Headliner board question

I have a 1996 chevy extended cab truck. I took the headliner board out
intending to replace the material. Parts of the board came off. Can I
sand down the ridges and will the material cover the slight
imperfection? Also in places I can see light through the board and it
is weaker in that area where most of the board came off. Should I
reinforce it with something? I am afraid when I put it in there that
the board will bend and mess the material up or the material wont look
right because of the imperfections underneath. I know I can buy a new
board but they are over 200 bucks and my truck has 331,000 miles on it
so I hate to spend that. I appreciate any help and here is a video if
that helps: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN4T3uTQNmM

On 03/19/2011 03:53 PM, stryped wrote:
> I have a 1996 chevy extended cab truck. I took the headliner board out
> intending to replace the material. Parts of the board came off. Can I
> sand down the ridges and will the material cover the slight
> imperfection? Also in places I can see light through the board and it
> is weaker in that area where most of the board came off. Should I
> reinforce it with something? I am afraid when I put it in there that
> the board will bend and mess the material up or the material wont look
> right because of the imperfections underneath. I know I can buy a new
> board but they are over 200 bucks and my truck has 331,000 miles on it
> so I hate to spend that. I appreciate any help and here is a video if
> that helps: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN4T3uTQNmM

If it's a foam like material, don't do what I did! I had the same issue
on an '89 VW GTI except mine was worse. I thought that I would
reinforce it with fiberglas cloth and resin, it melted the foam! D'OH!
Had to get another board from a junkyard and recover that one.

In fact, that may be an idea for you...

I think what I did with the junkyard board (which was better than the
one I ended up ruining but still had a few trouble spots) was to use
two-part clear epoxy to fix the trouble spots, reinforcing from behind
with brown paper soaked in the epoxy. With the VW ones though the
problem was cracking, not holes and thin spots. I am guessing that your
cloth had not completely come off the board, and the thin spots are
where some of the foam came away when you pulled off the cloth? I don't
have any brilliant ideas as to how to fix that, but you should, or the
finished product will show those spots.

nate

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On Mar 19, 3:53*pm, stryped > wrote:

>...will the material cover the slight
> imperfection?

No.

>Also in places I can see light through the board and it
> is weaker in that area where most of the board came off. Should I
> reinforce it with something?

Good ole duct tape.

On Sat, 19 Mar 2011 12:53:05 -0700 (PDT), stryped >
wrote:

>I have a 1996 chevy extended cab truck. I took the headliner board out
>intending to replace the material. Parts of the board came off. Can I
>sand down the ridges and will the material cover the slight
>imperfection? Also in places I can see light through the board and it
>is weaker in that area where most of the board came off. Should I
>reinforce it with something? I am afraid when I put it in there that
>the board will bend and mess the material up or the material wont look
>right because of the imperfections underneath. I know I can buy a new
>board but they are over 200 bucks and my truck has 331,000 miles on it
>so I hate to spend that. I appreciate any help and here is a video if
>that helps: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN4T3uTQNmM


I couldn't tell much from your video. What I'd do is make sure all
the old foam backed material is removed from the board. Then for the
weak spots/cracked spots paint over them with some polyester resin,
just a thin coat. If you use the proper foam backed material to
recover the board I don't think you will see much of the
imperfections. I recovered one board in an S-10 so I have very
limited experience. The only problem I had was I put too much of the
spray adhesive on and it was just too much in a few spots and bleed
thru the foam making the material "sink" a bit in those areas.