E30 Touring roof lining

[dobbiej]

Hi there,

Newby here. Picking up a 1994 E30 Touring on Monday and have heard the rear roof lining is sagging a little. I vaguely remember this is rather common, but is there a simple fix for this?

I live near Chichester, West Sussex, so if anyone knows of a good upholsterer please let me know.

Thanks,

Jeff

[daimlerman]

Tourings have an inverted tray type of headliner.The foam backed fabric is glued to this tray.
The foam starts to crumble with age and the fabric sags....the 'cheap and cheerful' fix is to staple the fabric to the liner,but it looks dreadful,as the staples start to rust it looks even worse!

Only proper fix is to remove the liner and scrape all the old glue off and glue new fabric on,a number of zoner's have done this,one to search out is Capri-Rob's thread.

The liner is not difficult to remove,Bigwynn wrote a very good thread on how to do this,the tricky bit,of course,is dealing with the sunroof opening.Take great care here,the stainless steel trim/runner bits have razor sharp edges that slice fingers for fun,leaving you with a claret stain on your new liner that is difficult to remove.

Allow half a day each way to remove/re-fit the liner.

[magpie]

staple gun.

[G-Bear]

Capri-Rob's looks really good, I think he paid a fair whack to get it re-apolstered. Bump on here did it himself and appeared to do good job.

Both worth a peep on here in the 'Members' section.

[Sanchez]

If u have patients and a screw driver you can get it all out. I bought beige "suede" on eBay and did it myself. Only downside to my work is patches of spray glue soaked through and stained. I'll be redoing it with thicker nicer material. Practice makes perfect.

[polsta]

where near chichester are you jeff thats local to me ? rather than staple it, use these, a good measure for prolonging a reupholster, they have curly piggy like pins, push and twist them in and look better than staples, measure/place them properly and its a great fix for a couple of quid, to fix and prevent future sagging

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Nickel-Twist- ... 180wt_1161

[G-Bear]

If u have patients and a screw driver you can get it all out. I bought beige "suede" on eBay and did it myself. Only downside to my work is patches of spray glue soaked through and stained. I'll be redoing it with thicker nicer material. Practice makes perfect.

You got any pics of the finished first attempt Sanchez?

[hongkongfuey]

Stapled mine looks like sofa lol

[rattysecretagent]

Hi guys.

I had previously read that yu have to remove the rear windows to remove the tray in the tourings, obviously not true

Has anyone written any instructions / experiences whilst doing this ?

Cheers

[rattysecretagent]

I should read the whole post first, I will check out Capri-Rob's post.

Cheers

[Cloggy Saint]

My first effort



Unfortunately the cloth was too heavy and it was impossible to get a nice finish around the check control panel bulge. I did it again with lighter cloth which worked out really smart but now the front and rear edges have turned brown from the sun so I'm looking at doing it for a third time

[Sanchez]

If u have patients and a screw driver you can get it all out. I bought beige "suede" on eBay and did it myself. Only downside to my work is patches of spray glue soaked through and stained. I'll be redoing it with thicker nicer material. Practice makes perfect.

You got any pics of the finished first attempt Sanchez?

Afraid not. I didn't do a good enough job to warrant pics but i can if you want to see them.

As cloggy saint just said his material was too thick, mine is too thin, it's also light colour so show all imperfections.

I'm only using it because I've no time or space to keep it unless it's in the car.

I'm going to source some better material and do it again in the summer. Practice makes perfect. Then il do my dad's one.

[G-Bear]

Dedication Sanchez and Cloggy Saint... Good efforts. Going to give my headlining a bash soon after a few other jobs.

Has anyone written any instructions / experiences whilst doing this ?

Cheers

rattysecretagent I seem to remember someone putting good write-up with pics on here in the main chat section. Do a search it was over a year ago so it might take serval pages but it's in here. Surprised it didn't get wiki-fied as it was good. Also look for Bumps build thread he shows more of recovering his roof lining.

[G-Bear]

Found them.. What else should you be doing in bed on a Sunday morning whilst away from your missus..

Here is the write-up of removal and re-fit. Worth reading the comments after as there's the odd bit of information.

http://www.e30zone.net/modules.php?name ... oof+lining

And here's Bumps bit on recovering.


http://www.e30zone.net/modules.php?name ... g&start=25

Well done Bigwinn and Bump. Well done the Zone

[daimlerman]

Found them.. What else should you be doing in bed on a Sunday morning whilst away from your missus..

Here is the write-up of removal and re-fit. Worth reading the comments after as there's the odd bit of information.

http://www.e30zone.net/modules.php?name ... oof+lining

And here's Bumps bit on recovering.


http://www.e30zone.net/modules.php?name ... g&start=25

Well done Bigwinn and Bump. Well done the Zone

Well dug out,Mr Bear!

That was the post I was thinking off,perhaps Mr Wiki will save it,this time round!

[spook]

Stapled mine looks like sofa lol

And it looks very tasty

[rattysecretagent]

WICKED CHEERS GUYS

[Partridge]

As the guys say above the material choice is critical. I did mine with spray glue but the new material fell away on the first damp day

I had it done a second time professionally, £150 including the material and stitching the sun roof panel. Now looks great, but the material does not have the flexibility of the original and is pulling away from the corners of the sun roof aperture. I'm not looking forward to the season as the sunroof is sticking on the thicker material and will need some easing.

[Grrrmachine]

We did already have a Headlining guide in the Wiki which covered some other aspects of removing the headline in more detail. However, I've now combined the two versions since bigwinn's thread had more detail about removing trim. I've also made a new page to document Bump's relining guide.

It's all here now:

http://www.e30zone.net/e30zonewiki/inde ... Headlining

http://www.e30zone.net/e30zonewiki/inde ... Headlining

[G-Bear]

Good work Grrrr

[daimlerman]

Thanks