Ok, it's been a bit of time since I've worked/posted on this part of the car. I've had it on the road for a couple of weeks now, so far so good. Will be doing some work on AC replacing an evap temp sensor and brakes, but I thought I would catch up on what has been done so far with the headliner job.

Last week I was able to recover the sliding panel as well as the B pillar pieces. Now the A and B pillars are in the car, only thing left I have to do is the C pillars and am not anxious to do that since I know they will be a bear and probably won't come out as well as I would like them too. But maybe I'll be surprised..

So here is what the A pillar looks like:



And here is the B:



I did not capture the sequence to recover the B pillars, but one thing to note was that I popped out the sliding part for the belt and then used some blue tape to cover the plastic that it slides in from overspray with the contact adhesive. When I had the outside done, I removed some of the foam in the middle and then cut the window and glued the edges back around to make a nice smooth opening. Came out fairly well.

For the sunroof panel, I debated over whether to order the new louvers since for sure these would be destroyed if I tried to pop them out first. I decided to leave them in and cover over them with the material since they were pretty well flush and the foam would hide them fairly effectively. I initially covered them with paper to shield them from glue, I'd rather it just sat on top. If you do yours and feel the need, they cost about 40 bucks each and more power to ya, but I have to cut costs somewhere. This material does breathe fairly well so there will be air movement even covered up.

Here is the board with the material glued on but edges not doubled over yet. I am removing the foam backing so I can get it down tight.



Blue tape on the rub strip, other edges already glued:




All edges glued, cutting out the foam so I get a tight fit for the handle:







Finished product:



Gotta fix the issue with the sunroof motor first before I put the panel in. Don't want to risk having the roof open and no way to close it. Car sits outside all year long so it has to stay dry.

 

I just did one of these last summer for my daughter's C220. The original foam backing of the vinyl headlining had decomposed into a nasty sticky orange colored goo that would contaminate everything it touched. My biggest problem was getting all that goo off the parts before it could be recovered. Lots of scraping. I found that a citrus based cleaner "orange clean" or somethng like that, dissolved it better than anything. That goo even got into the roof cavity and contaminated the newly covered sunroof cover when I was reassembling it.

Another thing that caused a contamination/soiling problem was the black adhesive from the black cloth electrical wrap on the various wiring harness sections. That stuff was also gooey and caused a number of black stains that had to be removed with the orange clean and some mineral spirits.

 

Looks very nice.

 

This may be the final update unless there are any questions. I finally got around to covering the C pillars this last week. As much as I would have liked to cover them with one piece of fabric, I could not get it to work where it would have bunched up in the concave section on either side. If you give it the slack on one side, the other side would look terrible. My seamstress friend talked about laying it down on the bias, in other words 45 degrees from the direction the direction the cloth is made in (top to bottom, side to side), but there was little to no extra give to make up for the difference. I even tried to use a piece without any of the foam backing, it is fairly easy to peel it off, and I did use that technique in several spots to gain some clearance, such as the B pillars opening for the seat belt slider. But that didn't look good either.

So, to take a woodworking truism, I "celebrated the joint" by making the covering in two parts and then folding over one edge so I had a fairly neat finished edge that followed the line of the panel. Maybe a pro could do it better, but its all mine and I'm fairly happy with the result and it's mostly done except for putting the sun roof panel back in and sorting out the motor issues. I'll save that for a day where I can get an early start and not worry about rain. Here is what the C pillar looks like installed:





This is to show the problem area of the panel, no way to cover it without the fabric bunching up and looking lousy.




Hope this all helps the next guy brave enough to take this job on.

 

Were you able to find a solution to the problem with the sunroof motor? Just curious.

 

Vince
No, not yet. I did take it over to the place near Haynes, European Autowerks and had Chuck look at it. He told me that I can drop the motor and still move the sunroof forward or backward without screwing things up. As it it right now, the hex key hole is too worn to let me manually close the roof and I don't want to chance it getting stuck open with all the rain we have been having. He said the system ran on the hall effect which I take it is a current sensing design that reads when the motor reaches the end of travel and the current goes up causing the computer to stop running the motor. My car must be out of sync, but he didn't seem inclined to want to go too deep into it.

I'll probably give it a go on wednesday to see if I can at least get the panel back in place, it gets hot with that glass and no shade on these summer dog days. I may have to find another motor to put in there, but I still think there is nothing wrong with this motor, just the worn out hex key hole. I just have to get the window in the full tilted up position so I can train the computer. Always sumpin I guess...

 

The instructions to sync the cables/motor are:

Cables - With the motor out, align the Tilting Bracket (the long slide bracket with the leg that sticks out laterally for the nuts that hold the glass panel) so that the mark on the tilting lever and the stainless steel Slide Rail align. The marks are near the rear of the slide rail. With a little study you should be able to find the marks on the Tilting Bracket; the mark on the stainless steel Slide Rail is relatively obvious.

Motor - There are two sets of instructions; one for the pre-98 cars and one for the later cars. I have found that you end up needing both. Basically, what follows is a hybrid of the two. Close the sunroof. Align the position marks on the motor before installing. There should be a pair of punched triangles on the gear housing and the control gear. The docs are a bit confusing. You may have to pull off a cover called the "Control Unit" to see the marks. It does say the cover is hard to pull off in the area near the connector. If this doesn't work, remove the drive unit again, realign the marks and try pressing the switch to run the motor in the close direction until it stops running, then install.

Hope this helps.

 

I'll be in the DC/Maryland area this coming Aug. Do you think you could work your magic and get my headliner recovered over the weekemd?
Just kidding, you have done a great job, And great detail in the describing the process. Hope can figure out the sunroof thing.

 

OK Vince, I'm still confused. Not really sure what the deal is with the cables alignment or with aligning the motor to a certain spot. My understanding is that the limits of travel are dependent on when the motor amps increases when it gets to either end and the cpu senses it and cuts power.

I did do some work on the sunroof this morning and got it put back together but still not working 100%. Pulled the motor out and figured out which two wires are power to the motor, the two heaviest, go figure. If you swap polarity on them you change the direction of the motor. I remounted the motor and was able to manually open and close the roof by applying power to those same two connections. I put it in the tilt up position and then reconnected it to the ceiling console and did the "teaching" the cpu by holding the switch for 5 seconds and then shut the ignition off and turned it on again and then the roof would go back in short jumps and forward ok. But when I tried to teach it in the opposite direction it would not move forward/close anymore. Tried this several times with same results. Guess I need to work that a bit more down the road, but at least the shade panel is back in and the bellows and front black plastic bar are also in place. I did get inside and clean off all the lovely orange residue which kept the panel looking nice.

 

I believe the Hall Effect sensor is used to determine position, not current draw. Somewhat like a crankshaft position sensor. That is why everything needs to be aligned. The motor is supposed to stop when it gets to the right position and if the cables are not aligned to the motor it doesn't work correctly.

To "teach" the sunroof all I have ever had to do is move it in "jumps". I have never had to move it to the vent position and turn the key off for 5 seconds.

 

I had to replace the headliner on the sunroof shade of my 2000 C230K. It still was not clear to me how to remove the plastic piece on the leading edge of the sunroof glass. It turns out it just snaps into slots on a metal bar attached to the glass. Here is a photo of the inside of the plastic bar showing the plastic tabs:



Here is the metal bar with slots that the tabs snap into:



I used tools from this 5 Piece Trim Panel Removal Set: http://www.kochtools.com/index.php?p=product&id=48 to pry the plastic bar down. Certainly not necessary to have but it's cheap and will probably come in handy for other things.

I got the headliner, adhesive, and plastic ventilation screens from Headlinerexpress.com. The old ventilation screens crumbled in my hands when I removed them. Bill Stauffer from headliner Express called me after I emailed a question and spent a lot of time going over how to do the job correctly.

One bit of advice he gave me that I never would have thought of is to always hold the headliner with the palms of your hands after it is glued down. If you press down with your fingertips, adhesive will be pressed into the foam and it will not spring back completely. You'll be left with a depression in the headliner. He suggested putting a long socket under the grip when snapping it in place. That way you won't depress the headliner doing that.

Bill would be disappointed with my work. I must have pressed the panel with my fingertips while concentrating on putting in the plastic ventilation screens and/or grip. My advice is to let the adhesive dry overnight before finishing the job. After the adhesive dries, it may not form depressions as readily.

Also, be sure to clean out the slot the panel and glass slide into. If your panel headliner was peeled back, there is sticky goo and bits of foam on the bottom of the slot, and the first time your slide your nice newly reupholstered panel back, it will pick up the goo and you will never get it off.

 

If there was one thing I would do different is that I would have removed those vent panels from the sunroof panel. All they do is rattle unless the panel is far back. One of these days I may get around to pulling it out again and popping them out.

 

I say....

My sunroof panel has been dripping sticky yellow fuzzballs for weeks. I am finally fixing it. just re-attaching the existing vinyl piece with some felt padding.

Gotta give Kudos to all of you who have performed this task. That broken down yellow foam is the stickiest, nastiest stuff. Rubbing alcohol seems to dissolve it.

I have been using lacquer thinner to dissolve the adhesive on the black fiberglass part. takes a lot of scrubbing. That is another task. :-( I had to take a break to allow my hands to rest.

I really do not want to do the entire headliner at this time. Hopefully it can wait a year or two.

What a mess!