I thought some of you might want to see a posting on how I made-out replacing the headliner upholstery in my ’82 Monte myself – here’s the run-down:

I purchased headliner material from a local fabric and foam store in Rochester, NY “The Foam Factory” (previously “Howard’s Fabrics and Foam” still operated by the Howard Family that have been in the fabric business in Rochester for many years). It was manufactured by a Glen Raven Mills in Glen Raven, NC (http://www.glenraven.com/automotive/index.shtml ).

By my rough measurement the headliner requires a piece of material about 48 inches by 60 inches. I got enough to do 2 cars, I think they ordered 3 1/3 yards of the 54-inch wide material for me – it was not cheap! I think the total with tax was about for the 3 1/3 yards.

The plan was to do the headliner I had already removed from the one ’82 that was sagging badly and “practice” on that one – I could then put it in the not-so-good car and use the backer from the second car to do a better job on the one I wanted to keep.

Removing the headliner is a pain since you have to pull-off all the molded plastic trim around the side windows and the pieces that support it at the front and rear above the windshield and rear window.

You actually do not need to pull all the molded trim from around the rear quarter windows. The stuff around the doors unscrews pretty easily  and once you have it off you can unscrew the rear quarter window trim at the door edge and drop it down far enough to allow you to drop the headliner.

The tough parts are the pieces above the windshield and rear window because you can’t see how to disengage the plastic clips that hold it up: Once you apply a little muscle to the trim pieces in an attempt to “loosen” them the clips break! I think you may actually be able to remove the piece in front by sliding it to one side or the other – when I put it back in I was able to re-attach it to the clips this way, although they are now loose since I damaged them trying to pry things off. The clips on the rear all broke on me and it is still dangling loose – I think there is a local automotive fastener place that will carry these clips but haven’t checked yet. I believe that I will need to replace the fasteners at the rear one way or another or else the material will go bad on me back there due to lack of support and eventually take the whole thing down with it again…

Once you remove the molded trim around the doors you can see the clips that hold the headliner up there – they are easy to figure-out as is the interlocking arrangement of side trim, windshield side trim and over-the-windshield strip. I wish I had taken a few digital pictures as I took the thing out – fortunately, I had another car to look at several months later when I finished the job!