Build Log: Interior Blackout, Black Suede Headliner & Trim, Dynamat Roof.

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Michael Korologos

New Member
#1
#1
Hello folks. I figured it would be fun to make a post where I add my progress as I take on my biggest project yet, and answer any questions for those of you who want to try and do it too.

My plan is to remove the headliner, pillars and all other trim pieces around the headliner and make them black. The headliner, visors and all 6 pillar pieces will be upholstered in black suede. The rest of the parts will be made black somehow. I have a couple ideas in mind that I will try and post my progress.

My first mission was to cut open the sun visors and see if the project was even possible, everything is hanging on the visors being a two piece design where they clamp together, that way you can upholster both sides and then just snap it back together, if it is a one piece design, it is almost impossible.

So out comes the razor blade and good news, we are golden. So the project will continue. But below you can find pictures of the torn apart sun visor.

More posts will follow with my progress, feel free to ask any questions along the way!

The is cross posted on toyota nation here. I will update both.

http://www.toyotanation.com/forum/3...-black-suede-headliner-trim-dynamat-roof.html























Some of my other DIY's:


How to upgrade your front door speakers.
http://www.toyotanation.com/forum/3...313-how-upgrade-your-front-door-speakers.html

How to install a QI wireless charger hidden inside the dash cubby.
http://www.toyotanation.com/forum/3...er-hidden-inside-dash-cubby.html#post10926033

How to paint the interior trim accent pieces.
http://www.toyotanation.com/forum/3...t-pieces-your-rolla-project-red-part-1-a.html

How to install the OEM Mudguards.
http://www.toyotanation.com/forum/3...ds-your-2014-toyota-corolla.html#post10963009
 
M

Michael Korologos

New Member
#2
#2
Bought everything for the project since the only thing really holding me back was how to do the sun visors. Also went to a local fabric store and picked some fabric, dye and other things to start while I wait for the main headliner material to come in.

Everything that I bought for the project and the cost:
$60 - Foam Backed Black Suede Headliner Material:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01KGXGWWA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Black Suede Fabric:
Joann's crafts: $20/yard
Amazon: $10/yard
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MYXK8X8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

$26 - 2 Bottles of 3M Spray Adhesive:

$61 - FatMat Sound Deadening Material (25 Sqft)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DYAF9FY/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

$12 - 2 Bottles of Rit Liquid Fabric Dye (not sure if this one will work but you can use it to dye certain types of plastics, I use it on plastic tools and RC car parts and with works great. The cool thing about this dye is that it soaks into the plastic so even if it gets scratched the original color won't bleed through. If this doesn't work I will use black paint.)

$20 - Two cans of matte black krylon spray paint, 2 cans of matte finishing coat(basically clear coat that isn't shiny)

$15 - Olfa utility knife and pack of 10 blades. Having a sharp blade on hand is really nice.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006O87O6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s03?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006SJAPW/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s03?ie=UTF8&psc=1


So the first thing I did was try to upholster the sun visors and it was pretty easy except for the top part where the rod goes and the mount. The suede is not really stretched at all and it was hard to get a clean bend around. I tried doing a ton of relief cuts and spent about 2 hours on one. Everything else looked really good. I have a friend who does upholstery work and he said he would do both of them for 40 bucks so I let him have them and the materials. I took pictures but my phone decided they were not important and deleted them, sorry. I will update when he finishes with them.


Next I began to remove all of the panels from the car. It was pretty easy and only took about a half hour, but I have experience taking most of them off from other projects. The only things that gave me trouble were the map light and sunroof cover, and the handles that are on the roof. The clips that hold the sunroof button thing are so ridiculously strong that it started to bend the sheet metal of the car when I tried to pry it off, I ended up bending it like a taco and the clips stayed in the roof while the cover came off. The handles are kind of hard because there is a plastic cover that has to be pulled from both sides straight out and its pretty tight, after that there are some metal prongs that need to be pinched. Then the handle comes off. The rest was pretty easy.


Next on the agenda will be blacking out all of the plastic pieces, i'm working on that as soon as i finish posting this, stay tuned...
 
M

Michael Korologos

New Member
#3
#3
Went to the thrift store and picked up a pot and external stove burner for the project. Cost 10 bucks. I didn't want to do it at home so I did it at my shop. The dye did not work sadly, it only worked on the plastic piece that attached the sunvisor to the car, and that part looks amazing, the other parts got dyed only a little tiny bit after about a half hour, and sadly I think I ruined the little sliding doors for the sun visor mirrors, I thought all of the plastic would be fine in the hot water but those got a little melted and now they are mis-shapen. I can probably just reinstall the visors without those pieces, they seem kind of pointless anyway.



Getting everything ready for painting. Here you can see that the one parts dyed good on the rod but didnt really where the screws go, and some of the other parts turned orange, like the mirror surrounds. I didn't dye all of the parts, just tried with the sun visor plastics, and clips for handles.



The picture is also a good indicator of what all will need to be removed for the project as that is all of the parts to be removed minus all of the main pillar pieces.



I am going to paint these tonight and let them sit, In the meantime I am going to try and take the headliner out and then work on the sliding shade for the sunroof. Right now the only thing holding the headliner is the door weatherstripping. I install windshields for a living and usually cars need the windshield removed to take the headliner out but I am going to try and fit it out the back door, I have seen it done that way too. Also I am really really hoping that the sun shade for the SR is removable by just sliding it out and not having to remove the whole sunroof assembly. We will see...
 
Chris Denton

Chris Denton

New Member
#4
#4
Wow! Can’t wait to see the finished product.
I painted my C pillars with Krylon fusion and they turned out pretty nice. Did this because I had already drilled out for the tweeters. Otherwise I would have wrapped them in carbon fiber vinyl like my A pillars.
I need to buy spare C pillars, should I ever sell the car. (Probably never)
I guess I need to do something with the B pillars now huh.
I’ll leave the visors and headliner alone, a tint strip should hide them well enough lol.
I have the matching gray seats but have black custom seat covers, so leaving some gray accents work for me.
I admire your tenacity, can’t wait to see how yours turns out!
 
M

Michael Korologos

New Member
#5
#5
Chris Denton said:
Wow! Can’t wait to see the finished product.
I painted my C pillars with Krylon fusion and they turned out pretty nice. Did this because I had already drilled out for the tweeters. Otherwise I would have wrapped them in carbon fiber vinyl like my A pillars.
I need to buy spare C pillars, should I ever sell the car. (Probably never)
I guess I need to do something with the B pillars now huh.
I’ll leave the visors and headliner alone, a tint strip should hide them well enough lol.
I have the matching gray seats but have black custom seat covers, so leaving some gray accents work for me.
I admire your tenacity, can’t wait to see how yours turns out!
Click to expand...
I am excited everything is starting to look good!
 
M

Michael Korologos

New Member
#6
#6
Got the headliner out, I had to bend it a little bit and I actually unbolted my drivers seat and tipped it forward to get it out. It wasn't too bad. Luckily our headliner doesn't get creases in it when you bend it a little, I don't think it's necessary to pull the windshield.



I also managed to get the sunroof shade out, and let me tell you, that was a huge PITA!



For some unknown reason toyota decided to put the screw to remove the rear stopper (thingy that stops the sun visor when you slide it all the way back) facing the roof. So I had to take about 5 bolts off of each side of the sunroof mechanism and droop it down a few inches in order to get this special little sideways phillips ratchet in to take the screw out. Took me about an hour and a half! After that the white plastic things, which also contain the drain pipes for water, can be removed and the visor slides out. I had to bend it a little bit to get it to clear the actual sunroof but that wasn't a big deal.



Had to remove 5 bolts, all near the curtain air bag, that was kind of scary...



There was also a nut that had a little bit of plastic in the way so I just cut a notch in the plastic to get that one out.


Also got paint on the parts, some of them look good but the spray can is leaving some spatter so I am using red scotch brite in between coats removing imperfections, I have a few that are ready for the clearcoat, going to keep painting and sanding until they are perfect.










Next i went to the dynamating(or fatmatting in my case). It was pretty easy to apply, I didnt really take the time to get it perfect but I don't really care, I think most of the road noise and wind comes from the sides and the bottom, but this should help a little.








Also here is what the GPS antenna looks like if you are wondering.





Also started to layout and cut fabric, may not get to actually doing it until later though




Next on the agenda is finishing the paint, suedeing the pillars and then doing the headliner and sunroof shade. I will probably peel the existing material off both so that it can stick better but I am not quite sure yet if that's what I want to do, it might suck and I am worried about ruining the headliner. We shall see...
 
Chris Denton

Chris Denton

New Member
#7
#7
That sound deadener should help a lot.
The problem with our cars is where the sheet metal rests on the frame pieces, they’re not sealed completely from the factory. I’ve been able to slip pieces of dynamat between some of them, specifically in the trunk. I’m gonna try some “road kill” deadener next. Dynamat is very heavy and too shiney lol.
Everything looks like it’s coming along well.
Interested about that gps antenna though. Does it look like the car is prewired for this? Or just a long cable that runs uninterrupted? Also, can you identify the radio antenna wire? And post a couple of pics?
My reception is shit on the stock radio.

Never mind on the gps antenna, I see in your pics where it plugs in.
 
M

Michael Korologos

New Member
#8
#8
Chris Denton said:
That sound deadener should help a lot.
The problem with our cars is where the sheet metal rests on the frame pieces, they’re not sealed completely from the factory. I’ve been able to slip pieces of dynamat between some of them, specifically in the trunk. I’m gonna try some “road kill” deadener next. Dynamat is very heavy and too shiney lol.
Everything looks like it’s coming along well.
Interested about that gps antenna though. Does it look like the car is prewired for this? Or just a long cable that runs uninterrupted? Also, can you identify the radio antenna wire? And post a couple of pics?
My reception is shit on the stock radio.
Click to expand...
The wire is the one seen in the picture, it runs up to the front of the car, and you can unplug the GPS where this connector is. Radio antenna is built into the back glass, it is the top 4 or 5 lines in the glass, so nothing really you can do about that.
 
0ldGuy17SE50th

0ldGuy17SE50th

New Member
#9
#9
I've been out here in San Diego for 20 years now, but i still remember being "stuck inside" back east for the majority of winter and thinking maybe i should start a project on the {insert vehicle name here} and see what i can come up with and occupy some 'down from the weather' time. Never did anything as intense and involved as most of the folks here on the forum, and i'm impressed as heck at the level and darn near professional results you folks do! Keep up the GREAT ideas and labors (and the required bloody knuckles, contortions, and bonking yer skulls). It's gotta be satisfying as hell, and to hell with anybody who thinks it looks bad and silly doing modifications to a Corolla!
 
M

Michael Korologos

New Member
#10
#10
0ldGuy17SE50th said:
I've been out here in San Diego for 20 years now, but i still remember being "stuck inside" back east for the majority of winter and thinking maybe i should start a project on the {insert vehicle name here} and see what i can come up with and occupy some 'down from the weather' time. Never did anything as intense and involved as most of the folks here on the forum, and i'm impressed as heck at the level and darn near professional results you folks do! Keep up the GREAT ideas and labors (and the required bloody knuckles, contortions, and bonking yer skulls). It's gotta be satisfying as hell, and to hell with anybody who thinks it looks bad and silly doing modifications to a Corolla!
Click to expand...
Do it, its really fun and the finished product will be really unique and look awesome
 
M

Michael Korologos

New Member
#11
#11
Finished painting most of the parts, I am still working on a couple of them.





Turns out the matte clear coat ruined the paint job on pretty much every part so I had to restart. It never really went matte, it stayed kind of glossy, and turned the paint blue on a lot of the parts. So I used red scotch brite and removed that coat and went back to repainting everything black. Just working on a couple parts for the b pillars.





The only part that I could not remove to paint was the guide for the seat belt, the plastic is molded to the metal, so I just used some black primer from my work(auto glass) and kind of blacked it out, its not perfect but it's not really noticeable, as long as its dark its fine.



*Ignore the creepy dude, its a random piece of paper I used so I didn't get anything on the belt.



Next thing I did was remove all of the old fabric from the headliner. Let me tell you, that was a major pain. It took about 3 and a half hours total and experimenting with a few things before I got it down.



You can see from the picture here what I needed to remove, there are basically 6 layers to our headliner. The top layer that is towards the roof of the car is a brown cardboard type material, under that is a grey foam that is very hard, then there is fiber glass, some white fuzzy stuff, yellow foam and finally the material.

Everything from the fiberglass and up is structural so it needs to stay, the rest had to go. I started by just peeling off what I could, scoring the headliner with a knife and peeling it off in strips, it came off pretty well but did leave behind some of the yellow foam and the white fuzzy stuff.



You can see in this picture that the fabric is gone, and most of the yellow foam is too, but a lot of the white material was still here. First I tried peeling it off by hand, spent about an hour doing that, waste of time. Then I tried a razor blade scraper seen in the picture, didn't work either. Next I tried using a drill with a wire brush attachment, it would snag on the white stuff and rip it off, it worked pretty good, but still left some behind. What actually worked in the end was just using a heat gun on a high setting and singeing off all of the material, it shrunk down and became hard, the glue would not stick to the fluffy white stuff but once melted it worked fine.

The end result looked like this.



That is as far as I got with the headliner so far.
 
M

Michael Korologos

New Member
#12
#12
*HAD TO MAKE TWO COMMENTS BECAUSE OF THE AMOUNT OF PICTURES.

Lastly I started working on some of the pillar panels, its not that hard, the front two took about 15 minutes each as they dont really have any crazy curves, but the B and C pillars were harder, C was the worst. And took about 45 minutes each. The problem is that the suede I have(not sure if all suede is like this) does not stretch at all, so when you have complex curves and bends it is hard to get it to conform and stick. I ended up with some wrinkles in the fabric but its not that noticeable so whatever.





But all in all they turned out awesome, don't mind the pictures where they look dirty, you can comb the material and it goes to the same color, and the stuff wipes right off.









Also finished the sunroof shade and reinstalled it.



Reinstalling the shade was not as bad as taking it off, just reversed the process seen earlier, but I did use new screws to hold the white end caps on, and screwed them in from the bottom, in case they ever need to come off again, I won't have to drop the sunroof assembly to get them back in. Not sure why toyota didn't do this in the first place...



The wrapping process is pretty simple, you spray the adhesive on the fabric and the panel, let it sit for a minute, then you stick it on, going from the middle to the outside worked best, making sure you don't lay it down with any creases or wrinkles.







Don't worry about the edges until the end, get everything stuck down first then you can go back in, spray and fold them over the edge, and trim the excess.







Last word of advice is to make relief cuts around bends and corners, it helps a lot. Also if you get any of the adhesive on the suede it came off nicely with 3m general purpose adhesive remover, and did not damage the suede.





That is it for now, everything is looking great and coming together nicely. Should hopefully do the headliner tomorrow and start reinstalling!
 
M

Michael Korologos

New Member
#15
#15
headliner time, lets do it!



I started in the big main area right in the center and worked my way out from there.













Pretty simple Just worked my way around starting from the middle and going to the edges. The front and near the handles was a little hard because of the complex bends and curves but since this material was a little bit stretchy it wasn't too bad. There are a couple of wrinkles on the passenger side sadly but not a huge deal. Overall it wasn't too bad took about 2 hours to put on, and about a half hour to trim the excess off and cut all of the holes. A sharp blade was really important, I went through about 4 olfa blades trimming it, they seemed to dull very quickly.

Next I shoved it back through the rear door and got a few things installed, I am missing some panels but its almost there. And the upholstery shop said my visors are done so i'll probably pick them up tomorrow :].




One thing I learned is that black does not mean black, as you can see in the picture above, the suede on the a pillar and the headliner do not match perfectly, surprisingly the headliner is a deep black and all of the other suede seems to be a little bit blue, you cant really tell unless its pointed out but if that's important to you make sure to compare before you start. I was too far into the project before I realized this so too bad so sad... I don't really care that much.

Another weird thing I ran into, not sure how to fix. But I ended up painting the rubber piece that goes around the sunroof hole seen in the picture below, and it is still tacky almost a week later, not sure if it will ever fully dry... paint doesn't come off but when you touch it it seems kind of sticky...





Sorry about the crappy photos, ill get better ones when its done.
I will be finishing up in the next couple days when i get the visors back and finish painting a couple more parts.
 
euriel

euriel

New Member
#17
#17
Michael Korologos said:
headliner time, lets do it!



I started in the big main area right in the center and worked my way out from there.













Pretty simple Just worked my way around starting from the middle and going to the edges. The front and near the handles was a little hard because of the complex bends and curves but since this material was a little bit stretchy it wasn't too bad. There are a couple of wrinkles on the passenger side sadly but not a huge deal. Overall it wasn't too bad took about 2 hours to put on, and about a half hour to trim the excess off and cut all of the holes. A sharp blade was really important, I went through about 4 olfa blades trimming it, they seemed to dull very quickly.

Next I shoved it back through the rear door and got a few things installed, I am missing some panels but its almost there. And the upholstery shop said my visors are done so i'll probably pick them up tomorrow :].




One thing I learned is that black does not mean black, as you can see in the picture above, the suede on the a pillar and the headliner do not match perfectly, surprisingly the headliner is a deep black and all of the other suede seems to be a little bit blue, you cant really tell unless its pointed out but if that's important to you make sure to compare before you start. I was too far into the project before I realized this so too bad so sad... I don't really care that much.

Another weird thing I ran into, not sure how to fix. But I ended up painting the rubber piece that goes around the sunroof hole seen in the picture below, and it is still tacky almost a week later, not sure if it will ever fully dry... paint doesn't come off but when you touch it it seems kind of sticky...





Sorry about the crappy photos, ill get better ones when its done.
I will be finishing up in the next couple days when i get the visors back and finish painting a couple more parts.
Click to expand...

Amazing work, looks perfect!
 
0ldGuy17SE50th

0ldGuy17SE50th

New Member
#21
#21

*Ignore the creepy dude, its a random piece of paper I used so I didn't get anything on the belt.
Hey i look a little bit like the creepy dude (same hairline and color; okay i'll admit it, i'm folically challenged) but i wear glasses so that makes me a SMART-looking creepy dude!! Great job so far, MK!
 
M

Michael Korologos

New Member
#22
#22
Chris Denton said:
How should I remove the front light housing where the mic and sunroof controls are?
I need to run an aftermarket mic up there.
Click to expand...
The clips that hold the sunroof button thing are so ridiculously strong that it started to bend the sheet metal of the car when I tried to pry it off, I ended up bending it like a taco and the clips stayed in the roof while the cover came off.

as far as the mic goes, I just put mine right in the head unit, I drilled a hole just small enough to poke it out. Then all the wires stay behind the head unit.

 
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