Removing hard headliner 75 duster.

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Ol'forest

Ol'forest

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Hi all, got delaminating headliner in my 75 duster, wondering how hard are they to remove? What holds them up? I assume they don't have bows like the vinyl headliners, my 74 and 75 dusters are the first post 60's cars I've had, so finding the change in technology interesting to say the least.
 
The hard headliners are just held up by the trim pieces and the dome light, sun visors, rear view mirror, etc... Other than that they are just there. No bows, glue or anything. Just remove a bunch of screws and it will come right out. The problem is that the old liners become very brittle with age and will crack and fall apart very easily. I just took one out of my 74 dart sport and the thing was in about two dozen pieces by the time I got it out. I already had a new one to replace it with so it didn't matter but if you are planning on keeping the old one you'll need to be super-duper careful with it.
 
Hmmm good to know, I was planning to reglue the delaminated stuff, maybe I should try and do it in place.
 
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You could give that a try. They do make repros in case you screw it up. The new ones are made out of plastic so they don't fall apart as easily. They are not exactly cheap though so if you can save your original one it would be better.
 
I just finished installing a plastic repro roof. They are nice, but they do need some tweaking and trimming. Reuse the original if possible. I wish I had.

Cley
 
I had problems with getting my new one to fit also. Didn't have much choice though. It had to be done.
 
Who did you get the headliner from? The one in my 1976 Duster, someone had tried to repair and it doesn't look that good.
 
I repaired mine and covered it. See my build thread link below. Top of page 6 I took it out. Then jump to post 157 to check out the repairs.

downloadfile.jpg
 
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When you run the dome light screws back in. Use the correct ones.
Don't make the mistake of being in a hurry and grabbing ones that are too long.
It will put holes in the roof and your new paint.
Ask me how I know.
 
My original solution was to buy a used cardboard headliner and refinish it. I did this by covering it with Vinyl material after repairing the damaged sections.. It looked great, but when I went to install it, I found out it was for a Swinger and not a Duster. If I had the correct cardboard to begin with, I feel that would have been the best solution for me.

Cley
 
JGC403 said:
Who did you get the headliner from? The one in my 1976 Duster, someone had tried to repair and it doesn't look that good.
Click to expand...

I got it from year one. It's a plastic liner with a cloth cover. They sell them without the cover also. They have to be trimmed to fit properly and the holes for the sun visors were an inch too far inward from where they should have been. It was a pain in the butt to get it installed properly but it looks good now that it's finished.

I really wish I could have used an original one but my car has a sunroof so it wasn't going to happen.
 
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