New Head Liner

[Kevin C]

Also, to hide all the wood screws you use to put it back together, use plenty of glue and paint over them.

Good tip, and appropriate for the model car that I have. It's not like its a highly sought after FWD with CVT

In order to remove the dried foam. A stiff scrubbing brush is the quickest most efficient way Also when changing the fabric make sure to get a foam backed fabric as it hides imperfections much better.

If I had dried foam it would have been easy. The original foam deteriorated into a sticky gooey paste that quickly filled up the brush bristles. The putty scraper worked very well to remove the bulk of the gunk, I used solvent on what was left.

Other things I learned:

The new liner dulls cutter blades very quickly, having a fresh supply helps. I went through six exacto blades making the small cutouts for the lights and visors. Also, my shop scissors are hand me downs from the kitchen; They also were lacking. The newer kitchen scissors worked much better, ideally I should have had a set of real fabric shears. The headliner material was surprisingly tough.

I for the initial glue up, I placed the material over the frame and folded it back, leaving the section over the back seats exposed (I split it at the sunroof opening). I spray glued the frame and the fabric and glued it from the center to the back window, pulling it taught as I worked it down. Once the back half was done it did the same thing for the front. I cut and glued the openings after I had the main sections done.

Three of my original trim pieces were broken, no idea when or by who. It may have been from when I got the car painted and they pulled the glass. The black trim set I got on Ebay was in decent shape and saved a lot of time over redoing my existing trim to black. Of the entire set that I bought, two clip mounts were damaged. I fixed them by doing a bit of plastic welding using a soldering iron and scrap plastic from my old trim. Not pretty, but its hidden and it works.

The pillar covers with the seatbelts got me the first time around and had to be redone. I did not realize that they need to engage with the seatbelt mechanism that is built into the door. Lesson learned.

I took the back seats out so that I could remove the trunk liner. That little bit of extra space made feeding the headliner assembly back in a lot easier. Talk about a giant pile of parts! I also learned to make sure that all the old clips come out. One had stayed behind in the windshield pillar, since I had new trim I never noticed that one was missing. Once I got the old one out the install was a lot smoother. Also, double checking that the wiring harness is dressed back and all the wires are accessible is important. I did not feed the passenger side mirror wire down and on the driver's side one section of the harness ended up in the way of a support. Super easy fixes, I just took my time and did not force any parts. If it seemed like a problem I did not force it.

I'm glad that people on the board talked me out of leaving the pillars gray. The black looks so much better!!!! I have a few things to finish up today. It's down to the trim for the 1/4 windows and putting the back seat seat and trunk liner in. I'm not fast at this, but so far the results are good.

[Kevin C]

As long as the trim was out, I figured I would clean up the rear package shelf a bit.

Before and after using spray fabric dye.

Screenshot 2025-04-20 162336.jpg

[bab73]

You did a clean job with your headliner.

For anyone who might do this, even if it's probably less of a concern with black, but I would advice to be careful with the glue application.
It can be quite fast to have it go through and have glue stains. Especially with a red glue like I had...

[Kevin C]

One thing that I wanted to add about pulling the trim for the rear quarter windows. To get the trim in and out it helps to pull the package tray and move it out of the way. The package tray is held in with 4 clips and four screws for the subwoofer. The 1/4 window trim fits in with the seat belt guide. The guide is retained with a clip. I found they you need to unhook the clip and remove the guide and the trim at the same time. It's a bit of a Rubik's cube getting it all to fit in again. With a lot of patience I was able to get it all back together.

Aged plastic can and will crack easily. The hotter the location the worse it will be. It's all back together and it looks great. Having the sunroof rattles fixed is now my favorite upgrade.

[Kevin C]

I finally did the sliding sunshade over. The sunshade was the trial part to learn how not to lay the fabric on. Since I screwed it up I needed to buy another section of fabric. I had used 3M spray on headliner adhesive. No question, that stuff really, really holds. As in without solvent its almost impossible to remove. Also, I painted the grey trim on mine black. In the process of painting it I got some spatter marks from a dirty spray tip. Laying down a heavy coat was a serious mistake. As the paint dried large craze marks opened up and it looked horrible.

Note to self, plastic paint does not do well with any heavy coats.

That left me with two parts that were going to need a lot more prep time than when I started. The fix was a 20 minute drive and $15 to buy another insert at the local Pick-And-Pull. There were at least 8 A4's to choose from.

This time, I glass beaded the plastic insert to roughen up the hard to reach spots, hand sanded the rest and used a tack rag and an ionizing air gun to get any remaining debris off. With the molded in vents, it's a trick piece to get an even coat on. With a bit of effort and more care I did a better job on this one and it looks like it was always black.

With the insert fixed I pulled out the new roll of material from Headliner Magic and cut out a section to fit. The first thing I noticed was that it was not the same shade as the first roll I got from them, in fact it was a better match. WTF? The upside is that since the color change is at a right angle its not noticable, but its disappointing that the shop that advertises their material as being chosen to be a good match to the OEM is sending out varying shades of material.

I fitted the new fabric, trimmed it using exacto blades (they dull pretty quickly, I used about 8 of them), slid in the painted trim insert and installed the shade. The glass does need to come out to get the shade in. I used to be a bit hesitant to mess with the sunroof. I'm way past that now that I have taken the sunroof apart a couple of times. Now its more like why was I worried?

The shade change is not noticalbe. For one thing, its really dark as you look up and the change is across surfaces that are at a right angle, I'm glad I didn't wait and try to get new material.

That's the end of this upgrade. No question, its a bit of work and you need to pay close attention to clip locations when removing and replacing trim. On a couple of parts I found that I needed to guide the clips in using a flat tool and a flashlight. The lesson was if it does not feel right, don't force it. The black looks really with the black sunroof insert S4 Ebay sourced dome light and sun visors from the UK that don't have a bright yellow airbag warnings. The best part is getting rid of the sunroof rattle!

The nice thing about pick and pull shopping is that you can look at similar cars in the yards and figure out what swaps and if the later models have an improved version of a part. The B7 sunroof guide that fixes the B6 guide was a good find. I also found that the B5's rear dome light fits our headliner. It has one extra switch and a different connector. Probably not worth the effort unless I find one in black.

[Kevin C]

One last detail was the rear dome light. I Painted mine black and used the switches from the B5 that are gray with a black decal. In a perfect world I would have the black / gray swapped. B5 switches are a drop in into the B6 assembly. The B5 has a center switch that does not appear to be needed on the B6. B5 assemblies in black are a lot easier to find than B6's and they cost less. For $20 I can get a doner unit to get black buttons. The one black B6 unit on Ebay has a broken tab.

The upper assembly is the B5 piece.
The lower is my B6 light that I painted black.
1000008114.jpg

[kevin1980]

I have used this to paint some parts
First I sprayed the parts with a plastic primer
And then the paint from the link

Yup i know its paint for leather
But after 2 years it still fits perfectly on the sprayed parts

https://volico.de/en/products/vlc-co...udi-black-soul

Verstuurd vanaf mijn SM-S911B met Tapatalk

[Kevin C]

I did notice that dome light parts were painted from the factory, so paint adhesion should not be an issue. The insert for the sunroof was not.

[RDA990]

I did a black S4 headliner swap several years ago, that headliner is now starting to sag. Do you think I can reuse the existing black headliner fabric? I'm thinking scrape the old foam off of the headliner, find new foam to glue to the headliner backing, and glue the existing fabric to the foam?

[Gunnarrrrr]

I did a black S4 headliner swap several years ago, that headliner is now starting to sag. Do you think I can reuse the existing black headliner fabric? I'm thinking scrape the old foam off of the headliner, find new foam to glue to the headliner backing, and glue the existing fabric to the foam?

I tried and gave up after getting only a few square inches clean in an hour. honestly, don’t even bother. Spradling FKS2459 is an almost perfect match.




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[Kevin C]

I tried and gave up after getting only a few square inches clean in an hour. honestly, don’t even bother. Spradling FKS2459 is an almost perfect match.




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FYI,

I did write Headliner Magic about the non matching material to see if they will send me a matching section. All I need is a 20 x 28" section. So far its been two days and no response, at this point, I can't say I would recommend them.

[Gunnarrrrr]

I got my sample card from yourautotrim, but ended up getting the roll from albrightssupply because shipping was way cheaper. Came in a couple days.


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