Replaced DeLorean headliner w/ new fiberglass backing

As part of my DeLorean's interior overhaul, I chose to replace my car's headliner. I had replaced the headliner on the doors back in 2013, which I briefly mentioned in this post. At the time, the front and rear headliner in between the doors was still holding up fine and didn't need to be replaced. But both of those pieces had started to show their age and were starting to come loose in a couple of places. Also, the original backing material had started to lose its correct shape, so rather than messing with that fiber board material again, I bit the bullet and bought a new headliner set with fiberglass backing material. 

I wasn't sure which color to go with on my car, but I contacted DMCH and they willingly sent me a swatch with color samples. I ordered the dark gray set and it soon arrived.

When I opened the package, I discovered that the color I was sent was much darker than what I had in the swatch, and sent the vendor an email with a picture of the new headliner with the two swatch colors I still had:

The swatch color on the left is what matched what I had in my car, and the light gray was for cars with light gray carpets. The folks at DMCH informed me that in the time between them sending me the color swatches and placing my order, their supplier discontinued the dark gray they were using and they had to switch to the next closest color. 

I was super bummed as I was hoping to keep the original dark gray color I had, but I didn't love the lighter gray color either. I also didn't want to go through the hassle of a return, especially with such a large box that it came in. They tried to make it right and provided a 20% discount refunded back to me, which was good of them. 

Removing the old headliner is pretty straightforward. The door headliners pop right out when you pry or pull on them. The center headliners require a bit more finesse. You have to remove the sun visors, held in by a couple of screws, remove the front interior courtesy light, remove the door weatherstripping where it holds on the headliner material, and then slide the whole headliner so that they are released from the bracket holding them in place. I made sure to document the correct wiring of the courtesy light so I'd be sure to hook it back up correctly:

My headliner left behind a bunch of glue residue where it meets the weatherstripping that I ended up scraping off with a razor blade. Here's what it looked like after I took out the headliner:

Once I got my headliner removed from inside the car, I was happy I chose to replace instead of simply recover them due to the state of the old backing material. Here's a look at the original backing material that is made of a type of fiber board:

The headliner was out of my car for nearly a year while I worked on various things inside the car, including bolting down the roof box, restoring the original dashboard, restoring the fuse box area, installing a new radio head unit, fixing the bottom of one of the seats, and restoring the AC unit and heater box assembly. The headliner was one of the last things that I put back in after reassembling the interior.

Before I installed the new headliner, I found that one of the headliner screw brackets was extremely rusty, so I decided to drill out the rivets and refinish it by sandblasting and paint. Here is what I discovered it looked like before I removed it:

Here's how it turned out after refinishing it and putting it back in the car with new rivets:

Going back further in time, when I removed the sun visors for the first time, I also found that the metal brackets that the sun visors swivel around were pretty corroded as well, so I pulled them out to refinish them. I couldn't find any "before" pictures, but here they are in the process of being refinished and when I went to reinstall them into the sun visors:

 

 

One thing I was not aware of before I went to install the new headliner was what a pain in the butt it would be to get the sun visor screws to line up with the brackets. It took a lot of trial and error before I finally was able to get all four of them put back in.

 The new fiberglass headliner comes with plenty of extra material around all of the edges, which allows you to make sure to get them installed just the right way. Here's a look at some of the extra material that I had poking around the weatherstripping as I was installing them:

The color of the new headliner doesn't match my sun visor color, but I think I'll be okay with that difference. The dark headliner doesn't feel nearly as dark as I thought it would when I first compared it to the color swatch. I love how the shape of the headliner has been fixed with the new fiberglass backing and I suspect that this will hold up for a very long time.

Fixed DeLorean center console brackets

 I had removed most of the interior of the car to work on things like the dashboard, A/C unit, radio, etc. and when I went to reinstall the center console, I was surprised to see how loose the brackets were that attach the console to the underbody. Here's a quick video showing how loose the rivets had become over time:

I also found a previous repair someone had done to one of the bracket mounts that was missing a rivet, but was held on by an adhesive. I knew it wouldn't hold it very well and decided to fix that while I was in there.

To replace it, I needed to get access to the other side of the panel, so I peeled back the center console cover and got enough room to fit the rivet gun down in there to put in a new rivet:

Once I had that done, I glued back the console cover material. I then drilled out and replaced all of the loose bracket rivets and put in some new ones that held it much more securely. Here's the after:

I then put the console back in the car after letting the glue dry for a day and it went back in without any trouble.

Restoring DeLorean jack retaining strap

Years ago, I discovered that the strap that wraps around the tool kit and jack bag in the front of the trunk had hardened and was snapped in half. Upon further inspection, I found out that it was very crispy and would crack and break even more if I tried to bend it.

I set it aside for years, but then recently rediscovered it in a cupboard in the garage and I decided to see if I could find new material to remake it. After a bit of searching online, I came across some rubber strips that I could get in a size close to the original, without an adhesive on either side, and then cut it down length and width wise to get it to how I needed it. I found a roll on Amazon titled "Solid Rubber Strips 1/8 (.123)" Thick X 1" Wide X 10' Long. Here's a link that may or may not work in the future.

I bought them several months ago and decided to tackle this today. I first measured how wide the original strap was and cut the new rubber strip down to match that after seeing how much length I needed.

I then used pliers and a flat head screwdriver to remove the staple-like things holding the old ends together and used a small pick to put holes in the right places on the new rubber strip before swapping them over. 

I then used a hole punch for a hole in the middle for the retaining bracket to attach to it. It all came together nicely.

Here it is all done, then installed in the car. It wasn't a hard or long job, but I just never made it a priority to take care of it. On to the next project.

The saga of removing, restoring, and installing a DeLorean dashboard

My original DeLorean dashboard has had a large crack since before I purchased the car in 2011. The crack went from the corner of the glove box to the windshield, which was unfortunate as that was really the only major blemish. There were a handful of other minor imperfections from the last 40+ years, but I hadn't really made it a priority to fix this until I decided to dive into a big interior overhaul. Here are some photos of the original dash:

I purchased a reproduction dashboard from DMCH for $299. These dashes are an economical way to get a dash that is cosmetically better than the cracked original, but they are all plastic. I knew others that had railed against these plastic reproductions, but my understanding was that their biggest gripes came from discoloration from the plastic from over-tightening the nuts securing the dash to the underbody. What I didn't anticipate was that the screws holding on the glove box lid would also be screwing into the plastic, which doesn't have nearly the same holding strength as the metal frame on the original dash. 

I removed the dash as part of an overall larger project, which involved restoring the AC unit assembly, new A/C lines, new headliner, etc. which I have written about previously. If I were going into this only to remove the dashboard, it would still be quite a bit of work as the center console has to come out, as well as the binnacle, glove box, and knee pads. I already had all of those out to get to the A/C unit assembly, so removing the remaining nuts holding on the dash was pretty straightforward. The hardest nut to remove was in the center of the dash, the one being closer to the windshield. It's just a stretch to reach it and kind of a tight area when the A/C unit assembly is in the car. 

The other nuts are all accessible when lying on your back on the floor with the seats removed. Removing the nuts holding the speakers on can be tricky to get to as well, but it just takes a little patience and a deep socket. 

Here it is after I got the dash out:

Here are some pics of what the plastic reproduction dashboard looks like:

I drilled out the pop rivets on the VIN plate on the original dash and installed the VIN plate on the new reproduction dash. Putting the dash in the car was pretty straightforward with some wiggling to get it to seat correctly. Here it is in the process of getting installed:

As soon as I installed the glove box lid, I knew that I wasn't going to be happy with the reproduction dashboard. I just couldn't get a secure enough fit with the plastic frame being all that I could screw into. This made it so that the glove box lid sat higher than before and I couldn't get the lid to consistently close seamlessly like it used to on the original dash. It's not super obvious in the photos, but this is how the glove box lid sat after I got it installed as best as I could, which I wasn't happy with.

You can also see a metal plate in front of the glove box, which is a new support bracket that I also installed to give that section some more rigidity and strength. Here's a front view of it installed:

I had another DeLorean owner that had successfully restored my rear interior quarter panel cover using a vacuum form method he has mastered. He had also used this same method to restore several original DeLorean dashboards, so I reached out to him and got my original dash packaged up and shipped to him for him to restore mine. It cost over $1500 with shipping costs, but he did an excellent job and I got it back within a few weeks. 

He was great about sending me updates and pictures along the way. Here it is during the stripping process to reveal the black foam underneath:

The original foam typically has some voids that never showed through. I was sent this photo showing one of those foam voids:

Here it is completely stripped:

 

A new layer of foam was then put on to build it up and have a perfect surface for the new material.

 

The dried foam was then sanded down and new speaker sections were glued into place:

The new material was then glued and trimmed out:

 

 

The speaker holes then had the holes punched in them:

                                           

Here are the pictures I got with it all completed:

Knowing I was going to get my perfect, original dash back, I was more than happy to undo all of the work I had just done in getting the reproduction dash in my car and happily removed it. I took off my VIN tag and put it back on the original dash. Here are some pics of my restored original dash after I got it back and during the process of securing the VIN tag:

I was very excited to get it back in the car and put it in the same day that I opened up the box. It went in extremely well, like it wanted to go back home. I'll be putting the rest of the interior together in the coming weeks, but here it is installed and ready for another 40 years:

The look and feel and the texture of the material used to recover the dash are extremely close to the original. I'm excited to get this put back together and back on the road. I'll see if anyone is interested in purchasing the reproduction dashboard, but I won't hold my breath.