e28+ Interior Headliner

[Phil Rushing]

My newly acquired 1984 E28+ has a beautiful original headliner practically without a mark on it and no tears whatsoever. That's the good news. The bad news: I want to replace some deck hardware and I cannot reach the underlying nuts; even with headliner unzipped in the specific locations they are out of reach. Only solution I have so far is to cut the bolt heads off on the topside and push them through. If they come out and lay on the inside of the headliner, that's OK with me. Does anyone have a better idea or suggestion? These old Ericsons are extremely well built, so much so that they were built like nothing would ever need to be replaced! If I could remove the interior cabin hand rails, the head liner would fall down enough to reach in further, but for the life of me I cannot figure out how these interior hand rails are installed. Does anyone know how to remove these without tearing too much apart? Thanks guys and gals!

 

[Loren Beach]

Over time I have had to access different areas of the main cabin top hardware, wiring, and also the underside of the decks fore and aft.
Each time I remove the small screws that hold the teak trim strip, and then carefully remove a lot (!) of staples.
With gentle stretching of the headliner and new staples it all went back together almost like new.
I do wish that the factory guys had put in a lot more zipper access places.

Loren

 

[Glyn Judson]

Dealing with your headliner.

Phil, Tire's no easy way to do this correctly but that said, it needn't cost an arm and a leg. Buy a portable air tank or a pancake air compressor as well as an upholsterers staple gun. I'm including eBay listing numbers here for an affordable tank here: 311743722879 and an upholsterers stapler here: 142185746358. Copy those numbers one at a time and paste them into the search box on eBay to view them. Of course if you want a compressor and a hose, Home Depot or Harbor Freight are good places to start as well as eBay. Here's how to get to the underside of your deck hardware. Remove the the plastic staple cover from the outer edges of the headliner, then pull out the staples. Don't be surprised if many of them are rusted but remove what's left anyhow. Now with the headliner pulled away in the work area you select, access to the fasteners will be easy. If you see signs of leaking from the mounting hardware, consider a permanent repair by drilling out the thin glass inner liner and balsa using a 1" hole saw, just up to the under side of the deck. Tape over the hole you created using the thin liner as a part of the plug. From up on deck, inject thickened West System #105 epoxy through the 1/4" mounting hole with a disposable plastic syringe enough to fill the void you have just created. After it has cured, drill out the center of the epoxy plug, bed as required and mount or remount the hardware. Use stainless staples to reinstall the headliner being careful not to pull too hard and stretch it creating wrinkles. A pair of needle nosed pliers might be helpful. Look carefully at the staple holes and where they were originally as a guide to installing the new staples. The benefit of the upholsterers gun is that it has a duck nose, allowing one to get into a corner, you get the idea. I've done this before this way and to see my vinyl headliner, you'd never know it had been selectively removed. Go for it, Glyn Judson, E31 hull #55, Marina del Rey CA

 

[Phil Rushing]

Thanks Loren and Glyn. Guess I have my work cut out for me. I really didn't want to remove the trim pieces holding the head liner in place, but sounds like the best and only way to do it right. I'm also concerned about tearing or otherwise damaging the old headliner - it looks so good right now! Oh, well...here we go!

 

[Glyn Judson]

Headliner anxiety.

Phil, Have no fear, take a deep breath and dig in. Matching the old staple holes is the secret. As soon as you try tightening the vinyl, that's when the wrinkles begin to show up. I have a pretty big compressor at home and filled my portable tank a few minutes ago as a test. With 80 psi shown, I was able to trigger the gun over 250 times before getting down to 10 psi and too little for it to fire. So you could shoot A LOT of staples before running our of air and I venture to say that you will not need to shoot more than 50 new ones at the most. If you don't have a compressor, try filling the tank at a gas station or your car mechanic's shop. At the end of the day it's all great fun, you will have learned a new skill and gotten some new tools. Glyn

 

[Frank Langer]

I have done these same repairs using just a heavy duty stapler from a hardware store without the compressor. Cost about $20.00 at the time and worked great. My wrist might have been a bit sore at the end of the day from all the stapling, but it turned out really well, and I keep the stapler on the boat in case I need to repair something while underway.
Frank

 

[Tom Metzger]

I always hate to agree with Frank, but again he is right. A hand stapler works well. My only advice is to make sure if you are buying the stapler that it uses common staples that are readily available in various sizes.

The good news is that you don't have to put in as many staples as you take out.

 

[Phil Rushing]

I have a hand held stapler. I also have a portable air compressor. I think I'll try the hand held first and see how it goes. If it proves to be too difficult, I'll buy a gun for the compressor and follow Glyn's methodology. My fears lie in damaging the old perfect headliner/trim rail as I attempt to remove everything. But thanks to you all, I'm prepared to give it my best shot! I can easily reach the nuts/bolts holding the old (broken) rope clutches, so I'm going to do those first. l will eventually replace the deck mounted blocks with deck organizers, and these are the ones that are hard to reach. It may be a while before I get to them, but I'll keep you all appraised of my progress. Thanks again to all!!

 

[Starduff]

Headliner Problem

Sorry, I just read your thread. I have an E28 also and the liner was equipped with plastic or nylon zippers that would not budge. Eventually, I found a chapstick like lubricant. I believe it is called Ziploc. I generously smeared it on every zipper and let it sit a few days. To my delight, they were all un frozen. Once open, I smeared more Ziploc on the exposed teeth from end to end.

I hope this helps. I apologize if I misunderstood your problem.

Starduff

Polonius
1987 E-28

 

[Phil Rushing]

Starduff,

Appreciate your input. Fortunately, all of my zippers function well. Its just that there are not enough of them and the ones I have are not in the right places!

 

[EGregerson]

staples

use stainless steel or monel staples!

 

[Phil Rushing]

Task completed

Thanks to everyone for their assistance on this. Job wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Used hand held stapler to restaple headliner and it worked great. Trim strip came off and back on easily. A few wrinkles in the headliner after completion, but not bad. Glad I did it the right way. A great learning and get-to-know-your-boat experience!

 

[Christian Williams]

I did this twice.

First time I used stainless staples to last 100 years and be very hard to get out.

Second time I used office staples, which rust slowly for 30 years and are easy to get out.

Easy with a hardware store one-handed squeeze stapler ($15).

By the way, staples come in various depths. Too shallow and they don't hold the headliner. Too deep and they don't go all the way into the wood.