Headliner Vinyl or Cloth?

[HarryT]

 I talked to an auto upholsterer today to do my headliner.  I asked how much more for vinyl and he said the same price, but would not recommend it because of the weight of vinyl.  He said it would start to separate a lot faster than cloth but would do it if I wanted.
Opinions and experience.
Harry

[Fierofool]

You're certainly old enough to remember the cars that came with cloth headliners.  We would replace the old cloth with the upgraded vinyl with the little air holes.  Those headliners were supported by metal rods that ran across from side to side.  Today's cars all seem to come with cloth that's bonded to a board.  The weight of the material may be the reason for that.  It's certainly faster to pre-assemble a headliner board with the cloth than it is to have someone riding down the assembly line, putting in metal bows and the headliner. 

The bonding to the current headliner board would probably be the real issue.  Most of them are deteriorated to the point that after you brush away all the loose crumbs, the board would be pretty thin.  The Fiero Store sells an ABS headliner board.  I'm guessing that it's probably smooth on the exposed surface.  A little scuffing with some course sandpaper would let you bond vinyl to it and the plastic should be stiff enough to support it. 

Just my thoughts on how I'd do it if I wanted vinyl.  I really think vinyl up top would look great. 

[Donster]

Our 3 Fieros have been done in cloth/felt, Anne's in red, mine in black and Shanine's in purple.
Felt seems to be easy to work with and the spray adhesive works well also. Wrinkles are easy to avoid while glueing in the felt.

All a matter of preference.

\D

[meatloafsandwich]

just to put in my 2cent, I went with black carpet, this is the stuff you get at wal-mart as "auto replacement carpet" I have been using it for years to cover speaker boxes and I did a mustang with it and it looks great (partly because I dyed the rest of the Fieros carpet black) to get around the issues Charlie brought up I just brushed all the crumbley stuff off then brushed on a coat of fiberglass resin, the carpet has no backing so the glue works awesome and it has a little streach to get in the corners with no wrinkles.

[TopNotch]

If your car has a sunroof, you're going to have a tough time getting vinyl to fit around the hole the way the cloth does.

[HarryT]

No sun roof. Thanks for all the input.  I will decide what to do in the next few days.
Harry

[jwrape]

Personally, after doing cloth, I would say vinyl because cloth is easily stained and vinyl is not. I got my brand new cloth headliner in and some of the old tar got onto it and was impossible to clean off.

[TopNotch]

Personally, after doing cloth, I would say vinyl because cloth is easily stained and vinyl is not. I got my brand new cloth headliner in and some of the old tar got onto it and was impossible to clean off.

Rub it with a cloth with WD-40 on it. It'll dissolve the tar, and not even leave a spot. The same thing happened to me when putting in a new headliner.

[jwrape]

Oh, too late. I sold that car. Maybe next time in the GT

[redraif]

Personally, after doing cloth, I would say vinyl because cloth is easily stained and vinyl is not. I got my brand new cloth headliner in and some of the old tar got onto it and was impossible to clean off.

Rub it with a cloth with WD-40 on it. It'll dissolve the tar, and not even leave a spot. The same thing happened to me when putting in a new headliner.

Really... I'm gonna try it... I got one little scuff on mine from the sound proofing when I redid it and threw it in.  I was ready to yank it and redo it right there... LOL!

Thats part of the reason the sunvisors never went in... LOL!

[GTRS Fiero]

Truth.  Rather than recover my sunshade, after removing the cloth, I painted the sunshade.  It never sags, peels, or gets stained.

I've been debating how to replace the cloth on my headliner.  I remember the vinyl with the little holes, and the cloth with the bows.  Not a fan of either.

It seems that cloth is the way to go.

[GTRS Fiero]

No sun roof. Thanks for all the input.  I will decide what to do in the next few days.
Harry

What did you end up doing?

[HarryT]

Would you believe I still haven't replaced it.  I never seem to get around to taking in in to have it done, but it will be cloth and soon.
Thanks for asking;
Harry