2000 2500 Pi Saloon Headlining

[Jake]

Hi All, I'm looking for a bit of help on what I think might be a rather obscure subject for you all, but if you can assist i'd be most grateful. 

I have a 2500 i'm "restoring" well mostly reassembling. Its been in bits for about 20 years and there are plenty of opportunities for me to learn. What i'm specifically after is advise on the headlining. When I bought the car the previous owner had removed the original headlining and half fitted a new one. Rightly or wrongly he's started at the back, all the stays are in the lining and the rear screen is fitted. BUT on investigation the lining doesn't appear long enough to reach to the front screen, that still needs to be fitted. On closer examination is appears that the stays may not be in the right order. (there are 5 and they are all different!)

There is very little difference between them and they are not marked with part numbers but do have a colour code. Reading the factory manual it appears that the sequence for a Mark 1 2000 saloon from the front is Green, Brown, White, Orange, Blue. For the mark 2 it says replace in the same order as removed, which doesn't help me as someone else did that 20 years ago.

Does anyone know the correct colour order for a Mark 2 saloon??? What I have seen is that the mark 2 stays do not appear to be the same colours as the mark 1 though I have only removed 2 so far as I think they will be rather difficult to re-insert!

[Jake]

Apparently for anyone who might be interested the bars can be marked with a colour bar, well they were on mine. Nothing on the first one, two bars on the second one, three on the third, four on the fourth and five on the fifth. 

[thescrapman]

Did you solve e issue of the lack of length? 

I wonder if it had shrunk with age.

[Colin Lindsay]

The Herald estate is the same, colour coded roof bars; I must check to see if the colour order is the same across the range.

How short is your headlining - half an inch or a massive amount? They need to be tensioned so may have to be warmed and stretched into position, but check the other end; too much may have been used here with the knock-on effect at the other end. There is a slight - very slight - amount of back and forth movement at the stays so have a look and see where the material is in regards to the stays - centred, or off to one side, and this may give a clue. The last Herald estate I started - and it's still not finished - I started in the middle and worked outwards towards both front and back.

[Jake]

Hi all, I've used our old friend brute force to pull the headlining back to the rear window frame. Using the sort of force that I would have thought might rip it, but it didn't and I've managed to glue it at the top to the window frame. Once I'd managed to get it that far back I was able to pull all the rails back until they were vertical. Now I've managed that the tension is much more even and it looks ok. I suspect a big part of the "problem" was that as the headlining had previously been partly fitted at the rear so had already been trimmed to suit so there was no excess material to play with. Whilst I've not finished fitting the headlining yet I believe it is now possible. Got to pull it to the front and fit it to the front screen, fit it to the C pillars and round the rear quarter lights  the at the top of the 4 doors! I reckon I might be able to get it finished by the end of the month fingers crossed. I've posted a picture of the headlining as far as I've got so far and will post another once it's done 😳