1988 Chevy Cavalier
This was my 1988 Chevy Cavalier. It is a 2.0L 4 cylinder automatic, with air, power door locks, and had over 169,000 miles on it. If you want to see the major mod I did with this car, go to my CavComp page. I traded the car in for my Chevy S-10 Pickup in November of 2003.
I didn't do too many mods with this car other than the sound system, but I did add a temperature gauge to the console to track the
temperature in the car. I needed this to make sure the CavComp system didn't get too hot (or cold in the winter) to run. I had an industrial
digital temperature gauge from a previous job, and so I converted it to a 12V system, and mounted it in the console. The sensor to it ran down to the CavComp box. The gauge doesn't completely cover a switch hole that used to be at that location in the console, so I used a
playing card, cut into a square, and spray painted black as an overlay behind the gauge. If you look closely at the picture, you can see it.
One other thing that I had to do with the car wasn't a mod, but rather a repair. The headliner gave out and started drooping, so I decided
to take a shot at fixing it. It is a more involved task than I had realized at the time, and I thought I would share my experience of doing it.
First, I removed the headliner from the car, and peeled off the fabric. The fabric used on a headliner is a special fabric with a foam backing. The reason that headliners fall down is that, over time, the foam breaks down and the fabric pulls away from the backing board. After I pulled the fabric away, a lot of the foam was still glued to the backer board. So, I used a paint scraper to gently remove the foam remains. What I was left with is what you see in the picture above. You want to get rid of all of the foam possible so that the spray adhesive used later has something solid to attach to.
The backer board also had some problems. Certain areas of it had gotten weak or bent, and in one spot, water damaged. So, I used some thin cardboard to reinforce the old backer board. I cut out manageable pieces, and I bent them to shape and used high strength spray adhesive to fasten them to the backer.
Now you can start gluing the new fabric to the backer. Apply glue to both surfaces, and follow the directions on the adhesive. I started with the visible side, and did a half at a time to make it easier to manage. As you can see from the picture, I used books, catalogs, and clamps to hold the fabric tight to the backer. I also used clothes pins along the edge to get a good seal, but I wouldn't do that again, as the clothes pins can permanently dent the foam and fabric. Fortunately, the edges on my cav are mostly covered with trim pieces, so it didn't matter too much.
Once the visible side has had plenty of time to dry, you can flip it over, and trim the edges. Then, I glued and clamped the edges like in the picture. Again, I wouldn't use the clothes pins.
The headliner turned out really nice and smooth. All that was left was to cut out holes for the light and such, and reinstall it. I did this fix well over two years ago, and it is still looking nice.