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.