Freelander 1 Headlining Replacement - completed

Many folk have the problem of dangling headlining. Mine has got bad enough to look at now. It was fine in the front, but rear seat passengers complained about the built in hair restyling mech built into the roof !!

So, bought some aerosol spray glue, some nice light grey 1mm foam lined headliner and this afternoon took the headlining board out.
Not a difficult job, rear boot side trims, upper window trims, grab handles, sun visors, interior lights and some Xmas tree studs and bingo.

Old fabric just fell off. Then, stood board on an old curtain and wire brushed it clean, rotted foam rubber in lumps fell off.
Will clean with a pot scourer and clean cloth before cutting and fitting new material.
Haven't got the camera outlet, but will do so.
Cost so far for fabric and a couple of glue sprays is about £50.

The R40 tourer as the same problems couple of links below for lining.

Foam Backed Headlining Sample Swatch [FBH-SWATCH] - £6.99 : AS Trim, Vehicle Textile Suppliers - Buy Upholstery, & Adhesives Online UK Ipswich (as-trim.co.uk)

British Auto Upholstery Material Wholesaler - Martrim Car Trimming Supplies

Threads which may help.
Headlining fabric - Page 2 - The 75 and ZT Owners Club Forums (the75andztclub.co.uk)

Rover 25 - Replacing the headlining | MG-Rover.org Forums

andyfreelandy said:

Many folk have the problem of dangling headlining. Mine has got bad enough to look at now. It was fine in the front, but rear seat passengers complained about the built in hair restyling mech built into the roof !!

So, bought some aerosol spray glue, some nice light grey 1mm foam lined headliner and this afternoon took the headlining board out.
Not a difficult job, rear boot side trims, upper window trims, grab handles, sun visors, interior lights and some Xmas tree studs and bingo.

Old fabric just fell off. Then, stood board on an old curtain and wire brushed it clean, rotted foam rubber in lumps fell off.
Will clean with a pot scourer and clean cloth before cutting and fitting new material.
Haven't got the camera outlet, but will do so.
Cost so far for fabric and a couple of glue sprays is about £50.

Click to expand...

Love to see any pic's - mines starting to go as well. There's a particular adhesive auto trimmers use - it that what you bought?

good links there @Arctic2 and @andyfreelandy get the camera on it!

OK will do!

First bit of health and safety advice. This morning I appear to have minute shards of fibre glass in my hands. Must be from the roof board which looked harmless enough.
Gloves to be worn !!!

My biggest fear would be damaging all the associated trim.. aged/brittle plastic just waiting to crack

andyfreelandy said:

OK will do!

First bit of health and safety advice. This morning I appear to have minute shards of fibre glass in my hands. Must be from the roof board which looked harmless enough.
Gloves to be worn !!!

Click to expand...

Hi Andy.
That cannot be good, it could make your hand swell up, i would say also wear goggles & mask, breathing that stuff in is really dangerous, i would look into having your hand looked at by a medic, very rare i work on any car without gloves mask & goggles.

Thanks, yes, very rare that I didn't wear gloves but it looked like a harmless piece of fibre board or even cardboard!!

Worth flagging early on.

kermit_rr said:

My biggest fear would be damaging all the associated trim.. aged/brittle plastic just waiting to crack

Click to expand...

The Freelander plastic seems to be holding up well, with no cracking being mentioned on here.
The 16 year old trim I've removed is still flexible and the correct colour, so the UV protective glass is obviously doing its job.

Yes no broken bits yet ! The string bags on the headlining are held with plastic studs and coarse thread nuts. I sprayed them with silicone spray before undoing to prevent studs breaking off and retightened to 0 Nm !!

Some photos - removal is the fixing studs which need a trim remover, clip on A post covers, clip on B post covers, rear boot side panels, rear boot window panels. All fairly straight forward except the rear boot window panels that I hadn't removed before and I guess most won't have either.

Showing clips on top edge.
Bottom edge held with screws, accessible behind lower boot side panels.
B Pillar clips gently prise off.
As does the A pillar trim.
Pull back the door rubbers at the top, remove the press studs x 4 along with sunvisors, door grabs and pull headlining board out the rear of the car. You then have this !
Pull off old liner. It makes a mess !
Wire brush (hand) all rotted foam off the liner board - care due to fibre-glass strands - wear gloves and goggles and a mask !
Put scraped off dust in the bin ! There is loads of it - suggest doing this outdoors.
Set cleaned up board onto a large surface with protection for glue.
Lay new fabric rolled up and prepare to do a bout 1/3 of the roof at a time, I chose the front due to the undulations and the need to stretch it over the shaping of the light and side curves. Continue 1/3 at a time only adding glue when ready to do that section.
I wrapped about 5mm over the edges of the sunroof and the front edge (wasn't done on original) to allow for any shrinkage.
Cut slots and holes and refit tightened string holders(see below)
My string holders had got a bit baggy ! So simply releasing the elastic crimp and refitting then cutting the old elastic off made it tight again.

That, my friends, is it.
As Haynes so often say - reassembly is reverse of disassembly !!!
Will post photo when fitted, assembly is sitting flat to dry perfectly before fitting it back in.
Only tiny marks are where the fabric was folded for post. I asked for it to be rolled !!! But they are disappearing with a position near a warm radiator.

Materials.

Lining: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/27516201...5qQSb6hQNK&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Adhesive:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/28467802...5qQSb6hQNK&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Top work andy. I will, at some point get round to doing this. I've been putting it off for two years now!

andyfreelandy said:

Materials.

Lining: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/27516201...5qQSb6hQNK&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Adhesive:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/28467802...5qQSb6hQNK&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Click to expand...

Hi Andy.
I presume the above is £12.99 per metre length how many did you use 2 or 3mtr

andyfreelandy said:

Some photos - removal is the fixing studs which need a trim remover, clip on A post covers, clip on B post covers, rear boot side panels, rear boot window panels. All fairly straight forward except the rear boot window panels that I hadn't removed before and I guess most won't have either.

View attachment 278587Showing clips on top edge.
View attachment 278588Bottom edge held with screws, accessible behind lower boot side panels.
View attachment 278589B Pillar clips gently prise off.
View attachment 278590As does the A pillar trim.
View attachment 278591Pull back the door rubbers at the top, remove the press studs x 4 along with sunvisors, door grabs and pull headlining board out the rear of the car. You then have this !
View attachment 278592Pull off old liner. It makes a mess !
View attachment 278593Wire brush (hand) all rotted foam off the liner board - care due to fibre-glass strands - wear gloves and goggles and a mask !
View attachment 278594Put scraped off dust in the bin ! There is loads of it - suggest doing this outdoors.
View attachment 278595Set cleaned up board onto a large surface with protection for glue.
View attachment 278596Lay new fabric rolled up and prepare to do a bout 1/3 of the roof at a time, I chose the front due to the undulations and the need to stretch it over the shaping of the light and side curves. Continue 1/3 at a time only adding glue when ready to do that section.
View attachment 278597I wrapped about 5mm over the edges of the sunroof and the front edge (wasn't done on original) to allow for any shrinkage.
View attachment 278598Cut slots and holes and refit tightened string holders(see below)
View attachment 278599My string holders had got a bit baggy ! So simply releasing the elastic crimp and refitting then cutting the old elastic off made it tight again.

That, my friends, is it.
As Haynes so often say - reassembly is reverse of disassembly !!!
Will post photo when fitted, assembly is sitting flat to dry perfectly before fitting it back in.
Only tiny marks are where the fabric was folded for post. I asked for it to be rolled !!! But they are disappearing with a position near a warm radiator.

Click to expand...

Nice work!

Got 3 metres. 2.5 would have done it but didn't see 0.5 being available. Also means you don't have to worry about it not being quite square as you have curves to fit into and creases to chase out !!

Forgot to say I used a wallpaper roller to force into curved sections then chased out to edges.

andyfreelandy said:

Got 3 metres. 2.5 would have done it but didn't see 0.5 being available. Also means you don't have to worry about it not being quite square as you have curves to fit into and creases to chase out !!

Click to expand...

You can use the spare material to cover the A pillar trims too, so it all matches.

I was going to do mine in black, so figured I'd do the pillar trims too, although I never got round to doing it.
If I need to do the FL2, then I'd go to black with that too, as the light cream is just so impractical.

andyfreelandy said:

Some photos - removal is the fixing studs which need a trim remover, clip on A post covers, clip on B post covers, rear boot side panels, rear boot window panels. All fairly straight forward except the rear boot window panels that I hadn't removed before and I guess most won't have either.

View attachment 278587Showing clips on top edge.
View attachment 278588Bottom edge held with screws, accessible behind lower boot side panels.
View attachment 278589B Pillar clips gently prise off.
View attachment 278590As does the A pillar trim.
View attachment 278591Pull back the door rubbers at the top, remove the press studs x 4 along with sunvisors, door grabs and pull headlining board out the rear of the car. You then have this !
View attachment 278592Pull off old liner. It makes a mess !
View attachment 278593Wire brush (hand) all rotted foam off the liner board - care due to fibre-glass strands - wear gloves and goggles and a mask !
View attachment 278594Put scraped off dust in the bin ! There is loads of it - suggest doing this outdoors.
View attachment 278595Set cleaned up board onto a large surface with protection for glue.
View attachment 278596Lay new fabric rolled up and prepare to do a bout 1/3 of the roof at a time, I chose the front due to the undulations and the need to stretch it over the shaping of the light and side curves. Continue 1/3 at a time only adding glue when ready to do that section.
View attachment 278597I wrapped about 5mm over the edges of the sunroof and the front edge (wasn't done on original) to allow for any shrinkage.
View attachment 278598Cut slots and holes and refit tightened string holders(see below)
View attachment 278599My string holders had got a bit baggy ! So simply releasing the elastic crimp and refitting then cutting the old elastic off made it tight again.

That, my friends, is it.
As Haynes so often say - reassembly is reverse of disassembly !!!
Will post photo when fitted, assembly is sitting flat to dry perfectly before fitting it back in.
Only tiny marks are where the fabric was folded for post. I asked for it to be rolled !!! But they are disappearing with a position near a warm radiator.

Click to expand...

Thank you for the pictures @andyfreelandy. I have some parts laying around, especially that foam blocks, when I did it in 2018 and need to get it back in.