Autopendium :: stuff about old cars

Tags: headliner interior restoration trimming

OK -- at long last the Amazon's interior is DONE. Mike and co at Auto Interiors out near Heathrow did a great job rescuing the job that the last muppet did, and though there are one or two things I'm just going to have to live with, overall, I'm pretty pleased with it.

The main leather (seats, door panels etc) have been done in a burgundy leather, with piping and details (e.g. gearstick/handbrake gator, parcel-shelf) in a dark blue leather. I've also had parts of the boot (trunk) done in the dark blue, and this, together with the tightly woven grey carpet works really well there.

The carpet's actually from MAH in Germany, and is the same sort of thing used in Porsches. It's a really tight weave, very hardwearing, and looks great too, in a puposeful, non-pretty way.

The remaining problem was the headliner, which was a bit of a struggle. The main problem, apart from the fiddliness of it was finding a good pattern from which to work, not helped by the fact that Volvo seemed to have changed the design in the mid-50s. What we'd got (out of my Amazon) was a set of metal 'spines', together with the liner itself.

Unfortunately the order seemed to be incorrect, and there were no 'boots' to fit over the end. Worse, the design seemed to be different to most headliners and in fact the other Amazon headliners we looked at in situ. Those had dog-legs at the end of the spiners, with biggish plastic boots and fitted in holes in channels just above the windows.

The spines from my car were missing the boots completely, and, more troubling, were a different shape -- there was no dog leg on the ends, even the holes where there on the body. This was turning into another massive hunt, as one supplier after another failed to have any headliner sets we could use as a template.

Finally, after a search on the web, I came up with the incredibly nice Classic Volvos, who were breaking a 122S. They agreed to take the headliner out for a very reasonable price, and did a great job ensuring that none of the rubber boots were lost.

Long story short it turned out to be the same sort as mine, but with everything there and in the right order, it made fitting the new scived leather headliner at least possible, if not easy.

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