Just a couple pieces at the ends and a couple pieces in the middle to keep it from getting away from itself to much if the tape gives way under any kind of heat stress. I definitely plan to put some kind of insulation and some soft cloth material on the face side.
 
So again it's one of those projects were just getting easier and easier and I'm thinking why was I worried about this not working. I think I'm having an automatic transmission flashback here. But actually that automatic transmission was easier it was just replacing parts. This lets a little bit of my craftsmanship abilities to be released. I mean with the transmission again it's just replacing Parts this is a lot of fitting and tolerances and stuff like that. Anyways I'll post another picture here without the duct tape on the face side because I'm sure there's a lot of people out there that only can see the duct tape and not see the true beauty. Like in the duct tape was never anything but idevice to temporarily fit. Actually once it was up there all night long and I loosened up the screws and all the tape and hung there in shape nicely just by the seat belt bolts.
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This is turning out awesome! I really did not think a hardboard product would take the right shape. Guess I over estimated the bends/form of the original, cause that looks like it fits great. I figured if I ever wanted better than my repaired one, I would be buying plastic. But, maybe not... What thickness plywood are you using?
 
I went to a place here locally called mr. Plywood they sell 1/8 inch ply, just I believe one thin slice. I tried to Home Depot and only thing they had was this quarter inch and it was still too thick. The two things that would have made this a thousand times easier would have been first the voodoo thoughts in my head just like the automatic transmission. Oh it's some big thing that can't be done except for a big professional. First thing stop those stupid thoughts. This isn't no Stamped Out piece of junk like you'll get stock, this is like something they would do at the Rolls-Royce plant and handcrafted with a Craftsman. Second I would have definitely benefited from a good template and not trying to flip one side to the other side trying to make pieces match and then having to carve out some of the corners that weren't even there. Also again not having to mess with all this stuff tape in the first place but going right to the hinges that I'm now figuring out exactly how I want to do it. Actually I do have a way I'm taking my Harbor Freight rivets and going down and getting some small washers so I can put one on each side of the rivet to spread the load and rivet on some straps of leather acrossed several spots along those hinge lines. I just bought my material and glue and that was another $60 so now I'm into this a total of $80. I'll probably be another five or ten dollars into washers or something like that. My $60 was probably almost twice what you'd spend if you just bought that regular modern headliner material but I have a taste for the Exotic and this particular bild is calling for something of an older kind of restoration.

This is turning out awesome! I really did not think a hardboard product would take the right shape. Guess I over estimated the bends/form of the original, cause that looks like it fits great. I figured if I ever wanted better than my repaired one, I would be buying plastic. But, maybe not... What thickness plywood are you using?
 
Okay maybe I was a little full of myself comparing myself to the Rolls Royce Factory but I'm pretty stoked I got to say that.
 
Also me personally I did not use the door card material. They had that but I wasn't feeling the the thickness of it was correct. Also it only came in like a three-foot with. But if you do buy that buy it at the plywood store they had it at the fabric store but it was considerably more.
 
Okay the 73 duster card board headliner Boogeyman has been broken. The biggest problem was my template . And also the way I cut things out. It should have been a lot more matching as if they were cut out of one piece. But my material size was 5 foot by four and a half foot so this would not fit on a 4 by 8 sheet all in one piece. Know if someone took the same piece of wood and was able to have like a 5 by 5 foot piece of wood I'm sure if they wanted to get real precise they can make inside relief cuts (with a router) also put hinges on the backside of it and it would come out extremely slick . But as it is the separate pieces it's better in separate pieces for how rigid the wood material is. If my actual glue on reveal material was like a thin vinyl (to reproduce the original cardboards textured vinyl look) or even that modern stuff (1/8 inch foam with material) I'd go spend another 14 bucks and just get another 4x8 sheet and just take more time, but again I believe my material choice should be very forgiving. One could just rattle can some black wrinkle paint or even do some Plasti Dip and be able to change the color? And probably not be into this more than $40. I'm not getting a hokey cheesy feeling, but I'm NOT driving down the road three years later telling people how easy it was. THIS STILL NEEDS TESTING
 
Wife donated a leather belt to make into hinges. I cut it into 3 inch pieces and drilled two staggered holes at each end. Got one halfway done and rivet gun broke. Harbor Freight junk! Well back to harbor freight in the morning....lol
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I put 4 straps on each side and three on the back and even this seems Overkill. I'll post a couple pictures when it's in and finally finished.
 
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