Hardtop Headliner

[SProZ8]

To celebrate winter, I'm in Southern Cal., I pulled down the stored hardtop from the hoist stored in the garage ceiling. Last time I had the hardtop on was about 5 years ago and I wanted to enjoy the altered aesthetic. I noted some bubbles in the liner, drove Z8 a few miles and by the return the liner was sitting on my head. The liner was not salvageable and I had it replaced with similar material. Note to those with a hardtop lift, the garage attic gets hot.

[Dogsbreath]

BMW glue seems to be somewhat less than ideal. My car lived in Vegas for most of it's life. I haven't any hardtop liner issues yet. I do have dash delamination though.

[Tyler]

Hi - I've got some hardtop headliner bubbles as well. Where in SoCal did you have yours replaced, and did you source the material from BMW?

[Carter Rise]

My hardtop has the same problem. It has lived in Virginia its whole life and hasn't suffered from heat extremes. It must be the glue. I am assuming I can have it glued back in place. I have dash delamination, too. Mine is a 2000 model and a very early car.

[SProZ8]

I doubt that you can re-glue the hardtop liner as the glue/foam substrate has turned to mush and the fabric no longer has any stiffness. I attempted to salvage the fabric by scraping the glue/foam backing off to no avail. Any old glue residue needs to be removed from the hardtop prior new headliner being installed. I did not use BMW's headliner replacement fabric and used a similar headliner material, about $40 worth and total cost was about $340 to get it done. Sergio at Orange Auto Upholstery did the replacement. I think any competent upholstery shop can handle the replacement. The harder part would be finding a non factory fabric that's an exact match to the existing headliner. I was not as particular in matching the factory headliner as I have seldom used the hardtop. Note that the back shelf also had to be replaced.

The same shop also handled the dash delamination after I did the 14 hours required to remove and replace the dash. See post under dash delamination.

[ra0507]

I have ordered the replacement headliner. Does anyone know how to remove the entire headliner shell from the hardtop? Can't tell whether you simply pry it off or whether you remove the rubber gaskets first.

Richard

[zed8]

I have ordered the replacement headliner. Does anyone know how to remove the entire headliner shell from the hardtop? Can't tell whether you simply pry it off or whether you remove the rubber gaskets first.

Richard

As far as I know hardtop window has to be removed as well.

[ra0507]

It is clear after removing the various parts of the hardtop that the hard shell to which the fabric/foam is glued, must come out in order to cover it properly and tuck it over the edges. We cannot figure how to get the hard shell out of the hardtop.