All

I am at the stage of replacing my old ceiling liner with the genuine article from Scandcar. I have taken out the steel ribs and liner and removed the old fibre matting and sound deadener stuck to the roof. I have placed new self adhesive sound deadener sheets and am about to glue new underlay material. Are there any tricks to getting the liner nice and tight and any other potential traps for new players as I was thinking of tackling the job myself rather than sending off to an upholstery shop.

Cheers
Bilo

Thank's for all those reponses. I am convinced that I will pay the money and have the professonals do the job after all I want a top job done. I think at some stage someone before me has glued fibre insulation material along with the sound deadener to the ceiling. After all it gets pretty hot down here in Oz so we need all the insulation material we can stuff in there to make it bearable in summer.

Cheers

It has been several years since I am done this, but I am a bit confused by your note. If you have put in sound deadener, what "underlayment" needs to be glued in? In my (fading) memory, when the headliner comes off the only thing glued on the roof was the sound deadener. The headliner itself is not glued in. The ribs hold it in place, then it is stretched out through the brackets around the rim.

Here's what I did:

1) Pull the metal brackets with the teeth in them slightly away from the body.

2) Thread all the ribs through the headliner then put all the ribs in place, generally laying out the positioning.

3) Where there is the hard plastic rim go ahead and flip it into the slot.

4) Tuck the rest of the fabric up behind the teeth. When everything looks good tap the metal back toward the body. You have to hit through the headliner to do this. I used a deadblow hammer with a couple of rags over the end to protec the fabric.

Again, this was several years ago, but I did this 3 or 4 times in various cars and always by myself. Always came out tight and straight.

JC Whitney is what I used also. Did it about 4 years ago. I did a lot of prepping with stripping, sanding and then gluing the new dynopads.
With the liner I started in the front and don't remember using any special tools. I may have though. It went pretty smoothly. Not a top of the line job, but pretty good, for a hacker ;>)

Hello: I did install an early cloth headliner in my 1960 Amazon-S (that I bought in Holland also) with the help of an experienced bodyman. We still had great difficulty and it will never be perfect. We must have spent 3-4 hours inside the car, with many false starts. We started with the back retainer strip, but I've heard we should have started from the front. The secret is to ensure that the tension wires are in their proper position and inclination. Volvo recommends a special tool to hook the fabric onto the toothed rail, but if you have a plastic rim on the headliner, this may be easier. My headliner comes out of the rim near the package tray, so I've obviously done something incorrectly. Unless you have patience and an extra set of hands, I'd pay to have it done professionally. Maybe after doing 3 or 4 of these, you could become proficient enough, but you risk ruining the headliner or always kicking yourself for not getting the job done properly. Of course, if this is your daily driver, then I guess you could accept a less than perfect installation job. If you do get it done professionally, take some notes and take pictures to help enlighten those who went for the "do it youself" route.
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Cam a.k.a. CVOLVO.COM

I rolled my 122 wagon back in 2000. After getting all the roof dents fixed, I thought I'd install my own headliner. Tried for 3 or 4 hours with a JCWhitney headliner and was unable to get it right. I probably could have done it with more guidance but I worked back to front and had a bunch of problems figuring out how to attach the front piece behind the windshield. Finally gave up and turned the whole project over to an upholstery guy. He had no problems with the JCW headliner and even put in some new windlace for me. It wasn't cheap and I never did figure out how to do it right but for me, on this project, it was a thing better left to the professional. I hate to admit it but this upholstery stuff is an art unto itself and has absolutely nothing to do with regualr old wrench-turning that I am used to.

Volvo farm had a new addition in Feb.

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Volvo Farmer:

20 Volvos '58-'91