The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Interiors 1937 Chevrolet truck headliner

I have a 1940 Chevy truck and I have been dealing with this issue for a while now. You can make the headliner out of anything but I wanted to make it out of cardboard as was assumed to be the original material. I did consider epoxy laminate but....... My story goes as this.....

I first purchased a cardboard replacement from one of the usual venders figuring that is should be at least close to working. It would not fit. The problem seemed to stem from the fact that in order for this to fit, the cardboard needed to bend in two directions at the same time... A compound curve.... In the corners. Cardboard can be bent in one direction easily but not in two. It's much like sewing cloth, you need to make darts to cover a curve. It behaves much like a piece of rope.... It's very hard to stretch and when compressed, it buckels. So I'm decided to build a form. On the underside of the roof, I placed thin strips of wood that conformed to the curvature of the roof hot gluing the strips together. It formed a complete pattern of the inside of the roof. I then covered the wood strips with heavy paper cutting darts and smoothing it to conform to the curvature of the wood. Having a complete mold of the roof, I bought a sheet of ABS and PVC plastic in an attempt to mold them to the shape of the roof using the mold I create. I found it was impossible to heat the plastic uniformly enough to slump over the mold without wrinkling. You can stretch the plastic, but impossible to compress without a oven to heat the entire piece over your mold..... It's actually not compressing their either.....

My next attempt was to take my piece of headliner cardboard and completely soak it for a few days and place it on my wooden mold. No luck, same wrinkling problem. Cardboard does no like to be compressed or stretched which is what is necessary to cover the compound curves in the corners. I even tried to mold it using the top of the cab as a pattern, same problem.
My friend Tom Burch (Thanks Tom) had some Home Depot cardboard floor covering that although is not as thick as the headliner, can be used to make a pattern. So, back under the roof........ I used the flooring cardboard and made a pattern off of the old messed up purchased headliner. I had to start somewhere. After much cutting and shaping with tape (wonderful for fixing bad cuts) I discovered the following:

You can't bend cardboard in two directions at the same time. Wet or not.... So how did they do it originally? I originally suspected they molded it, but I'm not so sure. If the cardboard was some kind of mash maybe or a fiber and tar mix......

It turns out that the headliner does not follow the curvature of the roof of the cab. On my truck, there is a metal support that runs across the the cab, door to door therefore lowering the headliner away from the roof. The metal inside panel behind the seat is fixed where it connects to the headliner. The front panel over the dash is flexible. If you run a straight edge from the back panel past but touching the center brace to the front panel .... You might need to pull the front panel back toward the rear panel to do this.... They will line up meaning that it is really a flat headliner. When you get to the curves over the door, .... the headliner simply curves down. The problem usually happens at the corners, trying to bend the cardboard around to meet the front overhead panel. If the overhead panel is not pulled back then the headliner must make a compound curve to meet the front panel usually creating a crease. If the front overhead panel,is pulled towards the back, there is no compound curve to deal with and so no crease. The entire headliner can be installed flat with simple curve (bend) down to meet the door. Now there is some funky cutting to cut around the door, front to back, but that's where you need to make a good pattern. The front panel seems to be the key here, it must be pulled towards the center of the cab for this to work and avoid the corner crease.

My door to door center brace has places to screw fasten the headliner to. Finding the hole can be tricky.... If you cut the heads off of the appropriate screws. This trick has been mentioned here before .....Sharpen one end to a point and screw them into the brace. When the cardboard is installed, simply press the cardboard against the sharp point of the screw and it will punch through. Remove the modified (no head remember) and use the proper fastener.

When I finally installed my headliner, I found that the curves I made at the doors were not tight enough so my headliner support screws near the doors would no fit without wrinkling the cardboard so I left them out..... I'm sure making a tighter curve will eliminate this problem........

Let me know if you clarification on this.... Or if I'm simply wrong.....

Waiting to fight another day.....

Mike