Headliner Installation

[SOMDTD]

I’m about to install the headliner (yaaa!).  The Hymnal says to “round over the edges of the foam using a 1/2 round over router bit”.  Tried that on a inconspicuous test piece and it looked horrible. The cut surface has a sort of torn look to it, not smooth at all.  I had the router bit set up in a drill press turning at 3000 RPM.  Does a high speed router turning at 20,000 RPM do a better job?  My router bit the dust a couple of weeks ago so haven’t tried cutting at high speed yet.

Tried hand sanding and that was bad too. The only thing that gave me a smooth surface was the bench belt sander, but that’ll be hard to make a even round over with.

It’ll be interesting working with contact cement.  When it grabs, it’s DONE, so pre-fitting and carefull placement is my going in approach.

[derek0]

I am quite a long way from installing my headliner kit, but I will do some experimenting on it using the small trim router I bought for this project and report back.  (Anything to keep me from working on those ill-fitting doors, which have been laying around since last November!)

[daveR]

SOMDTD,
I too am at the headliner stage. I was hesitant to use the router on the foam, but set up the router table and used a 1/2″ roundover bit with the bearing guide at the top of it. The bearing guide and the router table fence allow you to set it up so the foam can’t get sucked in too far. It worked fine although some of the small points have been a challenge. The general rounded edge is smooth. I do think it is a result of a new bit and the 25000 rpm of the router. 3000 rpm will just chop up that edge, not make it smooth-time for a new router.
I’m concerned about using that contact cement-very unforgiving! I’ll keep you posted.

[SOMDTD]

Thanks.  Bought a quart can of contact cement today, no idea if that’s enough but it ought to be close.  Let me know how it goes!

 

don

[tomtnt]

I was a bit impatient when doing the contact cement – didn’t let it dry enough so actually, it never had that instant bonding.  Instead, I use a heat gun to heat up both surfaces to dry the contact cement.  I still had 3-4 seconds to move the pieces around if the initial alignment wasn’t perfect.

for rounding over the edges, I used sandpaper and hand sanded the edge. worked well enough.

I’m really glad I bought the headliner.. looks great and does a great job of eliminating condensation…we went camping and there was quite a bit of condensation on the window but none on the headliner material.

 

[SOMDTD]

I bit the bullet and bought a new router and set it up on a piece of 3/4 plywood as a router table, albeit a little makeshift.  Did a couple of pieces and it worked well enough.  I think I am going to put in a fence though, the foam is soft and running the edge using the round over router bit bearing and getting it perfectly consistent is trickey freehand.   The fence will help a good deal with that, for strait edge pieces at least.

[daveR]

The router fence works great for the straight edges, and going slow on the curves without the fence works pretty well. Some touch up with sand paper softens some of the imperfect lines that are inevitable. Because I’m building the teardrop in one bay of a 3 car garage in central New York, heat is my big challenge (2.7F yesterday am). I put my 6 brooder lights with 75 watt bulbs (as per “shop tips”) inside the camper. That keeps the interior easily over 60 degrees. With a table set up to lay out just the side pieces (for one door side only) that I previously eased the edges of, I heated up the garage with the kerosene space heater and got the temp up to 70. I have to shut down the heater to keep from blowing the garage up-very dense fumes from that cement-glad I have a good respirator! I then put one coat of contact cement on all the liner pieces and a coat on the one interior side. I discovered it took 3 coats of contact cement on the foam to get good adhesion. I crawled in and installed the one side-managed to get them all on okay with only one spot not quite as nice as I would have liked it. That contact cement is totally unforgiving! I am not looking forward to doing all the front and overhead pieces. It sure does look nice though-really makes the door sill, door and bulkhead stand out. We’re heading for a stretch of fairly warm weather so I’ll tackle the rest in the next few days. I’ll send a pict if I can figure out how to do that.

[daveR]

Well, I got the rest of the headliner in. It is quite challenging and the cramped quarters don’t help much. I did remember a technique that I have used for laminate work and contact cement that really helped. If, after the contact cement has TOTALLY dried on the camper shell and the headliner, cover the glued surface of the headliner (every square inch) with a sheet of newspaper and leave some protruding out an inch or so. Then you can fit the piece of headliner into the spot it belongs and carefully line up the critical edges-the newspaper will not stick to either surface. Once it is in place and you are happy with how everything is, tilt the headliner back just enough to start slowly pulling out the newspaper. As you pull it out, apply pressure to the newspaper free areas to get them to stick. Continue pulling the newspaper out until that panel is secure. Go slow and careful and it works quite well.
I gluded one camper panel and the corresponding headliners at a time and went slow. I also dry fit the pieces with the newspaper in place to get a feel for issues I might have before I committed to the glue.
I did discover that the 2 “L” pieces that fit around the top hatch were a bit skimmpy-the trim piece may not be big enough to cover the remaining gap. I think I can patch it and I doubt it will ever be noticed.
Best of luck!

[JakeM]

I installed my headliner today.  Looks good except for one little gap that I might try to fill in with an extra sliver of foam.

I used DaveR’s method with the newspaper and it was very effective.  I rolled 2 coats of contact cement on the foam and 1 coat on the inside of the teardrop.

[Author]

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