My sister’s 1991 Pontiac with the 3.1 V6 still runs good (leaks a little oil), but the headliner is starting to come loose.
I’m thinking of cutting small slits in a grid pattern and squirting some Gorilla Glue up in each of them. Then maybe put a piece of tape over each slit to keep the glue from coming out.
Anybody tried anything like that?
Yes, and it doesn’t work. Once you start messing with the headliner, it will continue to bubble and fall in other places unless you take the whole thing down, use spray adhesive, and re-attach the whole thing at once. The adhesive, I have found, is a one-time-only stick. You can re-glue the parts that are falling down, but any other small part the gets unstuck in the process will start to sag.
What’s a headliner?
The fabric that’s glued to the ceiling of the passenger compartment.
It is the star of the show that gets the most prominent billing but that isn’t important right now.
Back to car ceilings. My SIL did it with spray glue a few weeks ago. It seemed to work but time will tell.
…an earlier discussion of this same subject. My own experience (recounted in the referenced thread) is that gluing it yourself doesn’t work; I eventually removed the headliner shell and took it to an upholsterer, who glued on new fabric for a very reasonable price.
If you do decide to try it, you’re definitely best of going with a pray glue like 3M 77 (easily available) rather than Gorilla Glue. For one thing, Polyurethane glue like GG usually needs water or moisture to activate and tends to bubble up and will seep through pourus materials like foam.
Best bet would be to take ALL the headliner off as neatly as possible. Spray the bare ceiling, wait 15-20 min for it to become tacky, and then carefull put the headliner back up. That’s essentially what an upholsterer would do, though probably with some new fabric.
I had a Rabbit I drove for years with no headliner at all, just bits of insulation glued to the ceiling that had a tendency to sag lower and lower unless discouraged with duct tape. Shortly before I sold it, I finally got around to making a new headliner (sort of) for it, by purchasing a bit of fabric and a can of 3M Super 77 spray adhesive. Since I sold it just a few weeks later, I can’t tell you if the fabric stayed glued or not.
I’m sure there are more effective upholstery glues than Super 77, though. On occasion my employment involves fabricating acoustic panels, and I use a lovely spray glue that is miles and miles ahead of that aerosol crap, though I’m quite certain it wouldn’t work gluing fabric to metal. Needs porousness. I’d bet good money that there are other glues that would work though.
A friend in college arranged some decorative upholstery tacks in a tasteful pattern on the ceiling of his car to keep the headliner cloth up. It looked like an expression of personal artistry but we knew better!
I removed the door, windshield, and rear window bonnet mouldings and dropped the headliner panel in an 80’s something Chrysler. Once I’d scraped off all the old headliner material, I sprayed Scotch 77 adhesive on it and stuck cotton tee-shirt fabric that I’d bought from the fabric store. It was even the right color of blue. Whee!
That’s the way to go. Do it right or don’t bother with a half-done job.
DWC has the best imput, with one caveat: that fuzzy junk IS PART of the headliner. When you are ready to reglue, you should have material on one hand and cardboard on the other. If ther is fuzz on the cardboard, the new liner will just pull it off.
I also tried what Caractacus did and it looked pretty impressive.
best wishes,
hh
When I read the thread title I had a picture of some drunk or drugged-out star performer who had to be braced up somehow to perform or he/she would topple over. I just never envisioned anyone doing it with Crazy Glue before.