Following a ‘successful’ day on the little Landcruiser LJ70 yesterday (i.e. got some jobs done and didn’t kill myself), I had another day at work on it today. Top of the list was the saggy headliner.
I’d bought in the Wurth spray glue especially, so all that was needed was to get the headliner tray out, separate the liner and backing and reglue it. Sounds really easy if you say it fast.
Getting out out was easy enough. Starting at the back, I took off the rear door aperture surrounds and pulled the glued edge off the body. I went along the roof inside, undoing the push-in clips and taking down the Toyota’s trim bits, grab handles and so on. The front was busy, with roof switches and visors etc, but in the end all that was left was the windscreen. Once that was out, I unglued the front edge, pulled out the side clips holding the tray up and it all came down easily enough. No injuries so far apart from a very sore eye following all the underside dirt that fell into it yesterday. Yes I was wearing glasses.
I took the liner into the kitchen to reglue it on the kitchen table – biggest flat surface we have. Problem number one was leaving the stapled edges in place front and rear. Really if I was keeping this thing, I would have bought a funky print to reline the roof, undone all the stapled edges and trimmed it up in surf or sari fabric, but I am selling it so I left the staples in and just aimed at reglueing as much of it as possible (so not the tighter curves).
The other side was done in smaller sections and stretching it much less. It worked quite well until I got to the centre part on the other side, when I decided to cut it. And myself. Thumb plastered, I made the best of a bad job and smoothed it out. I was learning fast now, so I pulled the rest of the first side off again and redid it. Came up almost perfect. Not bad considering the cloth is 20 years old. Moral of the story: DO NOT CUT IT.
I reattached the side trims (another PITA of job) and began putting it back in the truck. A few hours later (and with help from my neighbour), I reinstalled the front screen and it was done. Not brilliant but not bad – it should clean up OK and looks better than it did. I would happily redo this job in a nice funky fabric and will be keeping an eye out for something suitably off the wall for my project 911.
Last job of the day was to reinstall the towbar – more dirt but looks OK now it is on.
