Putting in a headliner metro 4 door
Just a long post on all who suffer from a dropping headliner.
While I have Metros in the family with upwards of 312k miles, my newest 2001 with 62k dropped its headliner low enough that it was touching my head while I was driving.
I read every post on the net on replacing/mickeymousing/or patching them none sounded useful.
So I went to a wrecking yard and pulled one out, just to see how hard it was.
Many pick-a-part places charge only about 10 bucks for a headliner.
Sadly, the only good headliner locally was taken the day before, leaving a bunch of rough ones.
I priced all the materials to do it myself and it would cost about 30 bucks for two yards of fabric, about 15 bucks for the glue. I only needed a fraction over a yard but they sell it by the yard.
So I stopped by a local small upholstery shop. He offered to cover it with light gray ¼ inch foamed fabric for 50 dollars if I brought the cardboard roof to him.
Sold.
It took him about an hour and it looks fine .The original had 1/8 inch foam so it’s a little more ‘plush’ now.
Short how to;
Remove all the screw items. That’s the sun visors, the sun visors end holders, any door ‘grab bars’ and the side clothing hook.
These are all Phillips. You will need a very small blade to flip open the grab straps (if equipped) you open them from the side and end. They are part of the grab strap at the bottom, near the door and open out to let you get at the screws.
The later Metro’s don’t come stock with them, instead they push in big round pins. These are a bear to remove as they want to break off rather than pull out. You can untwist them as while they are press in pins they are pressed into threaded holes that the grab bars bolt to.
On a side note, you can replace them with older grab bars. Rather than put the six useless pins back I put in three grab bars from a 96. I like having the grab bars, I don’t think Chevy should have dropped them.
There are two push pins at the rear of the ceiling. Take them out gently as you may want to re-use them. Chevy or Suzuki can probably sell you new ones but they can be ridiculously expensive for new plastic around here.
There is another slightly smaller push pin at the front near either the passenger or drivers side sun visor end clip. I’ve found the pin on either side, but not on both. The holes in the roof are on either side. Don’t know what criteria, if any, caused the pin to be put in one side or the other.
I suppose you could get another pin and put one in either side…
The dome light is held on with two 8mm nuts.
Open the glove box all the way (press in on each side of the plastic at the back to pivot the box out and hang it down out of the way. No need to pull the two screws out.
Empty it first…
The dome light wire is in there somewhere to the right, probably tangled with the air bag wires. Be careful of those.
The dome light wire has foam anti-rattle around the clip that lets you disconnect it.
You could also just pull the dome light fuse.
The dome light metal back has a plug you can disconnect at the light. There is a LOT of dome light wire under the cardboard headliner.
With all the screws and plastic plugs out you still need to GENTLY pull the six pillar plastic pieces free at the top. You don’t have to remove them, just pop the clips loose.
On these clips; They use the common plastic shafts with metal clips method of retention.
That is a plastic blade with a spring steel clip slid on the blade, then pushed into a slot. The metal spring piece likes to stick in the slot. You need to pull them out, all of them. Be sure you have them all. Then you just slide them onto the plastic blade before pushing it back together. DON’T leave them in the slots, and try to push the blades back on. They will often break if you do that.
Getting them out of the holes involves using your fingernails or a tool. Lots of luck, they like to get under the nails. Painfully.
So with all six pillars covers pulled back at the top, the visors and grabs etc. somewhere safe, the top is only held by some silicon glue they drooled over the cardboard before pushing the top up there. This stuff will have hardened but wants to grip the cardboard. On the Metro (96) that I practiced on, it was almost all loose. On the Chevy 2001 it was still gripping tightly and they used a LOT of it.
While on the Geo I was able to GENTLY break it loose, moving from one corner to another wiggling the headliner, tugging down slowly and finally pushing my hands up there to wedge it apart, on the Chevy it was too reluctant. I considered heat from my heat gun, but finally just used a long metal ruler to gently pry between the silicon and the cardboard till it dropped. Took much longer on the Chevy, about five to ten minutes of wiggle, pull, poke and pry till it dropped on the seats.
You do not have to pull the seats just tip them forward when you go to take the headliner out of the trunk. An assistant helps, just someone to press the back of the rear seat down to lower it. This is to improve the angle to ease the headliner out the trunk. There are a couple wide places at the end that make it slightly harder to slip out, but really, it’s pretty easy.
After the guy covered it I used latex gloves so I didn’t get it smudged up putting it back in. He made the holes for the sun visors and the dome light. I made the holes for the screws using a sharp awl and being careful to put them exactly through the center of the holes in the cardboard, and ONLY on the holes you are actually using. There are other holes that you MIGHT use on different bodies so be careful you only use the ones you are actually mounting through.
Putting it in was time consuming but pretty straight forward.
I used GE silicone beaded fairly thick to replace the stuff the factory used.
Total cost was under 60 bucks and that included upgrading the foam and adding three wrecking yard grab bars.
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hope somebody gets some use from the post.
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