that could easily be a seperate write up. how to disassemble and paint all the trim items. thats awesome that you plan on doing all that work.

i am about to sand and rattle can my whole truck to take care of the trail scars... have to bang out a dent first... shows you what detail level im at.

 

My headliner was starting to deteriorate from the Florida heat as it sits in the sun year round. I took it upon myself to try this mod. Grabbed a bucket and removed all of the switches/nets/etc. It took about 1-1.5 hours. I bought a panel puller kit at Autozone which helped.

The problem happened afterwards. The liner pulled off from various locations: hanging at the front and loose bubbles at the highest areas near the sunroofs. The heat from the sun deteriorated the foam and glue inconsistently. I bought all of the tools to sand the liner etc. I could not separate the liner foam/glue from the fiberglass shell consistently. The age of my liner had deteriorated very badly. I did not think that it would be as challenging to remove and proceeded to sand/scrape it. Unfortunately it proved to be too difficult for a novice like myself and that inner alarm sounded when I realized parts of the liner looked different from the pictures on this site. I scraped it too deep and could not sand the other areas correctly. I sent photos to this site on the internet which was only 45 minutes from my residence called www.headlinerexpress.com . The reply was not encouraging as I found out that I damaged it upon repair. Luckily he had a spare headliner and helped me out in a huge bind and discounted the labor that I did from removing the panel.

I wondered how much louder that the Disco would be acoustically w/out the liner from those that did it? Either way we covered it in black instead of the factory gray. It looks great! I'm happy and relieved. My story may not apply to all that try this mod. All that I can say is good luck and make sure that you are careful when scraping and sanding and hopefully you won't ruin it.

 

sound is the same. sorry it didnt work out for you, you are the first i have heard that had a problem.

 

There's always going to be a time when it does not go as planned and unfortunately it happened to me. I think that a lot of my circumstances had to do w/the location- Florida and the fact that my vehicle sits in the direct sunlight year round. Another result of this has been:

- cracked A-pillars
- cracked windshield base
- cracked front/ rear bumpers

The heat is tremendous and the fact that it's been in the sun for six years plus has caught up. Hopefully I'm the only person that has failed the headliner mod- but it's good to know what you're up agains when attempting any mod for that matter the good and the bad.

Regards-

 

This answers a question I was going to ask. My 03 doesn't have sunroofs either but the headliner looks like it was supposed to. I was wondering if someone got the wrong one used, and then just recovered over the huge sunroof holes

 

Bill from HeadlinerExpress is a good guy. I met him at last years FLRC Spring Rally. He had 2 MB Unimogs and a P38 at the time...

 

I personally like the contrasting color. However my headliner is Black and the trimming is Tan so it looks very well.

Im very surprised you had trouble with your headliner. My Disco was florida factory owned, it was the demo vehicle for the dealership, and i had no difficulties removing the fabric. In fact it came off very easily, then i took a pressure washer too it to avoid having to scrape it. Its not perfect, but it looks 100% better then it did and everyone who sees it says it looks great.

 

I just did this last weekend. I just got my truck a few weeks ago, and this was first on my list. It was not a very difficult job, more of a pain in the butt I would say.

I painted mine, and I think it turned out amazing! I have had a lot of compliments. It is not a perfectly smooth surface, but the texture is uniform and looks like it could have come from the factory. I brought my ceiling pockets to the Home Depot, and the person color matched them pretty close. I bought a Quart, and I may have used half of it.

I have a few pieces of advice.
1) Already been said, but Check your sun Roof drains and make sure they are good. You don't want to do this again. I have one that had snapped off on the passenger front.

2) I rolled my paint on as I was doing it in my apartment. If I had to do it again, I would defiantly spray it. I used one coat of primer, and 2 coats of color. Because rolling it on leaves a thicker coat, I think the fiberglass headliner absorbed some of the paint. I noticed it was a little heavier and noticeably softer than when I took it out. It seemed to crease easier as well. It still looks fine, just an FYI. I found that the creases are inevitable, so don't get crazy. A darker color may hide them, but I am not sure.

3) It is probable worth it to take off the B-Pillar trim. I found I was trying to wrestle it out of a few places at the same time, and this was not that hard once I figured out how they were on there. If you pull off the weather stripping around the doors, you will see they are just hooked on with 4 small metal clips per side. The window seals cover them though.

Good luck, definitely worth the time.

 

Hello,
First, thanks to 'hilltoppersx' for the 'how-to'; it was of great help in my headliner project.

I have a couple of items that might help folks while doing this project to their Disco.

Because I did not move the rubber molding, out of the way, I had a hard time taking the 'B' piller trim off, as I couldn't see the four (two on each side) clips. Once I moved the rubber molding I could see the clips and I used a small pick to pop them off. I took some pictures that might help folks see what the clips look like. One picture shows the rubber seal and one shows the clips; on this one you can also see the green 'push-in' clip that goes into the top.

I wanted to keep close to the same color of the headliner cloth so I used a Krylon - Camouflage Khaki. One picture shows the headliner after being painted this color. You can also see a couple of creases that happened while taking the liner out, but all in all - better than the sagging cloth I had before. I also took a picture of the cargo net and rear sunroof panel before I reattached then to the headliner, so you can see how the plastic blended in with the painted headliner. NOTE: when taking off the cargo nets nuts, I found it good to loosen one turn then go back a half turn then loosen one turn then go back a half turn....kind of like using a tap on harden metal, so as not to break the tap inside the hole.

One last thing: I never did need a 4mm socket..........I used a 7mm socket for the grab handle bolts, 8mm socket for the over head light nuts and 9mm for the cargo net / rear sunroof panel nuts. I also have a "plastic push in pin" removal tool that makes the removal of all the push in pins easy to pop out!

Thanks again 'hilltoppersx' and others and I hope my little input is of help.
C'ya,

 

color choice looks good! would love to see a pic of it back in the truck. thanks for hte tips as well.