I've spent the last day and a half working on installing a new headliner in my '69 Mach 1. After struggling, gluing and regluing, and using probably every curse word in existence (and making up a few new ones as well), I finally got a wrinkle-free headliner. Then, I moved on to the sail panels, which I assumed would be a walk in the park after the headliner ordeal.
Wow! I held one of the new sail panels up in place just to get an idea of its approximate final location, and I couldn't believe how awful the panel looked next to the fresh headliner. The panel came with the material pre-installed, and after scrutinizing the headliner, I can't believe how many wrinkles, dips, and bumps there are in this new sail panel. It looks like the moonskin material was installed over a rough piece of cardboard, and as I'm sure these things have sat on some vendor's shelf for months, the moonskin material has settled enough to show every irregularity in the cardboard backing board. There are more than a few wrinkles, as well as a few other issues.
It's bad enough to make me want to take the moonskin material back off (even though it's glued and stapled in place very well) and try regluing it tighter myself. My main problem is this: the cardboard backing board has a series of slits, almost 2 inches by 3 inches, like a grid pattern on the upper side where the rear window slopes downward from the roof. I'm not sure if the backing board has this pattern pressed into it on purpose; I thought maybe these sail panels fit multiple models, and the grid pattern indicated an area to cut out when using them in another model.
The headliner material has assumed the shape of these impressions, leaving a perfect mirror image of the grid pattern on the outside of the headliner. You can very distinctly see the pattern when you hold the covered side of the sail panel up to the light. The problem is, without starting with a better backing board, or maybe finding some way to cover the existing board and its irregularities, I can't see the point of trying to recover the existing backing board without ending up with much the same result.
Are all reproduction sail panels this bad? Reading others' experiences, I expected them to be nothing like the originals, which is fine, since I never had any originals to compare them to. But this is ridiculous! I'd gladly pay for a decent set of sail panels, but I'm afraid that if I order another set, I'll end up with a carbon copy of what I already have.
Is there any other source for decent sail panels? The headliner supposedly came from TMI, so I'm assuming that they also made the sail panels. Usually TMI products are very high quality. Has anyone successfully dealt with this issue?
