It was only a matter of time before the headliner fell in my Cayman. Typical problem where the foam disintegrates, leaving the headliner with nothing to cling to the fiber board. Heat speeds the process along, but living in NE helps with only summer having high temps. And when I was working, she stayed in covered parking while at work and in my garage all the time, esp now that I'm retired. So I delayed the inevitable, but it finally occurred.
Now I had to decide what to do. I had a Wheeler Dealer 2014 Cayman S 4 yrs ago that I bought in Dallas that had a droopy HL. I took it to my upholstery place but they said they didn't want the job b/c they didn't want to take it out and break expensive Porsche parts. Understandable, so I took it out and they replaced the HL for $175. That was pre-COVID, pre supply chain issues, etc so it would prob be $250 now. The design didn't look too complicated with lots of curves, so I decided to give it a try. Here it is out and with the material removed.
I boned up on YT vids and decided to give it a try. How bad could it be? Found some suede material with foam backing on Amazon and found the recommended glue to use (Permatex due to its higher temp rating).
It took a LONG time to get the old glue / foam off the fiber board. I spent mult hrs over 10 days to get it ready. I started using alcohol and a rag. This worked but took way too long. Bought a rubber wheel for a drill used to take decals off w/o ruining paint. It was 4-5" across and looked like a WWII Jeep tire. This worked but still left a bit of residue. Saw a vid where someone used laquer thinner so I tried that with a rag. Not very fast and it was too aggressive on the fiber board. Finally used the rubber wheel to knock 90% of the glue off, then poured alcolol on it and used a razor blade to get the final 10% off. Mind-numbing and slow, but I got it.
Now that it was ready, time to glue. The conventional way is to lay the new material over the fiber board, flip half of it back, and put glue on the fiber board along with the back of the material, let it tack up, then mate the two. Repeat for the other half. I plan to start with the rear half first since it has less curves to work around. Figure I can learn from a simple side, then move to the tougher half.
Everything's going well - rear material and board are sprayed with glue. I'm ready to move the material onto board. Except the material snags on itself and glues itself together. Crap! No worries, the vid showed that you could snatch it off and try again. Supposed to be movable until it finally sets up. Nope. It's glued to itself. When I yank on it, the foam lets go from the suede. I get it apart and onto the board, but there's some lumps. I use my roller and get some of them down, along with a few small wrinkles. Not perfect, but acceptable. It helps that suede hides some issues.
Change my game plan for the front half. Rather than applying the glue to the entire area, I work in 4" sections and work my way to the front. That worked much better and resulted in much smoother application. I then moved to finishing the side strips that overlapped the edge. This was Sat and I think turned out pretty good for my 1st attempt.
I've been hustling the prev 3 days, as there was a car show on Sun that I wanted to take Sydney to. Backup plan was Punkin, but having the car show inspired me to get this project done. While I was waiting for the glue to dry overnight, I washed Sydney up Sat evening. Then got up at 6:30am on Sun morning to put the HL back in. While I did a little bit of gyrations to get the HL out, I knew I wouldn't be able to do that putting it back in. I tried angling it in from the hatch but I couldn't find enough room to go there. I'd taken it out of the passenger door but couldn't get it back in that way either. I ended up taking out the passenger seat to give me more room. That meant disconnecting the battery so the seat airbags didn't detonate when I disconnected the wire loom. Once the seat was out, I had enough room to wiggle it back in. If you want even more room, take the driver's seat out too. Once I had the HL in the car, it was just a matter of min before the side panels were back in place and the HL securely in place.
The holes for the sun visors needs some trimming and I decided to do that at the car show. We were supposed to be there at 10 so the show could open to the public at noon. That 2 hrs could be used for the sun visor replacement. Did some vacuuming and put the passenger seat back in. Made it to check in at 10:20 and got my sun visors back in by 11.
Just thought I'd pass along my experience for any other Cayman owner on the forum. I would recommend buying 2 cans of glue. But overall, a doable DIY project.
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