13O OUR SHED
GT, THE HEADLINER WRANGLER, AND MORLEY GETS REAL WHEELS
UNLIKE MOST cars of its era t hat reta ined traditiona l cut and-stitched headliners, my 1982 Mitsubishi GJ Sigma had a hard-shelled headliner. A moulded shell (probably a mix of paper mache and sy nthetic glue) had v inyl bonded to it; more than likely the whole shebang had been offered into t he car t hrough a windscreen aperture and f i xed in place before t he glass was insta lled on t he Adelaide assembly line.
Great idea – and one that most manufacturers were using by the 1990s – but the problem with my shed-find Sigma was t he fact t hat despite good care, t he f ine foam backing on the v inyl had perished with age, a llow ing t he large sheet of v inyl to drop into t he cabin… right onto my head. To get t he Sigma road-lega l af ter I’d bought it interstate, I’d removed the droopy v inyl, leav ing just t he cardboard-coloured hardbacked shell in place.
But of course, wit h t he rest of t he car look ing so splendid (isn’t t hat such a lovely, beige-y, Sig ma-y word?) I was ver y keen to replace t he headliner before someone at a Cars & Coffee event noticed t his disgracef ul state of af fa irs.
With time-warp cars such as t his, I do like t hings to be close to original but as explained by my trimmer Dani, re-insta lling an era-correct headlining might be challenging as the foam-backed v inyl used by Mitsubishi didn’t appear in any of her trimmers’ supply cata log ues. The next-best-t hing was to use
automotive-grade foambacked velour of a similar colour – arg uably a better choice in a car cabin as it is lighter and absorbs sound.
Mitsubishi’s body design holds t he headliner shell around its edges: a lloy trim pieces run t he leng t h of the car above the doors to hold t he sides and – as I discovered - a few judiciously placed hidden clips held t he front and rear edges adjacent to t he screens. After removing hardware such as the grab- handles, sun-v isors and interior light (and lay ingback t he front seats for extra working space) I caref ully unclipped t hese trims
– t hey’re designed to be insta lled, not uninsta lled ! – a llow ing t he headliner shell to be lowered into t he cabin.
But how do I get the headliner shell out of t he car, without removing a windscreen? The tape measure showed the shell was j-u-u-st narrow enough to f it t hrough a door - diagona lly from t he top of t he B pilla r to t he base of t he A-pilla r - so by turning t he headlining left and down, it could be gent ly massaged out t he passenger front door.
What a mission! After I delivered it, trimmer Dani did her thing on t he headliner shell, adhering a soft, foambacked, beige velour to it before I squeezed it back in t hrough t he lef t-f ront door and re-insta lled a ll t he trick y clips and trims.
The f inished job is, of course, hardly noticeable… Unlike when I bought the car and the headlining was hanging almost in my face !
“WHEN I BOUGHT THE CAR THE HEADLINING WAS ALMOST HANGING IN MY FACE”