Interior headlining resembles Arabian tent

[CroughtonE32]

Well I wish you luck. We have to keep these E32's on the road. I mention GAHH to you because not only did I have a wonderful experience with them years ago, I have a buddy here in Florida that worked for BMW for decades and he's been keeping an E34 a year newer than my 1990 in showroom condition all these years. His car I believe is Salmon Silver (not 100% sure on that) and the interior is sort of split with the carpet being anthrocite (sort of a light black) and the entire interior (seats, headrests, arm rests and headliner being some sort of gray. Not sure what BMW would call his color exactly. I never asked him. Well, he ordered the entire interior from GAHH and everything was dead on. It was his order, as well as Vista BMW using them for torn seats that might come from the factory and other things they like to get away with, before letting a new car off the lot. I'm thinking with the note you got from them, they just must have been out of stock on your color and for your year. You have to just get lucky. Here's a good one for you. Ten years ago I had the finest body shop down here do a complete strip down to bare metal paint job for me. It was a two and a half week job. I'm talking removing everything including all glass, sunroof, bumpers etc. When they were stripping it down the guys realized the was another paint job under the paint I'd been starring at and waxing for 18 years. I drove down to the shop to see and sure enough. They removed my clear coat, then my base color and under it all was more clear, primer and bronzit beige base. I had never been in even a fender bender. All we could think is that when the car was coming over from Germany something scratched it up and BMW in New York City, where I bought it sent it out for a paint job before they gave it to me. I mean it was surely perfect and after 18 years I wasn't going to make a stink about it, but think about it. You write a check for 51 thousand dollars for a car in 1990, and the salesman never tells you anything about what had happened. Now that's sneaky. Still the best car I've ever owned and it will surely outlast me. Good luck.

[Legoman]

They removed my clear coat, then my base color and under it all was more clear, primer and bronzit beige base. I had never been in even a fender bender. All we could think is that when the car was coming over from Germany something scratched it up and BMW in New York City, where I bought it sent it out for a paint job before they gave it to me. I mean it was surely perfect and after 18 years I wasn't going to make a stink about it, but think about it. You write a check for 51 thousand dollars for a car in 1990, and the salesman never tells you anything about what had happened. Now that's sneaky. Still the best car I've ever owned and it will surely outlast me. Good luck.

You mean every single panel was like that? The whole car had been resprayed? One panel I could easily understand, but the whole car? You do see some dodgy stuff normal owners are never supposed to see when you tackle jobs like the headlining and start removing panels that are clearly never intended or designed to be removed. It's clear the cars were never supposed to last and be still on the road after 20 years or so. The factory clearly designed them to have all been scrapped well before this age they are now. They do say that if you get to having to recover the headlining, that's a sure sign you've owned the car too long.

[Sansouci]

Jeff,
I recently had another car appraised and the guy used some device to measure the paint thickness to tell him if it had been damaged or resprayed. Any evidence of that work diminishes the value.
Regards,
Ken

[CroughtonE32]

Jeff,
I recently had another car appraised and the guy used some device to measure the paint thickness to tell him if it had been damaged or resprayed. Any evidence of that work diminishes the value.
Regards,
Ken

Hi Ken. I've seen those gadgets on Youtube. Guy walks around the car touching it to different areas of paint and gets a digital reading as to thickness I think. 1ST Class Auto,in Pompano Beach who did my work really had no reason to check as they were stripping everything down to bare metal. It was just something they came across while doing their work. Something they had never seen before. Everywhere they stripped, there were two complete paint jobs to take off. I mean they weren't complaining as even 10 or 12 years ago, they were getting almost five grand for this. Today this kind of work in their shop would be double. I stopped off twice during the weeks they had the car. It was scary to see my sunroof in one place, windshields out, mirrors and bumpers off and some of those pieces already primed in a light black. I was just hoping the people that took the car apart would have no trouble putting it together again. When you saw my car about two years ago, I think you could see the job they did. I was stunned when I went down to pick it up. It was much better than the factory job that came on the car, and to this day is still looking like the day I picked it up. It the fifth year of the factory paint job, I was already losing some clear coat on the roof, hood and trunk, but this paint just seems to stand up a lot better. They even asked me if I wanted it to look like the factory job with some Orange peel or more of a glossy shine. Had something to do with the way they buffed it out. I, of course said no orange peel. This is the latest picture after a good wash and the clear coat is still as new. And that's in the Florida sun. I was really lucky with this shop.
Jeff

[Legoman]

Well it was a mission and a half but I finally found a local trimmer here interested enough to take on the job of recovering my headliner for me. Had to ring every single one listed in yellow pages though. I've heard every excuse under the sun for why trimmers didn't want to do this job.

We don't do BMW/European cars - the glue they use is too difficult to deal with, we can't charge enough to cover the labour
The headliner is fixed with clips instead of screws which always break, we can't get replacements and the local dealers won't help
We don't do cars with sunroofs. Too hard
We don't have sewing machines (WTF! How is a sewing machine not essential equipment for your business?) to replicate the stitching in the sunroof panel
We won't use customer supplied material (because if we stuff it up the first time, we don't have more material the same to have another go)
We won't use non-mesh backed headliner material because we don't have the experience or knowledge to get it right the first time. We need the mesh to allow us to rip it off several times and keep repositioning it to get it to lay flat.
We don't use 'stretchy' headliner material
We don't work on customer prepped boards because we don't know what's been used to clean it and hence can't guarantee the new stuff will stick.

Amazingly, this last excuse came from the same trimmer who initially used the first excuse. So in effect, they won't work on uncleaned boards and they also won't work on cleaned boards. They're a trimmer who won't work on any kind of headliner board!

You name it, I've heard them all and a few others too that made absolutely no sense. These excuses were from businesses with names like Mobile Headlining Repair, Roof Lining Repairs & Mobile Roof Linings. Companies that leave you in no doubt at all about what they specialise in doing and where their core business lies complete with before/after photographs of sagging/fixed headliners inside cars just like mine.

The difficulty in cleaning the old board + the difficulty in sourcing someone willing to do the retrimming of the new material + the impossibility of sourcing exactly the same material/colour to match the original, makes this by far the worst job I've ever had to do on this car. I would never recommend tackling this repair to anybody else.

[Legoman]

Putting the headliner board back in today and I have a quick question. In an iL, where do the rear grab handle coat hooks go? I didn't take any photos when I took it apart, so I don't know what's correct. They can go forwards or rearwards. Which is correct please? I've seen photos of car interiors with the hooks in both locations, so that hasn't helped at all. Just looking at the inside of the car I would think having the hook located forwards would provide more room to hang something, but is that how they came from the factory?

[shogun]

see here the last pic when we did a 750iL Highline, there it was originally like this on right side towards front http://infinitier.ddo.jp/e32/page/ma...inte_50812.htm
on my iL it looks like this, also original as it cannot be moved, fixed point in the bracket assume, left side to the rear http://twrite.org/shogunnew/files/he...0iL-Its-in.jpg
http://twrite.org/shogunnew/files/he...y-to-go-in.jpg
one number for all 4 handles, so it is different left and right 51161956026

[Legoman]

Thanks very much for that. I'm going with forwards like in the brochure picture. It seems to make a lot more sense that way. Rearwards would have anything hanging very much over the seat, whereas forwards would employ much more of the available space in the footwell.


Another silly question if I may, the sunvisors: can I presume the one with the strap is the driver's and the one without is the passenger's?

[shogun]

Have now double checked on 3 750iL parked here at my place, all 3 have the hook for the hanger in the rear towards rear, and that cannot be moved, it is in the bracket. Maybe there are different versions over the production years. Agree with your opinion, hook towards front makes more sense.

"Another silly question if I may, the sunvisors: can I presume the one with the strap is the driver's and the one without is the passenger's?">>>all 3 cars here have no strap on the sunvisors, also here probably differences by built year/country. I would assume it is for the driver side, for example to stick a ticket there when you drive into a parking lot.

[Legoman]

Well it's in now and I went with the coat hangers forwards and I'm pretty happy with that decision. It looks right that way. The hook is basically in the middle of the rear window rather than almost back to the divider to the quarter window. In my day off work I managed to dress the headliner panel, glue down some edges the trimmer had forgotten about, installed the 16 all new sunroof surround clips, trimmed some openings in the front for courtesy lights above the sunvisors and then I got the thing back through the door and into the car suspended on ropes. Clipped the sunroof surround on, clipped in the three rear bayonette hooks, installed the grab handle screws, installed all the front stuff, A-pillers, C-pillars + B-pillars, then started on the door seals before I ran out of light to see what I was doing.

All very successful so far. Didn't break a thing and didn't lose any screws or clips or bayonette fittings, so pretty happy about that. I just ran out of time to get it done in one day I'm afraid. I still have three door seals to put on + the sunroof panel to slide in, but that's going to have to wait now until the weekend.

The colour is too light. It's not a perfect match by any stretch, but it's close enough that I will be able to live with it I'm sure. The fabric weave is identical though, so the texture matches perfectly to the original on the pillars, it's just the colour is a fraction too light. That said, I'm very happy with the job the guys did I got to glue it on for me. There were no dry spots with not enough glue, and they hadn't stretched the fabric too thin anywhere or put any holes where there didn't need to be holes. The actual covering is a very professional job and I am in no doubt at all far, far better than I could have achieved even on my very best day with all the advice and help in the world.

I only needed to buy two new push button clips for the base of the B-pillars (which broke when I pulled them out) and the 16 sunroof clips (which are designed to break when removed - they're one-shot clips you simply cannot avoid breaking to remove). I didn't need to repair any plastic clips or bayonette fitting tongues on the trim panels at all. There was one I thought had broken, but in the end it wasn't and it grabbed the bayonette clip frimly when pushed on. So all around a pretty economical repair as far as it can be for such a large job.