Headliner measurements?

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SpThomass

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For starters I have a 2006 GMC Yukon denali xl.

I’m looking to replace the headliner with custom fabric and fiber optic lights to create a star effect. Plus the fabric is starting to sag and has come off slightly on some of the edges.

my question is; does anyone know the measurements of the headliner? Or how I could get those measurements?

thanks in advance, I figured this would be the best place to get the information since I couldnt find out online anywhere!
 

wjburken

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For starters I have a 2006 GMC Yukon denali xl.

I’m looking to replace the headliner with custom fabric and fiber optic lights to create a star effect. Plus the fabric is starting to sag and has come off slightly on some of the edges.

my question is; does anyone know the measurements of the headliner? Or how I could get those measurements?

thanks in advance, I figured this would be the best place to get the information since I couldnt find out online anywhere!
@Matthew Jeschke might know. He just did this.
 

Matthew Jeschke

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I ordered mine from AllBrights Supply. Not sure what your color codes are but they sell a sample card. You'll DEFINITELY want to get the sample card for your vehicle and check best match.

Additionally, these vehicles are VERY wide in the back portion beyond the C pillar. You'll need to order 67" wide. Most supplies sell 64"? I believe. The standard width is not wide enough.

My truck has a sun roof. I had to order an extra yard to do it. The height / length on my tahoe was 9ft, I ordered 12ft (4 yards). It was perfect.

You'll also want to order the 3M glue. It's a bit cheaper on Amazon. However, probably better off just to buy it at Orielly Auto Parts. BUY ONLY THE 3M GLUE. 3M 38808 Headliner Fabric Adhesive. Mine took nearly two 18oz bottles, although I used about 30% too much glue. Supplies:
WORD TO THE WISE:

Don't bother doing the headliner fabric. Take it to the pros. They will do a MUCH better job than you can. Mine didn't turn out well, despite I did it on my own. I only saved about 10$ as well. The shop that had quoted me said he wanted like under $200 because I'd done all the prep work. Then COVID hit and I decided to stay home do it on my own.

If you do do it on your own, this is DEFINATELY a 2 person job. It's REALLY hard to manipulate 12 yards of fabric so you don't get creases. Watch LOTS Of youtube videos. The flat parts are SUPER easy... It's where you have to transition around all the curved surfaces. It's damn near impossible.

Next DON'T use your hand / fingers. It WILL SHOW track marks if you do (I made this mistake). Use a wide flexible spatula of some sort, perhaps bondo spreaders. Something VERY flexible as any edges WILL show up where you press the two surfaces down.

Spray an even coverage on the backing board of glue. Then a light but complete coverage over the back side of the fabric. (I did WAY to much on the backside of the fabric). Tac the two sides together. Only due about 2 ft maximum at a time working from back of headliner (rear hatch) to front.

Have a SECOND person hold up the headliner so it only touches in middle as you work the fabric into the backing board (I made several creases trying to do this on my own, extremely hard to manipulate on your own).

I honestly, recommend doing the prep work on the backing board and then have a shop put the headliner on.

Removing headliner:

You cannot mess this part up. Hardest part is removing these stupid coat hooks from the back of the headliner. Watch youtube on that. You'll likely break them either way.

Remove all the pillars They just snap on. Use a PLASTIC body clip to pop them off (never use screwdrivers or those dumb metal body panel tools).

Take off the visors (torque screws) pretty easy, comes right off.

Take off the screw by the roof console. It's a black little plastic clip, there's a screw in there...

Console on roof has a screw in back side towards windshield. Then there's two metal clips... they pop off - use plastic body tool if you need to.

DO NOT RIP OFF THE DOME LIGHT / HEADLINER WIRING HARNESS! PEOPLE DO THIS IN TUTORIALS BUT IS COMPLETELY UN-NECESSARY.

There's a wiring harness that connects to the MBEC by the parking brake pedal. Disconnect that connector for the cab lights. I cannot recall exactly which one it is. Then, this is crazy... Label each wire in the connector. Take apart the connector (watch youtube, use a paperclip or connector tool). The harness then EASILY slides up the pillar and out with the headliner. Most people rip the harness off the headliner (DON'T DO THAT THIS IS WAY EASIER AND CREATES LESS DAMAGE / REWORK - IT'S COMPLETELY REBUILD ABLE AS IT WAS NEW).G

BONUS POINTS... When removing the wiring harness w/ headliner, before you pull the harness through... Connect fishing line. The line will come up with the harness as you pull it through. Tape the end of the fishing line somewhere on the A pillar... That way all you have to do to pull the harness back down is tape it to the fishing line and pull from other side when you are done w/ headliner.

There's a few Christmas tree clips holding the headliner up. You can pull those out with your plastic body tools. They slide right now.

You may have additional consoles on the headliner depending on your options. They should come apart similar to the front one.

Sounds like a lot but it comes out pretty quickly.

Once it's all apart you need to lower all the seats, recline the front ones all thew way. It will come out sideways from the rear hatch.

Clean up headliner:

Rip that old fabric off. It'll come off by hand mostly... Then there's a backing. Will make a BIG mess so have a shop vac close by.

DON'T USE WIRE BRUSH WHEELS ON DRILLS THAT WILL ONLY DAMAGE YOUR BACKING BOARD. Again everybody is doing that on the internet. STUPID sorry haha. People do stupid stuff on youtube.

It will come off EASILY with scotch brights. You'll need a bunch of them. However, it will clean the backing board up really well. Continually vacuum up the debris.

I cleaned it up as best as humanly possible. Till almost completely no sing of the foam on the board. It took maybe 2 hours.

Now you'll see damaged areas in your board. You can fix these however, many people use Bondo. I used hot glue, but was a bit trickier to do than bondo. You could also use some bondo fiberglass kit. That might work best.

I used parchment paper and hot glue. I put hot glue in holes and tears. Then parchment paper with weight to spread it to shape. I have a fair amount of experience doing this sort of thing. Bondo may seriously be easier as you can work it after the fact / sand it.

The most damage will be at edges of the headliner. I filled those edges that were ripped up wtih hot glue. Then took duct tape and taped them together so they held the correct shape. The glue setup, then I removed the duct tape.

When you are done clean up the fabric side of the backing board with grease and wax remover... I put on shop towels and wiped it down. This is a solvent to use sparingly and watch to make sure it isn't damaging anything... but seemed to work fine for me.

Then I flipped the board over and checked all the wiring harnesses. I taped up where they looked to be coming apart. I then put on new clips (you can order them on amazon). Lastly I re-hotglued the wiring harness where it seemed to becoming off the top side of the headliner (really didn't want to have any issues with ratting stuff up there).

That was about it... This is where I would have handed the project to the pros.

PM me if you need any help :) Sounds harder than it is. The prep is easy... I could probably do it in a morning. You may need a weekend. It'll save you $$$$ to prep it. But save you next to nothing to put the fabric on yourself.
 
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OP
SpThomass

SpThomass

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thanks Matthew! you really know the ins and outs of this haha! Is the sunroof visor hard to do, or any different because it goes back and forth? Also I was going to do a flat black Instead of the OEM tan, I personally think it would look better, so hopefully it turns out nice!
But anyways thanks man for the help I really needed, and sorry for the late reply I haven’t been on the forum since yesterday morning. I’ll PM you if I have any further questions!

I ordered mine from AllBrights Supply. Not sure what your color codes are but they sell a sample card. You'll DEFINITELY want to get the sample card for your vehicle and check best match.


Additionally, these vehicles are VERY wide in the back portion beyond the C pillar. You'll need to order 67" wide. Most supplies sell 64"? I believe. The standard width is not wide enough.

My truck has a sun roof. I had to order an extra yard to do it. The height / length on my tahoe was 9ft, I ordered 12ft (4 yards). It was perfect.

You'll also want to order the 3M glue. It's a bit cheaper on Amazon. However, probably better off just to buy it at Orielly Auto Parts. BUY ONLY THE 3M GLUE. 3M 38808 Headliner Fabric Adhesive. Mine took nearly two 18oz bottles, although I used about 30% too much glue. Supplies:
WORD TO THE WISE:

Don't bother doing the headliner fabric. Take it to the pros. They will do a MUCH better job than you can. Mine didn't turn out well, despite I did it on my own. I only saved about 10$ as well. The shop that had quoted me said he wanted like under $200 because I'd done all the prep work. Then COVID hit and I decided to stay home do it on my own.

If you do do it on your own, this is DEFINATELY a 2 person job. It's REALLY hard to manipulate 12 yards of fabric so you don't get creases. Watch LOTS Of youtube videos. The flat parts are SUPER easy... It's where you have to transition around all the curved surfaces. It's damn near impossible.

Next DON'T use your hand / fingers. It WILL SHOW track marks if you do (I made this mistake). Use a wide flexible spatula of some sort, perhaps bondo spreaders. Something VERY flexible as any edges WILL show up where you press the two surfaces down.

Spray an even coverage on the backing board of glue. Then a light but complete coverage over the back side of the fabric. (I did WAY to much on the backside of the fabric). Tac the two sides together. Only due about 2 ft maximum at a time working from back of headliner (rear hatch) to front.

Have a SECOND person hold up the headliner so it only touches in middle as you work the fabric into the backing board (I made several creases trying to do this on my own, extremely hard to manipulate on your own).

I honestly, recommend doing the prep work on the backing board and then have a shop put the headliner on.

Removing headliner:

You cannot mess this part up. Hardest part is removing these stupid coat hooks from the back of the headliner. Watch youtube on that. You'll likely break them either way.

Remove all the pillars They just snap on. Use a PLASTIC body clip to pop them off (never use screwdrivers or those dumb metal body panel tools).

Take off the visors (torque screws) pretty easy, comes right off.

Take off the screw by the roof console. It's a black little plastic clip, there's a screw in there...

Console on roof has a screw in back side towards windshield. Then there's two metal clips... they pop off - use plastic body tool if you need to.

DO NOT RIP OFF THE DOME LIGHT / HEADLINER WIRING HARNESS! PEOPLE DO THIS IN TUTORIALS BUT IS COMPLETELY UN-NECESSARY.

There's a wiring harness that connects to the MBEC by the parking brake pedal. Disconnect that connector for the cab lights. I cannot recall exactly which one it is. Then, this is crazy... Label each wire in the connector. Take apart the connector (watch youtube, use a paperclip or connector tool). The harness then EASILY slides up the pillar and out with the headliner. Most people rip the harness off the headliner (DON'T DO THAT THIS IS WAY EASIER AND CREATES LESS DAMAGE / REWORK - IT'S COMPLETELY REBUILD ABLE AS IT WAS NEW).G

BONUS POINTS... When removing the wiring harness w/ headliner, before you pull the harness through... Connect fishing line. The line will come up with the harness as you pull it through. Tape the end of the fishing line somewhere on the A pillar... That way all you have to do to pull the harness back down is tape it to the fishing line and pull from other side when you are done w/ headliner.

There's a few Christmas tree clips holding the headliner up. You can pull those out with your plastic body tools. They slide right now.

You may have additional consoles on the headliner depending on your options. They should come apart similar to the front one.

Sounds like a lot but it comes out pretty quickly.

Once it's all apart you need to lower all the seats, recline the front ones all thew way. It will come out sideways from the rear hatch.

Clean up headliner:

Rip that old fabric off. It'll come off by hand mostly... Then there's a backing. Will make a BIG mess so have a shop vac close by.

DON'T USE WIRE BRUSH WHEELS ON DRILLS THAT WILL ONLY DAMAGE YOUR BACKING BOARD. Again everybody is doing that on the internet. STUPID sorry haha. People do stupid stuff on youtube.

It will come off EASILY with scotch brights. You'll need a bunch of them. However, it will clean the backing board up really well. Continually vacuum up the debris.

I cleaned it up as best as humanly possible. Till almost completely no sing of the foam on the board. It took maybe 2 hours.

Now you'll see damaged areas in your board. You can fix these however, many people use Bondo. I used hot glue, but was a bit trickier to do than bondo. You could also use some bondo fiberglass kit. That might work best.

I used parchment paper and hot glue. I put hot glue in holes and tears. Then parchment paper with weight to spread it to shape. I have a fair amount of experience doing this sort of thing. Bondo may seriously be easier as you can work it after the fact / sand it.

The most damage will be at edges of the headliner. I filled those edges that were ripped up wtih hot glue. Then took duct tape and taped them together so they held the correct shape. The glue setup, then I removed the duct tape.

When you are done clean up the fabric side of the backing board with grease and wax remover... I put on shop towels and wiped it down. This is a solvent to use sparingly and watch to make sure it isn't damaging anything... but seemed to work fine for me.

Then I flipped the board over and checked all the wiring harnesses. I taped up where they looked to be coming apart. I then put on new clips (you can order them on amazon). Lastly I re-hotglued the wiring harness where it seemed to becoming off the top side of the headliner (really didn't want to have any issues with ratting stuff up there).

That was about it... This is where I would have handed the project to the pros.

PM me if you need any help :) Sounds harder than it is. The prep is easy... I could probably do it in a morning. You may need a weekend. It'll save you $$$$ to prep it. But save you next to nothing to put the fabric on yourself.
 

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