Friday, May 1, 2009

Headliner removal

Today I only had a few minutes to work on the car so I removed the headliner.

It was falling and smelled pretty bad (notice a theme here? the inside of this car stinks).

I had my first problem with the car: each of the sun visors had a rusted bolt that wouldn't come off. After spraying WD-40 and trying a couple of things I had to give up. I had no problem getting the rest of the trim off.

I first pulled the vinyl down completely. That made a nice mess. I then looked at the cardboard liner and it had a bunch of stains on it. I poked it with a screwdriver and it started flaking. So, the cardboard was shot.

I cut around the sun visors and pulled the rest down. The insulation between the roof and the cardboard was rotted and falling apart. So I pulled it down as well and thew it away. For now I am going to keep the headliner and backing board so when I get the replacement I can cut to match.

The roof has some glue on it and I think some surface rust, but I need to get back in the car when there is better light. It might just be glue.

I also need to find out if there are aftermarket sun visors and how the screws are into the body. I may have to cut them out and use a vise grip to get the screws out.

Total time: 1 hour

3 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Use a hammer drill to back those stuck screws. The vibration helps break them loose. Rather than the drill driver just spinning out of the screw the hammer drill clutch can be set at a lower torque and the 100's of taps in the counter clockwise direction it should break loose. Another tool you want to have. $$

    May 4, 2009 7:28 AM

    ReplyDelete
  3. WD40 will get you nowhere. Try PB penetrating catalyst (http://blasterchemical.com/display.cfm?p=50003&pid=4), available at NAPA for sure, and I'm sure other places as well. Also, you might want to invest in screw extractors. I haven't had much luck with them. However, even if they do not work, I have drilled the hole bigger and bigger until the screw collapses on itself, then pick out the pieces. Of course, you must be careful not to hit the threads.

    ReplyDelete