The headliner in the painted top on my 1996 CE is sagging. I never use it, but I would like to repair it myself. Do I have to remove the top material and the board it is mounted to? I read somewhere that you could cut a VERY small slit and use a tube from a WD40 can to spray adhesive under the liner without removing it. Will I have to buy a new headliner material from Eckler's or is there a chance I can remove the old liner? Thanks.

 

..i only have experience rebuilding 1 and putting it in on a 88 "clear" bronze top that didn't come with one...i

... took mine out of another vette (? yr.)...what i did is get a rather flexible putty knife and some paint sticks and start to lift the liner from the roof....

....as you do this, grab a paint stick or two to prop up under the sections that you lifted....i used my hand for the most part between the headliner and the top so i could feel how much resistance the insulation of the headliner was giving me so that i could carefully work around it to loosen it up....

...you are gonna itch for a bit like i did because of what i believe to be fiberglass.......once i removed the headliner from the donor car, i repaired the loose fiberglass with some 3-m spray adhesive (the heavy duty stuff) and put on a new backer-board and went from there...

....in your case, i mention the above so that you don't mangle the headliner.....you may be able to carefully peel the headliner material away without much damage and replace it with similar material that could be found at a fabrics shop......then, apply the new cloth where the old one was with 3-m and let it dry.....then you can fasten the backer-board with the new material back onto the "roof"...i would NOT use wd-40!....

.....there have been a few guys whom have taken foam and cut it to size, covered it as above, and fastened to the top and it looked quite well......as for me, something like that would not have the insulating qualities i need here in florida as the top gets extreemly hot!.....

 

I just did mine yesterday. Cut two little slits and using some spray adhesive and the extension sprayed glue in and resealed it. I would give it a 5 on scale of 1 to 10 and plan to have it professionally redone sometime this winter, probably in leather.