The Crusty Cuda: Whole lotta Shakin' (N96) Goin' on!

[njsteve]

Working towards finishing the week-long headliner project, today but ran in to problems with the crappy reproduction sail panels. The original pressboard sail panels have several compound curves to go around the interior of the C pillar. And it has a bracket for a door panel style clip in the center to hold it against the interior C pillar frame. Of course the repro panels are a flat piece of cardboard with a two-sided taped square to hold the door panel clip in. The fabric is glued onto the cardboard. And as expected, about two seconds after you engage the clip into the C pillar frame, it rips right out of the cardboard, which does not conform to the contours of the C pillar area.

So that was $60 down the drain. I tried peeling off the fabric from the repro panels and then gluing it onto the original pressboard sail panels after removing the original black fabric. But the cardboard delaminated and half of it separated with the fabric and wouldn't peel away cleanly. I tried anyway. No luck - it was a wrinkle-fest and even with steam and an iron I could not get the twists and wrinkles out.

So I contacted the manufacturer of the sail panels and bought two yards of the white headliner material to attempt to recover the original panels myself.

So here is the progress and the current semi-finished result.

Lucky I had the Lincoln's hood to spread the headliner out on. Whole lotta wrinkles in that folded up fabric.