Canopy Headliner Installed

It’s a task I’ve put off for a long time, but I finally have a headliner attached to the canopy. I’m super pleased with the results. Although it wasn’t particularly difficult, it was manually-intensive, detailed work and took me most of the day Sunday to complete.

First, I had to plug the pre-cut 37mm holes for map lights that I’m not using, since my lighting console is at the front of the canopy instead of mid-cabin. I printed some simple caps on the 3D printer and attached with epoxy.

Factory holes for map lights get plugged
Holes plugged, ready to start applying adhesive

I used 3M headliner spray adhesive to attach the material to the canopy ceiling; it’s stuck on pretty well, I don’t anticipate the headliner will ever come off. This adhesive is very similar to the 3M Super 90 spray I used to attach the luggage area upholstery to the insulation and skins.

The adhesive is quite sticky — way too hard to do the whole thing at once — so I worked in sections, starting at the rear and worked my way forward. As shown in the next photo, I used a LOT of craft paper to prevent overspray from hitting the suede side of the headliner.

I worked on small sections at a time

Each of the pillars had a clip to wrap the end of the headliner around, to result in a nice clean edge.

Headliner cuffed around the metal clips
Main part of the job done!

Since the canopy wasn’t really designed with having a headliner in mind, I had to get a little creative with trimming the edge of the headliner. In the rear seats, the window butts up right against the canopy skin, there is no channel or other feature to hide the trim. I decided I would remove 7mm of the headliner and then trim the edge up to the window with a fabric trim tape. I think it looks pretty good.

Removing some of the headliner at the rear windows using a little custom tool (center of photo) with a blade set at 7mm offset from a flat edge
Fabric edge trim on the rear window

I temporarily installed the cabin lighting controller, it fits in very nicely, and is very low profile.

Before putting in the headliner, I installed two rivnuts to secure a headset bracket to the ceiling. The bracket is nothing fancy, just something I got from Amazon. It is made with a flexible silicone material, so it can deform if someone bumps into it, rather than causing a head gash.

Headset bracket
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