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Well,
here is the headliner out of the coach. I already had the cabinets out
so it was not a big deal. What I learned: The sun visors are a bi***.
You can
them easier to do. I have no idea why the threads are so long. Here
is a
trick.
Swing the visor over to the other side then swing it with the wrench.
You do
not have to fight the spring that way. Oil that puppy up---mine was
very
rusted.
Next keep track of where all of the screws go-----many are different.
I don't
think all of mine were factory. Not a hard job take your time. You
can
see how discolored this thing is by the area closest to you---it was
covered
by the first section of headlined. Notice the black line at the divide
between the discolored part and the white part right in the middle.
This is where the mice had eaten through it.
OK
this is the front of the headliner. This is where the mirror mounts.
The half moon cut out is for the windshield center post. This is the
biggest crack I had in mine.
Here
is the same mouse hole from the back side. Notice the blue tape
through the hole. One of the lessons I learned from the rear end cap
is that you have to
put tape over the holes you are going to fiberglass over. If you don't
the resin will run all
over the place. I have found that 3Ms blue masking tape works
well. You can also see
all the holes where people had tried to put the curtain rail back up
with screws and pop
rivets.
Here
is a shot of all the holes in the cab headliner where the curtain rail
goes behind the seats.
We
started here on the front of the headliner We screwed the headliner
to a piece of wood so we could pull the crack together. Then we glassed
over it.
I
wanted to reinforce the entire front area of the head liner since it had
some small cracks and it flexed up and down when going over bumps.
You have to sand down the first layer of glass first----unless you
are a lot
better at putting it down than I am. Any small bump becomes much
bigger when you put a new layer over it. Could cause clearance problems.
Here
is the whole headliner with the reinforcements. First the repair to the
crack then reinforcing the front area then the entire mounting rim
and a strip over the center
for good measure and last but not least the rear curtain rail area.
After
removing the tape from the inside of the headliner here is what the
mouse hole and some of the other holes look like. No fiberglass resin
running all over the
place. Learned that the hard way. Next the holes were filled from the
inside. Lowes had
some stuff called General Household Putty. It is made by Bondo. Looks
like body filler to
me. The man there said it was a little better for plastic work because
it would flex a little
more----heck I don't know just thought I would buy it. No research
here Tom----Just
GUT INSTINCT. Some stuff I have learned: Put the Bondo on with a flexible
tool. Plastic
putty knifes work well. The try a piece of plastic milk jug------does
a nice job too. You
can cut it to fit the curve you are working with. Now here is the kicker.
Keep a dry
toothbrush handy. Once you fill in a hole and level it off with the
knife then take the tooth
brush and clean out the texture around the hole. This will keep you
from getting smooth
spots like I did on the rear end cap.
Finally
take a sander with 60 grit paper and grind down the fiberglass to
match the edge of the plastic. One note here this picture was taken
while doing it face down.
We thought we had it right. Once it was flipped over you could see
that more had to be
taken off.
Well,
here it is---all clean and white. Not that bad of a job really. 3 days
and about $38. I used Plasti-kote Vinyl Color as "paint" I am pleased
with what I got.
There are plenty of other companies making this stuff----just
what I bought.
Overall things I have learned:
The real problems with this headliner is that all of the poprivits
were put in with no backer washers.
Only about half of them were holding. If you remove the curtain rails
and reinstall them
Use backer washers. They will stop the rivets from pulling through.
This is an easy problem to solve when the headliner is down. Also don't
try to fix headliner
problems with poprivits---they will just open up the hole more.