Received a sample of fabric to match the grey headliner in my 2001 330Ci. Matches perfectly!!

I plan on having the headliner recovered by a local shop that does good work. The shop will use the fabric from Veterans. I'll recover the rear package shelf and the "C" pillars myself. How much fabric do you think I'll need?

 

How much fabric
My rear shelf is black. It was faded but I just used fabric paint to recolor it as the deck piece and the fabric on it were fine otherwise.

I bought 4 yards, 2 for the headliner itself, 1 yard for sunroof and pillars and an extra yard for mistakes on my part. I ended up needing 2 yards.

 

I got the material today from Veteran Co. It was an exact match of the original material as stated by the OP. The color is spot on. They were very helpful on the phone and it took 4 days from CA. to MA.

 

1/8th backing, I got 2.5 yards @ about $35 per yd. iirc

Width is 54"

 

The headliner material can be used on the "C" pillars. The "A" pillar fabric is way thinner than the headliner fabric.

Veterans Fabric FTW!

 

The veteran part no is bmw1997

Also they have a textured read parcel shelf material for mercedes thrat matches the gray color closely if yours isn't black. If it is black they stock Oem bmw material.

Finally ask a local shop about ordering the material for you. My local shop started (after I did mine at home) they can get the material from veteran for less than 20. I paid 35. Also they only have the narrow cloth (50 inches) at the moment.

The local shop also told me they would spray it if I took it out and did the prep work of wire brushing the foam off. The gun and Wedgwood is way better. Though I used the yellow 3m glue on the can (0809 i think) and it's holding.

 

Contacted them and they sent a free sample book.

Pretty sure the anthracite black headliner is bm134 black.

 

BM134 looks like a close match. Thanks for sharing the pic. Are these all the colors they sell? The headliners in all 3 of my BMW's are sagging and they are 3 different colors. Do they have anything for the hellbeige and hellgrau?

 

I think bm134 is a close match when compared to a new panel from BMW. Picture of them below.

And yeah these colors are what they carry. Hellbeige is sand beige and hellgrau is titanium silver I belive.

 

These guys carry it all in So. Cal.
http://www.globalupholstery.com/#

 

Headliner magic and Veteran both carry matching backed and unbacked fabrics, there's no need to figure out work arounds for the A-pillar screw covers.

 

These days Veterans has nothing in 1/8th or unbacked. The website has no pictures any longer either.

 

Matching, but not completely so going off the pictures. One thing is colour matching, then there is the texture/pattern.
For people suggesting recovering everything in another random fabric - I only need to retrim 1 (sunroof) panel, hence I need it to match existing OE headliner. Plus, I find the OE headliner material the nicest

 

A few years ago, I had my 330i sedan headliner and pillars completely recovered at a local headliner shop using the materials they provided for around $300. They did a great job.

Stick with OEM color or a close match. All of the associated bits and pieces, like the sunroof surround, all trim, visors, third brake light cover will blend in like OEM. Also be prepared to source replacement plastic bits like the sunroof shade handle, and track pieces, those tend to be crispy after 10 years, and will probably break, or in the least be ready to be replaced during the job.

 

Finally got my sample from Global Upholstery (still surprised I had to order from the US to get some fabric for a BMW).
It is thankfully closer to OE than I anticipated. You can see in the photos that the shade is very close, with and without an external light source.
Now, sadly this is still not OE.Not sure if visible in the photos, but the aftermarket fabric has more of a horizontal weave pattern, whereas OE is square (horizontal+vertical weave). It might be because of it that OE has a bit more of a sheen to it, and reflects light somewhat differently.
Texture is also close, but not the same. To me OE feels more like a natural fabric, soft to the touch but not too synthetic. GU is definitely synthetic to the touch (I hope they checked its flammability).

All things considered, it might be “good enough” for the sunshade, but I probably wouldn’t use it if I was doing the whole headliner.
Can anyone confirm/deny whether Headliner Express uses the same stuff from Global Upholstery?

 

I used 3M Hi-Strength 90 spray adhesive to do the headliner in my e36. Sold the car after 6 years later after I bought my e46 330Ci. It was still perfect. Used on all of the pillars too. As people have written, the prep is the most important thing. I used it again last week to re-fit the base pads on my Macbook Pro. Still works well after all these years.

 

Finally got the sample from GAHH (took it longer to be delivered from Heathrow than it did to come from California to Heathrow).
Not sure if I am just late to the party or if people posting about them having OE stuff have newer cars, but it’s completely the wrong material for E39/E46. I think it might be the same/similar as on newer anthracite headliner cars (Global upholstery on the left, GAHH on the right).
Then again, their Titanium Gray looks closer to E46 material, so maybe that's what people were talking about.

 

Google Veterans Fabrics in Los Angeles. It sells factory headliner material made by the company that supplies the fabric to whatever company makes the headliner.

 

Veterans is a front for Global Upholstery from what I understand

 

Here are some photos of the fabric from Veteran Co comparing to a few OEM parts.

Mark's S54 Touring Build

I'm looking to join the club with the rest of you guys who are building (or have built) an S54 swapped touring. I'd been searching for a while to find the right car to start with and was recently able to grab this one from Virginia and drive it 1200 miles back to Wisconsin...

www.e46fanatics.com

 

Small update on this, got hold of a sunroof panel that presumably came from an older Webasto kit, and thus had the older (E39/46) anthracite material on it (I joined this thread because the first panel I got had a different fabric). I am assuming that the new panel is OE.

Some comparison photos (Webasto OE top, Global Upholstery bottom).

As before, when I was comparing to OE headliner in the car, there are slight differences:

• OE patterns seems to have slightly denser stitching
• OE is closer to gray than black (might be due to age)
• OE cut out seems to show a somewhat denser cell structure (could be due to how it was cut).

Overall, I am still happy with the Global Upholstery material, and may keep the OE one as a spare