My 740's headliner is sagging a bit in the back. Does anyone know any tricks to fix this that doesn't involve pulling the whole thing out and redoing it? Thanks, Ron

I have redone several headliners by replacing the cloth. One car I've done twice. I know this doesn't answer your question directly, however I personally think the following answer is a great idea. I thought about putting the video I made of it on youtube, but didn't want to give away my idea, but I will share it with you. The last two headliners that I did, I will never have to replace the cloth again. I took out the headliner board, cleaned off all of the cloth and foam, and painted it with a textured paint. It does look really good. I used a stone textured paint on both. A rustolium "stone" from walmart. About $8.00 a can, and used 4 cans. (4 door sedan)

Wagons are sort of easy to change out, if you can find a good one to install. I've done 2 in the last 2 years. You take apart all the roof trim, carefully remove the dome light and the sunroof trip, and walk it right out the back with the help of 1 or 2 others.

Sedans are a bit more of a challenge. The interior work is the same, roughly, removing all roof handles and dome light and so on. The seats go back and the headliner drops and turns and bends just a little to go out the front passenger door.

Material can be obtained at fabric stores, the old headliner panel is scraped clean of crumbling foam, and you spray everything liberally with 3M "77" adhesive. Clean clean hands too! Press the new fabric in place and then trim off excess around edges and sunroof hole.

A real repair in place, honestly I have no better suggestions than staples and fasteners mentioned here. It's a pressed-fiber sheet, sort of like heavy cardboard, so light fasteners can be used in it until it fails again.

These headliners are probably one of the few big failures of the 740/940 series of cars. They're all going to come down one day.

--Rob

Hello,

I used contact adhesive for my sagging headliner last time. I applied the adhesive to both mating surface, waited a few minutes to dry and pressed on. For a few days the cabin may smell with solvent. But the repair holds up for a few years now and its invisible.

Hope this helps.

Amarin.

I have not tried, but considered, using thin aluminum strips from the hardware store. 8' length is about $12 or so. In any case, I was thinking of simply making a 'bow' out of it, fasten the ends to the plastic trim, and it'd/they'd hold the headliner up. Painted in pretty colors I'm sure it'd blend right in.

Ok maybe not that last part, but... :-)

I used a super small stapler, put a few staples in and they are almost impossble to see....

if u r like me have access to a few good junk yards, u can find brand new headliners if u visit them frequenly enough. I found new ones for all my three 745s over the past 5 years. That's the best way to do it. good luck

Only the plastic screw ins sold at most auto parts stores.
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Post Back. That's whats makes this forum work.

I need to do a repair on my sedan as well. The center courtesy light is what's holding the headliner up. I believe it is the foam on the fabric that degrades with time. I would think that there are other creative ways to do a headliner , painting or vinyl upholstering material ,cloth perhaps1

I came up with an quick, easy, inexpensive headliner fix that looks great! The headliner was sagging in the back, but it had also pulled away from the front over the windshield, and the sides over the front doors. I went to the hardware store and bought two 1/8" x 36" dowels, cut them (broke them, actually) to the size I needed, and pushed them into the space between the moulding and the headliner, kind of wrapping the loose fabric around the dowel as I pushed it in. It does the job, and it's almost invisible. I also bought 8 white panel fasteners, for the sagging back. The head of the fasteners are about an inch around, and they have pointed ends, so they'll go through the fabric and the backing easily. I pulled the headliner tight up into the indentation over the back seat, and pushed the fasteners into the inside corners. They look like buttons, and match the color of the fabric almost perfectly. If you didn't know, you'd think it came from the factory that way! Total cost was about $6, and it only took about 1/2 hour to do the whole job. Can't beat that!