I think the Headliner is finally finished.... except for the dome light.

Rodney and I got an early start this morning.  First I met him at Mike Darby's for the final adjustment on his newly rebuilt SU carburetors for his MGB.  After that and some all important visiting was completed he and I stopped at Kraver's Seafood Restaurant for a quick lunch, then on to my house to do some more work on the interior upholstery on the E-Type.

Rodney's putting the final bolt in the fuel tank

We decided that putting the fuel tank back in ( had it in once but had to remove it to put the rear bumpers on) would be the next thing to do before we got too carried away with upholstery.  It didn't go in quite as easily as it did the last time we did it, but after a little struggling and a few cups of coffee, we got it back in and connected.

We then started working on the final stages of the headliner. We barely got started good before we realized that it was time to get ready for a little field trip to Pensacola to Mini of Pensacola's 2nd birthday party. We were going to ride over in Rodney's classic Mini, but the heat and humidity forced us to opt for something that had air conditioning.  After the party, we stopped for a quick "all you can eat" Barbeque dinner and headed back to Daphne. The sun was still up and we decided to get back to work on the Jag. 

Rear brackek for the trim wool

Gluing down the skirt

Rodney drilled and mounted the brackets at the rear of the ceiling that had been missing from my car but were fortunately on the old '69 parts car we have.  I removed them the other day and cleaned all the rust off and painted 'em.  These brackets allow you to tuck the headliner cloth into the gap where it is grabbed by some teeth in the bracket, holding everything good and tight.


Then I got on my back in a somewhat less than comfortable position in the car to glue down & fasten the final parts of the headliner down.  The last thing that needed to be done was neatly lap the two ends of the wool together with a nice fold and mount the dome light.  After scurrying around looking for the dome light fixture, Rodney finally found where I had hidden it and handed it to me. I inspected it and realized that I should have had it re-chromed when I did the rest of the stuff... "forget it, I'll use it like it is" I thought.   I took the lens off of it and promptly broke it.  Actually it was very brittle plastic and pieces were breaking off of it.  So much for that light...  I'll have to order a new one on Monday.

"Thumbs up" for the Driver's side

Finishing up the passenger side.

The dome light goes in the middle.

The bottom 2 inches will be covered by trim

I'm really happy about the end result.  For never having done this before, I think that, with the tremendous help of my previously mentioned "crack team of old farts", we did a pretty good job!!