Headliners: All sorts of fun. GM Headliners: Engineering nightmare

"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa) 04/27/2016 at 18:30 • Filed to: None

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No, really. What idiot engineer decided to make the HEADLINER integral to the car’s wiring harness? I need the headliner off to service the sunroof, but I can’t test the sunroof because the controls are a part of the headliner. I am so many levels of confused.

Also this magnet handles holding up the center of the headliner. This is the smartest part of the whole thing.

“Oh, the A pillars just pop out and then some phillips head bits take off the handles which are made of far too many pieces!”

All off.

The idea is to fix this but now that I can see the mechanism I have no idea wtf I’m doing.

These are the main pieces. Not shown is the million pieces of sunshade, “oh shit” handle, interior light bezels (this car uses four or five different types of interior light bulb for somefucking reason), and broken plastic christmas tree fasteners and metal clips.

This is the other reason for this. Dying the interior black.

It’s more of a charcoal because of how much of the underlying color shows through, but holy hell this stuff covers plastic nice.

C62030 > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 04/27/2016 at 18:34

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That car has more air vents than an air conditioner factory. That is luxury GT motoring.

Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To > C62030 04/27/2016 at 18:41

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It’s a running gag among 8th gen Riv owners to make fun of the ludicrous amounts of vents. Many people pop a couple out and put some sort of gauge in there, usually boost or something.

I Will Always Be The Honey Badger > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 04/27/2016 at 18:46

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If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > C62030 04/27/2016 at 18:46

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The two “vents” on the passenger door are just HVAC controls disguised as vents. The last Bonneville, however, has no such excuse:

DoYouEvenShift > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 04/27/2016 at 19:11

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Working in the auto industry for the last ten years, Iv learned to no blame the engineers. But blame the people that tell the engineers to “make it work, but cheaper” over and over again.

C62030 > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent 04/27/2016 at 19:25

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I have a Pontiac. But God, am I glad I don’t have that one. Every single little thing is just so ugly and weird. And not good weird. “Why are you chasing me into this alley” weird.

dsigned001 - O.R.C. hunter > DoYouEvenShift 04/27/2016 at 19:27

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I think there’s plenty of blame to go around here. I’ve known auto engineers who long ago sold their souls to be mid level managers and will defend GM’s stupid corporate decisions to the point of denying that there’s anything wrong with their cars.

jimz > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 04/27/2016 at 19:36

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because the supplier assembles the wiring onto the headliner and ships it into the assembly plant as a unit. making cars is a low-margin business, and the faster a car can be assembled the better.

Rust and Dust - Oppositelock Forever > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 04/27/2016 at 19:53

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What problem is the sunroof giving you? Intermittent failure, or total lack of operation?

In any case, it’s usually just cheap hot glue holding the overhead harness to the headliner, you can (gently) remove the wiring from the headliner to hook up sunroof controls to chassis harness for testing functions. Just tape it back in place prior to headliner installation, it’s not like the wiring harness is really going anywhere once the headliner is back in place.

If it makes you feel better, it could be much, much worse:

Lost a day and a half of my life to this panoramic sunroof/power sunshade monstrosity. Pretty sure this is the modern day version of Dante’s 9th circle of Hell.

Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To > Rust and Dust - Oppositelock Forever 04/27/2016 at 23:00

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intermittently it won’t slide back/forward. All the other motors work fine but that one is sketchy. I get the feeling some sort of sensor was getting tripped by the sliding sunshade bit that was sort of flopping around the mechanism which I removed with excessive force cleverness.

Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To > jimz 04/27/2016 at 23:01

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But why not just glue the wiring to the metal roof instead? It’s one step of work either way, just at different points in the installation process and it makes service (and the headliner part itself) far easier and cheaper.

Jayhawk Jake > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 04/28/2016 at 10:25

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As he said, the headliner comes with the wiring harness preinstalled. Plug it in, boom, done. The way you recommend is much more labor intensive on the assembly line. And glue needs to cure, so it takes time. You could put it in with plastic retaining clips, but that’s cost and parts.

Service is easy. Drop headliner, repair thing that needs repair. Looks like a reasonably long pigtail for the sunroof and the wiring harness, wouldn’t be that hard to lay the headliner on one side of the car or the roof and plug it in.