Video Transcript

Hi guys, I'm Sam. And I'm Nate. And in this video, we're going to install the headliner.

So, this is our headliner, 20-1103-71 charcoal tweed easy install, more appropriately named a conversion install headliner, which means from there to there, there to there, and all the way back down to the quarter windows, behind the quarter windows, this is all one piece. The main portion of the roof is one piece. So that's why they call this a one-piece headliner. It's actually one, two, three, four, five, six pieces in a one-piece head. I mean technically that is the headliner. One-piece headliner. Door post. Door post underneath the quarter window. Underneath the quarter window below the rear window. And those are the sideliners.

Sideliners, not headliners. So this isn't going to be as in-depth as the video we did on my 1971 Super Beetle. Uh, in that video I installed a whiskey unisuede headliner. And this one, it's the same exact pattern headliner, the same exact process. We've got almost a 20-minute video on the installation. This is going to be kind of a we're going to do this piece and then it's going to be in. Although I'm going to try to have Nathan do most of this work. I'll show him how to do one side, he can do the other, yada yada yada. I am going to help him out as much as possible because a headliner is not an easy job. However, doing a headliner in cloth is a heck of a lot easier than doing a headliner in vinyl. I can tell you that from experience, having done multiples of both, doing a vinyl headliner is much more difficult.

With that being said, we're going to get started with the door posts. These are the first pieces to go in. There is this little piece of wind lace that's sewn into the door posts. They're left and right. They're virtually identical. They've got a longer side on one end than the other. That longer side you want at the bottom. Doing the wind lace pieces—this lip and this edge. Most importantly, that flat edge needs to come in behind that metal gripper, making sure that that piece is set. So, I'm going to work on this one. Yep. Right there. That little lip needs to go in behind that little tooth. It's like a P almost. Yep.

Once that's in place, then we can roll the headliner around, screw it down the post, and it'll set here, and this will get overlapped by our roof piece. So, we're going to get to work on that. So, we got the door posts. We have the material tucked into the door jamb there and around the back side. You can see that P is held in behind the clips there. Now, you can come in with a hammer and just tap them all flat all the way down. You can tap all that side that you want, buddy. Now, you can do the other side, too.

What do you think, Nate? Uh, looks interiory. Looks interiory. All right, Nathan, have you got both sides done? Yeah. So you can see what it looks like on the outside. Nice trimmed edge all the way down. Material will pull over and wrap around the inside. And so that means we got to go through and glue everything up and down both these posts, the back sides, both sides. Get to it. Yeah.

Both sides in. Note that around the quarter windows, don't just wrap it all over and then come in and cut right here. Cut the material first and then fold it. And then specifically if you're dealing with pop out windows, make certain to cut the material back just around here, but on the inside because this is where the hinge for our pop out window is going to install. We don't want to take a razor knife or a razor blade and cut into the paint right here because that's a perfect spot for rust to start developing. So cut before and then fold.

Nate, we got that side done. Yep. And we have this side done. And now we get to align our headliner bows. We have put them in the roof where they go. And then because they are new headliner bows, we're going to have to insert it. Note how far it sticks in, run it across, and then cut it on that side. We have our headliner set in place on top of the car. This will tell us about where to insert our bows in the roof because the roof is not the same width from front to back. So, we'll put our headliner bows in the roof, run it across one side, note how far it sticks in on this side, make a mark out of it on that side, and then trim the excess on that side. Sound fun? Yeah. All right, let's do it.

So, this side was stuck in. This was at the edge of the roof right here on the opposite side. And it stuck in that far. So, I'm going to take in roughly four fingers. I made a mark here on this side at the edge of the roof. So, I'll go pinky, four fingers, and I'll just go a little bit shorter. So, I'm going to cut this right here to length. And this is our front bow. I'm going to take it, insert it into the headliner. So, we've got all of our trimmed headliner bows covered with headliner bow caps. Now, we're going to bundle up our headliner and then hang up all the rods there and there. And then we're going to center the headliner from here to there.

Making sure that we have enough material on that flap right there to cover from the rear window to the quarter window. And we want to make sure that our headliner is centered left to right in the car. Sound good, Nate? You getting tired, Nate? Yeah. What time did you go to bed, Nate? I don't know. All right. Well, probably like 12ish. 12ish? Good lord. No wonder you slept until like 10:00. Not 10. 9. I'm sorry. Let's go put this headliner in, buddy.

So, we've got our headliner just temporarily clipped at the back. We've got our piece of pinch weld from this pop out window. Run across the front just to get that thing set so we can get kind of our general bow spacing set apart. What do you think, Nate? It looks amazing. It looks amazing. And it's not even in. It's better than the bare roof. So, anyway, you can see where the bows are just kind of set in the sides up above the pad. And now we're going to pull off our pinch weld. We're going to spray glue that front edge right there. And once that's set, we'll work over to our door jambs. And we'll just keep on working all the way back to get all the headliner in. Yeah. So much fun.

Work continues. Nathan's getting the sun visors in, the rearview mirror in. Trying to—yeah, it ain't easy trying to find those little holes after the headliner's installed. I've got the headliner in place against the top side of the door jamb. Now working on this side and then I'll work from that corner down into the quarter window. Same thing on here and then we'll keep on working towards the back. All in all, we're getting there.

Did you lose glues or screw or you still trying to find the hole? Still trying to find—well, I found them. I just know that I'm trying to put them back in. That's the fun part. All right, carry on. Final stretch. Just got to work on from here down to the top of here. Try not to glue anything in between. You want kind of a smooth panel between the quarter window opening and the top of the fender though. You don't want to have it like formed to the body. You want to kind of actually have it floating. Yeah. Like stretch into place. Just around all the corners, not like actually on the panel.

Cut out here for our pop out window. And then we also have our seat belt pole is up in here somewhere as well. Right there. I want to say it's a good thing we cut the foam out of those areas cuz it was a pain. It's as hard as you find more holes for sun visors and visor clips and stuff like that. But Nathan eventually found them. We eventually—we're getting there. So, I'm going to keep on working down here and then we can button up the bottom side here and the bottom side here and we can call it a night cuz it's almost 8:00. But at least for the night, the headliner should be done. Tomorrow we'll get the carpet kits, quarter panels, we'll get the rear seat back in, windows, stuff of that nature. We're getting there. At least we'll have the bulk of the headliner done tonight, if not all of the headliner done tonight. And then we can put the windows and stuff in tomorrow. Yeah.

Well, Nathan, what do you think? It looks a million times better. It's not just hush mat and dirt and grime and junk and nothing. It's a full charcoal tweed headliner. Yeah. I mean, if you just don't look like below there. It looks like it's a perfect interior. We're getting there. Pardon me. I'm beat. It's 9:00 at night. I'm up past my bedtime. I got to get up at 6 o'clock tomorrow. So do you. You're a lot younger than I am. So anyway, we finished up by double wrapping our material here. I didn't wrap the edges there cuz it's going to get covered by carpet, but TMI actually binds the edges of that tweed material. They do it on these, too, but it's a little bit too long. And they sew the edges so that it's all actually a finished edge, which looks really cool.

Mhm. You got all the headliner done. Like I've always wondered how the heck there's like little like things there and like how it really stays up anyways. But now I know. Now you know. There's a bunch of little bows up there holding that headliner up to the roof. I think it came out pretty darn good, buddy. Yeah. Is it perfect? No. But then again, it's a heck of a lot better than it was. Yep. It's about as perfect as the paint is. Well, it's actually more perfect than the paint, but it's fine.

So, with this, what are you going to do? Hush mat. Hush mat. Hush mint. Hush. Yep. We got to hush mat all these rear areas. Nathan's gonna work on that tonight while I go get showered and go to bed. But yeah, hush mat from there to there. Hush mat the fender wells and hush mat that entire rear luggage shelf down to the floor pan. So above the body bolts and everything else. Yeah. Up into that. Yeah. Well, up into this seam. Yeah.

So with that, Nathan, we've got a headliner in the car. Yeah. It looks amazing. Did you figure you learned something? Yeah. I didn't know a lot of the stuff that I now know. Yep. Do you think you could do one on your own next time—with my help. Yeah. With help. Yeah. So, that's the important part. Kind of a cool come around. My first Beetle that I actually installed a headliner was actually before I met your mom. Her uncle helped me install my first headliner and it was this exact same color headliner. So, kind of the way the world spins back around, we installed this same headliner in your car.

So, with that, I'm Sam. And I'm Nate. And you too can install a headliner if you're patient. Life's full of good people. If you can't find one, be one. Later, guys.