As far as the door panel inserts on the first gen S coupes, the fabric is not mounted directly to the door plastic. It is adhered what I refer to as a backer board. This supports it s exact shape and gives it stiffness. It also moves the fabric forward from the door itself or shall I say outward, creating the illusion of depth when paired with the grooves in the door above and below it. It'll make more sense when I attach the backer board with the fabric to the door. Right now I can't find the glue but it is somewhere in the house.

So what you see in the pictures is me using adhesive to bond the fabric to a backer board whose shape is absolutely identical to the fabric itself. That is what everything looks like a mirror image when you would not necessarily expect it to. One is always the fabric underside, the other is the front side of the backer board. Hopefully that makes sense. When I show the final result, all you see is the surface of the fabric but the backer board has been adhered to it and vice versa.

 

This is the back of the finished headliner. It shows how to fold the fabric on the back.

This the finished headliner.

I "rebuilt" the visors, and then took them to a place for them to do the edge stitching.


The finished visors.

 

For some reason, I can't find the pictures I took after the finished headliner was installed back in my car. I'll take some pictures this weekend. Fortunately, it still looks good after almost 12 years.

 

Hey StarLady, what's the JB Weld being used for? I'm just curious as I'm PRETTY SURE you didn't use it on the fabric!

 

That looks amazing! Gives me hope to achieve a similar result. 😀

 

Glad you ask
I used the JB Weld to attach the mirror to the visor. The mirror originally has six tiny plastic posts that go into the visor. They, of course broke when I removed the mirror, so I used the JB Weld to connect them back together.

 

Door panels complete.
Final result looks better than it would look if two 10-year-olds did it so there's a plus. Impossible to line things up perfectly on your first try.

New headliner is installed, along with the trim that holds it up.
Back deck installed, took 18 seconds.

Fighting to remount the visors to the top through the headliner. The holes were aligned through the headliner at one point but there's too much funny stuff going on so I may have to take some of the trim off to adjust The headliner.

Put in 4 Polk six and a quarter " speakers to replace the other crap my nephew put in. Had the previous version of the speaker in my '97 coupe and liked it. This version is far superior. $200 for four of them is a total steal. They just sound really great in the coupes.

Which reminds me/off topic does anyone have a 1995 to 1998 Saturn OEM AM FM CD with equalizer radio for parts? I went to turn the balance **** and it crumpled in my fingers. I don't think I've touched it in 15 years so not unexpected.

Pictures of the door gluing, headliner and trim install to be posted this evening. Just need to debuzz the doors and the back deck before putting the door panels back on

 

If I was able to do it, you can do it!
I only needed help from a good friend removing the headliner from the car, carrying it, and then putting it back in. It's a tricky procedure that must be done slowly and carefully. Be careful handling it and carrying it because it's made of a pretty fragile material that could break easily. It's not made of styrofoam, but it would require the same care as handling a large piece of thin styrofoam.

I'm a bit OCD, so after I removed the old headliner fabric and smoothed the surface (scrape, sand, fill in divots, more sanding), I painted it with some white house paint I had lying around. It sucked a lot of paint, but when it was done, the surface was smooth, and it gave the whole thing a "beefier", sturdier quality. Also a little heavier.

You can do it!

 

Looking forward to the pictures!

 

So I took some pictures of my headliner, mainly to give you guys confidence that when using the right adhesive, it will last and stay in place for years (almost 12 in my case).





P.S. I got "creative" with the sunshade.