Head Liner Sagging

My 1993 325i head liner is sagging in the back. I drive with the windows open and the head liner is suffering. Any advice on how to re-secure (glue?) my head liner back up?

I had the headliner of my 1998 M3 come down on me a few years back. The car had lived most of it's life in the brutal Texas sun and it was too much for the foam backed headliner material to live through.

In any case, you really can't just reglue the existing liner. There is a layer of foam under the cloth that breaks down and causes the liner to sag. The only effective fix is to rip out the old liner, completely scour the remaining foam residue out and glue in new headliner fabric.

Believe it or not, my local fabric (sewing) store had black automotive headliner material available.

Do a search on Bimmerforums, Bimmerfest or Google and you will find a bunch of articles with how-to advice

Good Luck

+1 to what Lance said. My local Joann's Fabric stocks headliner material and I got the heavy duty 3M spray adhesive at Lowes. Pull your headliner out (actually a fairly easy process), clean off the old foam & adhesive and glue the new stuff on. You'll be an upholstery expert in no time!

I have 3 E36's and they ALL do the sagging headliner thing after a few years. I actually need to put a third one into the 318ti.

Go black for the M look.

Patience and at least one set of extra hands are the secret in making sure you don't get any wrinkles while laying the new liner in. When applied correctly, the 3M contact cement is totally a one shot deal. Once the two surfaces touch, it ain't coming apart again without destroying it.

If the backing material is soft enough, colored thumb tacks work great. Or you can go to a fabric shop and buy the corkscrew like fabric pins. On a old beater, I've opened up a stapler and stapled away.

I replaced my headliner in my E36 with some material I found at Wal-Mart for $4 a yard. It is microsued (I know not everyone likes it) but the job was really easy and pretty straight forward. You can see what I did at

http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=955337

I need to touch up some places, but so far it has held really well.

Good job, looks good.

Thats been on by BIG todo list for long time. Maybe this winter.

Thanks!
My to-do list is dwindling down, finally!

Wow, that does look great! You make it look easy. I might have to change my non M cars over to the dark headliners!

GR