Great tip when redoing wrinkled pillars.

[ohiobuckeye]

Remembered having a bottle of this stuff in the past and found it quite useful. Picked up a $12 spray bottle at the home store to see how well it would aid getting all the gunk off underneath the pillar cloth.
It is called De-Solv-It, but the words "Contractors Solvent" are more prominent on the label. I think it is available at most home centers. Anyways, this stuff is the real deal. Best of all it is bio-degradable, non-toxic, smells good, and could be on your hands all day no problems. Also needed is a package of dollar store plastic wrap, couple rolls of decent paper towels, and an assortment of scrapers and abrasive pads you already have around. Don't get me wrong, this ain't no miracle elixer, there is SOME work involved, but the results are worth it IMHO.



Start by removing staples and then peeling fabric off.
Lay a strip of plastic wrap on work-area.
Set piece gunk side up.
Saturate foam with solvent.
Lay 2nd strip of plastic on top and down sides as flat as you can.
Fold underneath layer up and over to create a good seal.
Go amuse yourself for a while. The longer the better. Overnight if you have the patience.




This is the first pass with a small metal putty blade.
Perty sweet eh?
Get off as much as you can and repeat.
Where the foam and adhesive wrap around the back sides do a section at a time propping pillar up so that section lies flat.
It's a little trial and error with a learning curve but you'll get the hang of it.
When done you get this.





Work at it as a project, it's not like you can't drive the car with 'em off. Better yet, do like I did and snag them off a junker.
There is a stickie in the Interior section on how to re-cover them, and going to this extreme is prolly not necessary.
But I have my demons, and I know many of you do too!

[RCA1186]

I may have to be doing this with mine soon. They were perfect when I bought the car but they're starting to sag a little now. It all depends on finding a decent material to match.

[skizo]

Any thoughts on just not using glue on the face of the forms? I was thinking of just going with carpet tape on the back and stretching the fabric a bit at a time and pressing it in place, then maybe glue the hot edges for a bit more strength.

PS ... mine were fine till I decided to pull the rear deck for a paint job. That was the original creme and had discolored and stained over time, especially around the speaker cutouts. It's now got a couple coats of black fabric paint and looks good.

[ohiobuckeye]

Skizo; This is admittedly overkill, but why not do it right? Its winter and we got plenty of time on our hands for little projects like this. I just couldn't leave that filthy, smelly gunk on there and recover over it.
I've searched through almost every thread involving redoing the pillars and the sunroof shade and seen where people have used wire brushes, tons of sandpaper, brake cleaner, WD-40, and brute force. None completely removed everything, and all made a giant mess of one form or another. This method is virtually effortless and mess free.
As far as only applying glue to the back. That may be problematic as these are 3 dimensional objects and it is possible that there will be areas that wont lay flat on the face no matter how much you stretch and pull.

[randnon]

I have done this on my 2 gen 1's and found that junk yard headliner can be washed in the machine and reused. I glued down some new foam first and then used the matching old headliner to cover the foam. I used some of the white foam packing material you get on electronic items as the base. the used headliner come off w/o the foam. You do need to do a full glue job as some of the shapes are concave. If your pillar covers are not too bad you can just loosen the back and give it a little tug and glue job. I do not know where you can buy matching cloth. My local pick and pull just gives mee the cloth and it takes about 2 min to cut and pull it out. See pictures