987.1 Headliner Replacement

Living in Florida has clearly taken its toll on my car. The headliner in my 08 Cayman S has completely fallen down. I've taken it to multiple different upholstery shops in my town and each have come back saying that they don't have a material that matches. I have the sand beige interior with cloth on the headliner. The aftermarket cloth replacement material has been discontinued, and the ultrasuedes they have don't match the rest of the interior. I'm now left with a decision: do I order a new headliner and have it shipped and installed (about $670 part +$150 install for fabric, or $1000 part + $150 install for alcantara ) so that it is guaranteed to match, or pick perhaps a deviating color like grey to match my paint for like $300? Opinions? Has anyone else had to do such a replacement with sand beige?

My grey headliner in my cayenne had the same problem. I ended up doing an alcantara conversion. Was about $1500 all said and done. Now my cayman isn't too far behind. I have a good interior guy and I'm sure he would be able to source a matching material. Keep in mind headliner material had the foam connected to the material. So all old foam has to be removed. I bet if you found a small town upholstery shop they will be able to get you the right stuff. I'm going to go the alcantara route in the cayman . Should be less than $1000 including a couple yards of material. Will get A pillars covered as well.

Why don't you keep it black as this will look least intrusive Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It's not black now.

I did my headliner and A-pillars for less than $400 using a generic gray fake suede from the pic. I did end up doing the underside of the hatch and plastic trim in the hatch area too to make it all match. Just pick a beige suede that looks good with all the other beiges of the leather, vinyl, plastic, and fabric because you don't need the headliner backing.

I'm die hard DIY'er and recovered the headliner in my 2008 CS for a total cost of less than $100. It came looking very nice. I have a write-up that's mostly done, just haven't posted yet. Want a copy?

Mine was and now is gray. I did it w felt like fabric from Walmart. $20 total including adhesive. Pretty easy to do actually.

A copy would be great! I am leaning toward switching over to "Honey Suedeliner" as it seems to match decently and is a nicer material. I dont think the grey would look quite right with the all beige interior, but would entertain a picture for consideration.

I just had my headliner done by Marietta Auto Trim in north Atlanta. My car is a 2006 Cayman S with grey interior. They matched the grey color very well. The texture looks similar too. $300. I am very pleased!

True but the black contrast will look good and won't look out of place. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

After looking at the swatches, I went back to the shops and asked about the "Honey Suedeliner" that is at the bottom right of the picture that tach miami posted. It appears to be a pretty decent match to the a-pillars, but is a bit lighter than the original fabric and not quite a match to the leather which is all over my cabin with the full leather interior. I'm took the leap and asked them to order up a couple yards to have it done later this week. Given that the carpets are actually lighter than everything else, I figured that as long as I'm in the family of colors it should look like it belongs. I'll post a picture and observations once complete and let you know what the final tally was. If anyone did the black or grey contrast against the beige, please post a picture as I'd like to see it!

Mine has the same issue. Going to be doing it in Alcantara when I re-do the rest of my interior. I've held it up with some safety pins for the time being. Can't really see unless you're looking at them, does the trick for now!

what bad luck, it just happened to me after a beautiful drive out yesterday. thought I felt something touching my hair this morning and later realized the headliner is also affected in my 987.2 . found this old thread with the instructions to remove by Treiberg. http://www.planet-9.com/987-cayman-...987-cayman-boxster-service-tech/98316-how-remove-headliner-drooping-lining.html

Okay, all done. I went with the Honey Suedeliner. What do you think?

Looks great and matches as good as possible. Nice.:cheers:

meisme33 - from photo looks nice and close to the rest of the colour hues of sand beige. it can be difficult to find matching material if your interior is NOT black. I am also in the process of getting mine fixed and decided to look into the "why cant it be glued back or fixed" question. From the picture below you can see that the cloth and the sponge or foam has essentially separated. Also the residue of the foam has begun to disintegrate and become similar to dust or soft sand and will not hold the cloth anymore even if you re-apply adhesive. Will post more updates once its done.

This is not an isolated issue. I got my headliner fixed about 3-1/2 years ago because it was sagging. Clicky.

It looks and feels better than OE. I guess being in Florida too, your guy had access to the same source as my guy.

Looks awesome! I would also replace the sun visor's fabric with that suede if for no other reason to get rid of those stupid warning decals!

There are several types of materials available, cloth, microfiber and alcantara . Not that many choices for hues matching sand beige interior and alcantara was easily 2-3 times the cost and cannot seem to match the seat material. Here's a pic of mine - just got it installed yesterday - was a 1 1/2 day job easily due to trim piece removal and installation as they're all connected to the roof.

Just noticed my sand beige headliner drooping. I see a bunch of Florida guys have this problem - anyone in the Tampa/St Pete/Clearwater area? I'm thinking of doing there removal myself unless there's a local shop that knows Porsches. My first thought was to re-glue the old material since there's nothing wrong with it. Then I saw eyeofthetiger's picture. Still - I wonder if some dry cleaning fluid or Goof Off would dissolve the adhesive enough to remove the old foam. That brings-up a question: do the upholstery shops just glue over the old foam, or do the remove and replace it? Seems like removing the old foam from the headliner would be the most time-consuming part.

It's not the adhesive that fails, its the foam backing itself. See http://www.planet-9.com/987-cayman-boxster-service-tech/87876-2006-cs-2008-cs-headliner-same.html for more details. The only fix is to remove all of the old material and adhesive, and replace. At least the gray OEM material is available for ~$200 (just the material, not including install, etc.), but I suggest using OEM is a poor approach since will just fail again in a few years.

There's no one here in Pinellas County area that can do predictable quality interior work (based solely on my experiences.) That said, I would contact the local Jaguar dealer in Pinellas Park and find out who does their interior work since older Jaguars are known for developing sagging headliners. Anyway, as a DIY, it can be a real messy job since taking the old cover off is going to damage the foam where the adhesive is still sticking. You may end up having to replace the cover too if the foam degraded and remains stuck to the cover. In the end, it may be cheaper and easier to just replace the headliner given all the cutouts and complex shapes - Sun Coast has this Cayman Alcantara Headliner:Suncoast Porsche Parts & Accessories Yup, a bit pricey!

There's no reason to save some of the foam sticking to the headliner form since it all has to be removed to get a good bond and a smooth look with the new fabric. My guy got a batch of material where the foam wasn't even sticking that well when new so he peeled it off before gluing it down in the hatch area.

Rschwerer, sorry to hear you're also afflicted with the "pat on the head" syndrome Yes, the most time consuming part is cleaning the existing panel to prepare for new application and of course removing all the related trim takes quite a while. The broken down foam is very messy and breaks down into tiny pieces. even in the few mins of taking pics, i managed to create a mess.... The guy who re-did my roof lining removed the old material, cleaned the panel of all old foam (not sure how) and applied the new lining. As mentioned by the others, this ensures a more consistent adhesion of the new material.

Thanks for the info. Yeah, I eventually figured that the existing foam was probably shot. I was just wondering if the old cloth liner could be cleaned (with a dry cleaning solvent) and reused. I found a couple generic youtube videos showing the process. It looked like the new material already had the foam backing already attached. That's the piece of info I was missing before. I don't mind doing the liner removal and installation myself, but if I could find a shop I trusted - I'd likely let them do that too. I'll see if I can get some recommendations from friends. This sucks. My car is hardly ever parked out in the sun. 99.9% of the time it was garaged when not being driven. And when it is parked outside, it doesn't get extremely hot here - highs in the lower 90's. So its not like it is getting baked. Add this to the llist of crap Porsche is incapable of getting right. (see water pumps, shifter cables).

Don't be too afraid of recovering your own headboard. As others have said the 'hard' part is just removing the headboard. I've shared the attached DIY instructions with others and had intended to post as an article, but never got around to doing so. Anyway, here it is for those that might want copy.

Nice job! Thank You.

thanks car_guy for the detailed instructions and tips on what to look out for. In my case the guys managed to tilt it an angle and get it in via the hatch. I knew it was a lot of effort but this makes me appreciate the guys who did it for me even more

Thanks very much for this post! I found this article today, after I had already removed the headliner to put DynaMat on there and reinstalled it. This was also a sort of test run to make sure I could get the headliner out for when I have to fix my sagging headliner. Fortunately it isn't too bad yet, it is sagging from the front and the visors pretty much keep it up, but it will fall soon enough. Anyway I am going to put microsuede on there instead and the article you posted is a huge help. I was a little confused with your post and hope you could clarify on something. The way I understand your article is that you got a new headliner that already had some sort of foam layer attached to it, is this correct? I planned on just ripping out the old one, sandpapering the panel smooth and then just gluing the new material directly to the panel, without any padding. From what you have learned, will this procedure I described work, or do I also need to install some new foam padding layer to the material? Thanks very much! -Walt