Hi guys. A previous owner installed a sunroof in my crew cab. When I first got the truck the left front of the headliner was collapsing from water leakage. Eventually it just fell down and I pulled it all out, leaving the ugly gloop mess surrounding my sunroof. That was 4-5 years ago and I’ve been without a headliner since. The sunroof continued to leak, I sealed it up from the inside with black caulk.


Recently i found a company (REPOP) selling headliners for our trucks on jegs. $32 later and I have a very impressive piece of cardboard. Very high quality it seems. My original plan was to measure the sunroof from all angles and cut the headliner in two down the middle of the truck and install each side separately to keep from removing the sunroof.

Now being out here and looking at it, the sun roof is way above the plane of the headliner. Meaning that right from the outer corners, the headliner material has to go up about 2 inches to meet the sides of the sunroof. A cardboard liner is never gonna want to do that angle. Instead of my headliner being flat, the whole surrounding sides of the sunroof would be at 45 degree angles upward to meet the sunroof. More spaces should have been installed in the sides of the sun roof to lower the lower edge of it to be inline with the sunroof.

I dont want to install another sunroof. I don’t know if this can be welded. With how incredibly flimsy my whole roof is being a crew cab and having a 18”x30” hole in it, I don’t see how it could ever be welded. Not by me definitely. I’d have to take it to a real good body shop and leave it for days and hours of work done to it.


Can i fix this with epoxy? Say I cut the middle section of the roof off a parts truck, and trimmed it down to say an inch bigger than the hole in my roof all the way around. Would I be able to epoxy that over my hole? I’m thinking of using something along the lines of what’s used for unibody cars, or the epoxy used to mate parts of boat hulls. There’d be a lip on my roof yes. My truck is white, and the paint on the roof is in pretty good condition so I could color match the panel with the paint I already have for the truck. Inside I would just install sound deadener on the underside like I have to rest of my roof, and the install a normal headliner over it. I guess it would even be possible to make two patches one for each side. I’m not looking to win awards for originality or factory correctness. But hack jobs have no place on my vehicles.



Does that sound crazy to you guys? I’m not one for bubba fixes to things. But the act of cutting my roof out even more to install another crappy sunroof seems like the most bubba thing possible. Second to that being just leaving my shiny sound deadener for all to see. Googling the manufacturer of my sunroof comes up with a long list of companies out of business with no parts availability and it’s on it.

I would just remove it and reinstall it with the headliner but all the fasteners are rusted in place, all the plastics cracking and faded. And the rubber seals are already coming apart. I don’t want to risk the chance of not being able to reinstall it. I’m very tired of not having a headliner.

 

Since whatever you do isn't going to look good anyway why not fix it right ? weld in a patch panel then do a little body work and spot paint it. if you ever decide to repaint it nice the hard work is done.

Welding that in would be a lot easier than you think. a little wire feed welder and stich weld it in easy. if you have even basic welding skills you can do it.