Just did my headliner.

[Tboy]

Originally Posted by c900

The result looks really good. Given the paint is a rubberised coating it should be a bit like bitumenous underbody coating and internal sound-deadening materials in the way it absorbs noise and since my 9000 needs the headliner sorted out it would be good to try this with a similar material which was a grey colour (current colour of the headliner fabric).

Will see when I get around to figuring out what to do with it.

Craig.

Most all the underbody coatings and such advertise them as paintable. While you may not find the exact grey in the base material, you could topcoat it.

[tuner4life]

Alright, I'm employed once again and I can now start dealing with my 9k again.

Adshaft. The rocker paint is great so far. (I'll get pics when I can) But I have a question. What did you use on your sliding sunroof panel? I would imagine that this stuff would get scraped off rather quickly? I thought about dying the material that is there now black since it is not saging. What did you do to yours?

[c900]

Originally Posted by tuner4life

Alright, I'm employed once again and I can now start dealing with my 9k again.

Adshaft. The rocker paint is great so far. (I'll get pics when I can) But I have a question. What did you use on your sliding sunroof panel? I would imagine that this stuff would get scraped off rather quickly? I thought about dying the material that is there now black since it is not saging. What did you do to yours?

Was thinking about this myself... WIth my 9000, I think I'll just dump the pathetic glue-on fabric and give the sliding sunroof panel a coat of normal paint, or perhaps take the sliding panel out altogether. But given the harshness of summers here in Oz, that might not be a good move.

As for the actual headlining, I'll see if I can locate the same sort of rocker panel coating here in Oz. My two C900's both have very saggy headliners as well so they'll need their headshells coated at some stage. If there is a way to create a tan finish using rocker panel coating it'll be excellent.

Craig.

[adshaft]

Originally Posted by tuner4life

Alright, I'm employed once again and I can now start dealing with my 9k again.

Adshaft. The rocker paint is great so far. (I'll get pics when I can) But I have a question. What did you use on your sliding sunroof panel? I would imagine that this stuff would get scraped off rather quickly? I thought about dying the material that is there now black since it is not saging. What did you do to yours?

I used the same rocker panel paint for the slider, but I will never slide that thing shut so I'm not concerned about scraping. The sunroof glass has a nice tint so not much sun comes in.

[tuner4life]

I painted the slider with duplicolor's vinyl and fabric coating spray. It looks good and seems fairly durable.

Pics soon

[tuner4life]

Sorry for the tremendously long delay.

I award you with pictures...

First of all, I swapped out the glass roof from my 1994 cde parts car.





I painted all the trim pieces with vinyl and fabric dye from duplicolor.



The finished headliner...



Nice texture









In this picture you can see the sunroof panel. I used the duplicolor vinyl and fabric dye on that as well as the A-pillar trim and it looks good and is holding up well.



The parts car next to the good white car.

[plasticfoodwrap]

looks good

[2legit2quit]

heres my black headliner, ignore the red circle and arrow i needed a trim part,

[mike9000aero]

looks good

[c900]

That is very impressive. Given the very sad state of the original headlining in my 1990 2.0 carlsson, I am keen to do something similar as the headliner really hurts the overall look of the car (though at present it's only me that sees it!).

I seem to recall the black paint is some sort of rocker panel paint? I haven't looked for anything like it in auto parts stores in South Australia as yet but I'm sure there's something around.

Getting rid of the fabric would certainly be a good improvement and it gives me an excuse to properly deal with what I suspect is blocked sunroof drains. When I did a very big clean out of the 'aquarium' I found the the ends of the two front drain hoses but at present I haven't been in a position to test the drains to see if they're actually blocked.

Has anyone else in the land of Oz attempted this sort of headlining restoration? I'm keen to try it in my 81 turbo C900 as well (it's headliner is held up by this star field of brass thumbtacks!), though the 9k's situation is more of a priority.

Craig.

[9000Andrew]

Looks great. Killer job! Nothing like the satisfaction one gets from a DIY repair. Much better than paying $300 or more to have an upholstery shop do it.

[c900]

One thing with using rocker panel paint - what are it's heat properties like?

The roof gets a lot of sun (esp. here in Ozzieland) and it'll be important to use a paint which is capable of handling high temperatures for sustained periods regularly.

I'll be going shopping soon to get the paint to do my 9k's headshell, and I will also be looking to do the headshell in my 81 turbo C900 sedan which still has it's 'starfield' of brass thumbtacks keeping the old fabric in place.

Craig.

[c900]

So far I have not had any luck with locating a supplier of rubberised rocker panel paint at the auto parts stores I've visited. Is anyone else who's in Oz able to come up with a source?

There are plenty of normal (regular) types of rocker panel paint available. K&H Coatings (An Aussie auto paint maker) has POR-15 type paint in aerosol but not a rubberised type.

Craig.

[bare]

Dunno.. the Pressboard liner base with paint on it is far too Ghetto for my tastes. But then it's not my car.
$300 for a drive, in drive out, fresh headliner install is not prohibitively expensive IMO.

[mySaab900]

I need a new headliner in my c900, I was thinking of taking it out and vinyl wrapping it, but I like this idea too, looks quite a lot cheaper and easier. Plus I love the look of that.

[adshaft]

Don't really get on here as much as I use to, but I'm glad this thread came in handy for a few people. Turner your project came out nice btw...good job. If I can help anyone with getting them the rubberized paint, don't hesitate to ask. I can wait till it goes on sale and buy some more. Only thing with this, is that it's aerosol and might be a bit tricky to ship internationally (hazmat).

[Tboy]

It's a long story, and I didn't finish the project (again, a long story), but I achieved similar results to adshaft with a small three inch roller and some roll on bed liner, made by Rustoleum, sold at autozone. I used one of those 3 inch rollers made by shurline (red handle, light green on the packaging, and rolled it out.

[c900]

Doing a bit of thread re-jiggery/pokery

Very recently I tried out some 3M stone chip resistance rocker panel paint from the K&H Surface Technologies range (Aussie company) that 3M bought a few years ago and integrated into it's bigger product line.

It's really good. I used it to test inside the back wheel arches on my 80 series landcruiser and so far has been doing great. I didn't over-coat it with another product like is recommended, so don't yet know what it will do long-term.

But it is or was made in grey and black and I think some other colours. Other auto body coating suppliers like Septone (that might just be an Aussie brand - not sure) make very similar products. I reckon it is very similar to the product the OP used re-coat a 9k headshell rather that use glued-on fabric.

The collapsed headlining (held up with brass thumbtacks) in my 9k is the standard Saab beigey colour which I kind of hate. I reckon gray spray-on headlining for the roof headshell would be really good in my 9k carlsson which is a white car with black leather seats and black trim on the pillar panels everywhere except the roof.

How difficult is it to get the headshell out of a 9k hatchback with a sunroof btw?

Craig.

[Cark]

Getting the headliner out of a hatch car is very easy. Just drop it down and slide it out at a bit of an angle. Folding the rear seats forward may help. It's the trunk cars where it's really difficult to remove the headliner!

[c900]

With good ongoing employment again since late 2015 I've finally had the finances to really get serious with the 9k (and eventually will give my two c900's more love as well). I recently took both a-pillar trims out as the fabric completely came off them due to the foam later going off to Hogwarts.

Can't get any of that K&H stuff now as 3m bought out the company and killed off those aerosol products. Kinda sucks as they were pretty good and genuine Aussie products. Closest I can find now is those aerosol 'stoneshield' type products for wheel arches but I don't know if they're good for interior use though they do get supplied in other than just black (Septone 'stoneshield' can be sourced in grey as well).

I can get Duplicolour aerosol bed liner and there is a really nice looking POR-15 one (I just did a full restoration of the false firewall aka lower cowl plate with regular POR-15 paint) that might be worth trying out on those small trim panels.

Seems that the bed-liners almost always come only in black but that's fine IMHO for small trims, and probably the headliner too.

I just hate the way the fabric fails when it's foam layer dies - it looks disgusting.

The most important question about using the bed liner idea is how well does the stuff stand up when used on interior panels? Given my first posts in this thread were about 8 years ago (wow!), I wonder what it's been like in real-world use.

Another thing - the old glue used to attach the 27 yr old fabric/foam stuff is difficult to remove from the fibreglass pillar trims but I am finding that brake cleaner works and doesn't seem to be too aggressive that it eats into the structure of the trim panels.

Is there any better way to completely clean and remove all old glue and ugly decayed foam dross so the trims are then ready to bond to something new?

Craig.