Hi,

In the front of my 97 Civic, the ceiling fabric is falling down. What would you recommend as the best way to fix that?

There are also 2 rust spots near the passenger side rear fender, how should I go about preventing it from growing and maybe cover it up. It is a white car and reddish-brown rust spots are kind of tacky.

Thanks!
AP

 

They sell headliner for the inside which is just applied using spray adhesive. It generally works very well.


Regarding the rust:

You are going to have to sand off all the rust until it's back to bare metal, prime it, then paint it. If the rust is so bad that it goes directly through the metal, you are going to have to cut all this out and fabricate a replacement piece.

If the rust hole is minor, sand it out, prime it, then apply bondo then paint.

 

if you just want to do a quick fix on the rust, you can buy a sprayon or brush on rust converter. I use it all the time and it works very well. You need to get the main rust scale off and then put this converter on it and wait about 24 hrs before you put paint on it. It will turn the rust into a black primer and should stop the rust from going any further. Then you can just get a small can of primer and a can of white auto paint and spray it. Now if you want it to look really good, thats another ball game all together. I think the maker of the rust converter is mar-hyde, or it may be clean strip, I can't remember right off, but its in a small round white bottle and u can get it at just about any parts house. autozone ,advance, pepboys, I know autozone has it cause thats where I get it. its about 5 bucks. if you want a better job, just look it up on the net and u should be able to come up with a site that shows how to do it. hope this helped

 

oh yeah, the headliner in your car is attached to a stiff carboard like material which is the backing, u have to take this out which is normally held up by some trim or something. once you get it out take the old material off and clean it up best u can. it is probably put on with a spray adhesive. but should come off fairly easy. You can get headliner material at most auto parts houses and a big can of spray adhesive and just read the instructions. if the existing material is still good, u can just peel it off and respray it with adhesive. Most the time it will be sort of crumbly or rotten.