Securing the cloth of my car ceiling back to the ceiling

April 11, 2021 6:06 PM

The cloth of my car's ceiling has become detached from the foam lining (or whatever is up there). What is the cheapest way to reattach it? Duct tape has not worked. Assume I do not care what it looks like, I just don't want it blocking the back windshield.

I don't want to rip it off entirely because I'm worried about little pieces of foam raining down into my car.

posted by anonymous to Grab Bag (22 answers total)

Stapler?
posted by The otter lady at 6:08 PM on April 11, 2021 [4 favorites]

Many years ago I used safety pins and was reasonably satisfied with the results.
posted by thejoshu at 6:09 PM on April 11, 2021

You can get a spray adhesive like 3M Super 77, and spray it through a small hole then adhere it up with magnets while it dries.
posted by nickggully at 6:13 PM on April 11, 2021 [16 favorites]

Generally what happens there is that it's not actually the adhesive that's deteriorating, it's the foam itself crumbling away from the glue line. So you can spray glue it back into place for a while but it will fail again very quickly.

Cheapest way is just keep cutting off the hanging sections with scissors, cloth and foam and all. The result is quite safe but very janky.

I chose to remove the ceiling liner entirely when this happened in my car.

Perhaps you could just button it back into place, given enough little neodymium magnets.
posted by flabdablet at 6:13 PM on April 11, 2021 [9 favorites]

This happened to me fairly recently and I used a product called “headliner pins” to pin it back up. They look like pushpins with a corkscrew shape. Worked well and a cheap fix!
posted by sevensnowflakes at 6:21 PM on April 11, 2021 [16 favorites]

T-pins. Safety pins work too, but t-pins are less obvious.
posted by sacrifix at 6:24 PM on April 11, 2021 [2 favorites]

Cheapest source I know for neodymium magnets is discarded hard disk drives. Each drive will yield two flat, curved magnets from the back end of the head positioning assembly and these are wicked strong. They'd easily be up to the job of stopping a car's ceiling liner from flapping in the breeze.
posted by flabdablet at 6:25 PM on April 11, 2021 [3 favorites]

I used a syringe with some type of liquid glue or adhesive. Probably put it in a regular pattern. It might have been fabric glue because I do not thing there was a visible difference where the glue was.
posted by Short End Of A Wishbone at 6:29 PM on April 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

Gorilla glue.
Because we already had it in the house.
posted by markbrendanawitzmissesus at 6:45 PM on April 11, 2021

sevensnowflakes is correct. My neighbor had a professional re-adhere a headliner; after a year, it was down again. The pro then used the corkscrew type pins and it's worked like a charm.
posted by mightshould at 6:47 PM on April 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

You want twisty pins.

The interior ceiling fabric in most cars has a little bit of a foam backing and the fabric can separate from the backing. Twisty pins will grab into the foam and poof problem solved. I used a few packages of these to tack up the headliner in a 1980s Oldsmobile. For glamour, you can spray paint the pin heads before applying (I like sparkle glitter) and apply in a pattern to mimic cushion tufting.
posted by countrymod at 6:50 PM on April 11, 2021 [5 favorites]

I've tried staples for this and I do not recommend it. When I drove with the windows down, the wind would catch the fabric where it was still loose, and then the staples would get pulled out and fling themselves at me while I was driving.
posted by TrixieRamble at 7:01 PM on April 11, 2021 [5 favorites]

Another extremely low-tech method I've seen work is to use thin wooden dowel rod or wood strips, fashioned as ribs, bending up into the arc of the roofline. They're wedged into the plastic around the top of the door frames. You have to cut them just right to get them to work, since they have to be a little longer than the actual distance between the opposing plastic bracing. Might not work depending on the car: They need something on either side to push out against so they'll arc upwards.
posted by glonous keming at 7:03 PM on April 11, 2021 [4 favorites]

If this is not a car with small children... Little rare-earth magnets. Strong enough to stick to the steel roof. You can get 100 of them on ebay for like $10 delivered.
posted by toxic at 7:05 PM on April 11, 2021

I have successfully repaired the head liner in a 2001 Honda Civic; it had been coming unstuck and dangling down in the back of the car. I repaired it years ago -- at least five -- and the car is always parked outside in the hot sun in North Carolina. No covering, no trees. And it's still adhered!

I used a spray adhesive made to tolerate high temperatures; there are spray adhesives made specifically for car headliners, and I recommend you purchase and use one of those.

I remember I carefully taped and covered all the non-cloth surfaces (covering the entire rear window to be safe) so that I could spray it thoroughly on all the roof area that it could reach. I don't remember how saturated the foam was, unfortunately, but I believe I sprayed that roof _thoroughly_ (probably holding my breath, finishing as quickly as I could do a thorough job, and then exiting the car immediately).

I followed the instructions carefully; I don't remember what they were, but if they said spray both surfaces (cloth and roof), I'd have done that, and if they said spray the roof only, I'd have done that.

I know you said you don't care what it looks like, but this repair will actually WORK better if it's done with the same care that makes it LOOK better, so might as well do it right. It wasn't that time consuming, and the results were and are worth it.
posted by amtho at 7:21 PM on April 11, 2021

Have used both staples (like, staple gun staples, not office staples) and upholstery tacks and both worked OK. The upholstery tacks looked nicer.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:01 AM on April 12, 2021

FWIW, you can often order magnets for a few bucks on Wish.com. The problem is shipping time. This is for @flagdablet's magnet solution. Wish have plenty of sellers advertising a few hundred small magnets for free, just pay shipping.
posted by kschang at 2:40 AM on April 12, 2021

Depending on your car magnets may not work, not even of the rare earth variety, because there can be significant space between liner and roof.
posted by Mitheral at 5:26 AM on April 12, 2021

nickggully's answer is how they'd do it at an auto upholstery shop. That spray adhesive is like contact cement - you spray it on, then wait a bit for it to dry before mashing the two pieces together.
posted by Rash at 8:23 AM on April 12, 2021

Spray glue is probably the best solution, though I will warn you that, if you're trying to spray under the cloth while still up in place, the glue will end up soaking through the cloth, largely because of the tight space and inexact application.

The solution also depends on what the cloth is actually falling away from. In my car, for instance, the headliner cloth is adhered to a plastic headliner form that runs the entire length of the roof, underneath the actual metal of the roof. Thus, magnets or pins aren't going to work. The accepted repair for falling cloth on my car (an early 2000s Golf) is to remove that plastic headliner completely and remove and replace the cloth to the plastic. You'll be able to better control the spray and not soak through the cloth. I've opted to just live with dangling cloth.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:55 AM on April 12, 2021

I used about 30 powerful neodymium disc magnets in a friend's Dodge Caravan a couple years ago and they are still holding up the headliner just fine.
posted by bz at 4:42 PM on April 12, 2021

Response by poster: I could not actually get the headliner pins to screw into the roof so I ended up using tacks. We'll see if they fall out!
posted by Anonymous at 2:25 PM on April 15, 2021