Trojan Boat Forum

I see alot of posts of interior cabin pictures where it looks like the ceiling liners were replaced. If the budget allows I am thinking of doing this on my '71. I had a couple questions:

* how is the fabric attached to the ceiling? Is it wrapped around something and then secured in sections?

* do you take off the wood trim and then pry off the sections? how are they attached?

* how do you work around light fixtures etc?

thanks. I want to know what I am getting into. The earlier posts on fabric was helpful.

mytrojan wrote:I see alot of posts of interior cabin pictures where it looks like the ceiling liners were replaced. If the budget allows I am thinking of doing this on my '71. I had a couple questions:

* how is the fabric attached to the ceiling? Is it wrapped around something and then secured in sections?

* do you take off the wood trim and then pry off the sections? how are they attached?

* how do you work around light fixtures etc?

thanks. I want to know what I am getting into. The earlier posts on fabric was helpful.

I am answering on the assumption that your headliner is like my F32... perforated vinyl. NOTE not material backed.

It is stapled to the wood frame behind all the trim pieces you will see at the outside border of your liner. I needed to remove some large teak panels also not just trim strips.
Remove the trim and then you will see the old staples. There should be seams as you go fore to aft... these are created by stapling a light metal strip to hold one section's end and the start of the next... both ends go under this metal trim and are stapled, the second section is then folded back over the trim to hide it and show a straight edge at the joint... so the liners are face to face under the metal so that when the second is folded back it is now showing the finished side.

On my boat all the lights are screwed onto the liner, so remove them, disconnect and then replace the liner.
This is a two person job and requires some finger strength to stretch and hold the liner while it is stapled by the 2nd person. Pay attention that you do not have wrinkles as these are hard to remove once stapled. Best to work in a warm environment so the liner stretches easily and is then likely to shrink when the boat is run in a cooler every day environment. I did not heat my space when applying so on warm days my wrinkles are more obvious to me.

If you have AC or Heat or both on your boat, it might be a good opportunity to look at installing some insulation on the ceiling before putting in the new headliner. Possibly foam board?

There, I just made the job more complicated for you.

Sorry