The following comments pertain to removing and installing a headliner in a 1962 Mark 2 Jaguar.
Replacing a headliner requires that the interior of the car be removed and that the front and rear windscreens be removed.
These both seem like daunting tasks, but I assure you they are do-able.  I have provided a number of digital images from when I did this job.  They range from “before”, to “during”, and finally to “two years after”.  You may draw your own conclusions as to the outcome.
I grade myself at about 8.5.
The headliner looks very nice, but it’s not perfect.
Few ever notice the imperfections, although I don’t show my car.  I drive it.

I recommend a couple of books that discuss headliners:

 "On Classic Trim" (Practical Classics & Car Restorer, Kelsey Publishing Limited)
"Mk 2 Jaguar Restoration" (Practical Classics & Car Restorer, Kelsey Publishing)
Search for Kelsey Publishing on the Internet.  You can order them on line.

1. view 1 original headliner	2. view 2 original headliner	3. view 3 original headliner
4. old headliner all cants and  clips in original locations	5. new headliner with cants  clips transferred over	6. detail of three front cants and clips
7. detail of three rear cants and clips	8. each cant is different same  with clips keep track	9. dynamat sound deadening installing  longitudinal sections
10. rubber strips above doors  another view	11. rubber strips above doors  for securing headliner	12. stay away from small transverse  pieces It was a mistake
13. POR15 protection for front  windscreen aperture	14. headliner fitment at rear  windscreen aperture	15. headliner secured at rubber  strips above doors
16. these wrinkles appeared as  I installed the rear windscreen	17. furflex installation wrinkles  appear but can be managed	18. home made tool to install lock  strip in front windscreen gasket.
19. side view of home  made tool	20. view 1 immediately  after completion.	21. view 2 immediately after completion
22. view 1 two years after installation	23. view 2 two years after installation	24. view 3 two years after installation
25. view 4 two years after installation	26. view 5 two years after installation	27. view 6 two years after installation

Removing the old Headliner:

You will be performing what the manual always calls "the reverse order" of installation.  Do this carefully so you hopefully end up with a complete old headliner to reference when you install the new one.

1) Remove the front and rear seats.
 

2) Remove all the wood trim pieces around the edges of the headliner (this is not incidental, but I am assuming you know that the screws are hidden beneath the rubber door seals).
 

3) Remove sun visors, rear view mirror, and the two interior lights back by the parcel shelf (careful when removing these last two items...there's a thin plywood ring to which each light mounts that will probably fall to bits when you remove it.  You need the old ones for a pattern).

4) Remove the front windscreen complete with rubber gasket.  The factory shop manual addresses this task and is recommended reading.  The task involves carefully removing the chrome trim, extracting the rubber locking strip, breaking the glass/rubber bond, and then simply easing the glass forward and out of the rubber gasket.
 

5) Remove rear windscreen complete with rubber gasket.  The factory shop manual addresses this task and is recommended reading.  The task involves removing the chrome strip, breaking the glass/rubber bond, then pushing the glass outward (at a corner) whilst supporting it from the outside.  Not as easy as the front glass, but really not bad.

At this point you will basically be ready to begin removing the headliner proper.  Observe how it is installed.  If you have a digital camera snap a bunch of images.  Now begin removing it:

6) Peel the liner carefully off the lip of the rear window opening (where you will find it glued).

7) Ditto front window opening.

8) Work your way along each side edge of the headliner.  You'll probably find a combination of staples, brads, and/or glue.  Note all this carefully because you'll be there again pretty soon with the new headliner, trying to achieve a tight, wrinkle-free installation.

9) Once the front, rear, and both sides are free, you are at last ready to remove the cants (cants are the metal bows that hold the headliner up into position).  The cants are in sleeves that are stitched into the headliner, and at each end of each cant is a metal clip that fits into a sheet metal bracket welded to the inside of the body just above the door openings.

10) Starting at either the front or the rear, you will now be able to grasp each cant through the loose fabric of the headliner and actually rotate it back towards the center of the car and downwards.  Once the cant is in a downward "sagging" position you'll be able to lift each of those clips up and out of the bracket.  Pay particular attention here!!  Each cant has it's own particular clips.  The clips are NOT interchangeable among the various cants, and the cants are NOT interchangeable among the various sleeves.  Keep the digital camera at hand and proceed with care.  Mark everything so you know which cant goes in which sleeve, and which clips go with which cant.

11) Once you have the cants and clips free, then the headliner is also free.  I recommend laying the old headliner out on a table or flat surface, and re-installing the cants and clips into it...and make them secure so things don't fall apart.  Keep it all together until the new headliner is ready to be installed.  Which ain't yet, by the way.

12) There'll undoubtedly be lots of clean up to do.  The jute matting that is glued (with vile black tar) above the old headliner is probably history.  I replaced the jute stuff with that self-adhesive "black rubber" sound-deadening mat (DynaMat) above my new headliner.  It worked OK, but I made the mistake of using every piece of the mat (it's not cheap stuff!), cutting it into small pieces to fit here and there.  I now recommend against this approach.  Buy as many mats as you need, but only install it in longitudinal pieces that span at least two cants.  Even though those mats are self-adhesive (and as I recall I also used 3M spray adhesive in an attempt to achieve maximum adherence overkill), I have suffered some of the smaller pieces coming loose.  Not too cool.

Installing the new Headliner:

So now the old headliner is out of the car, the new sound-deadening material is installed, the cants (bows) are all cleaned up and installed in the new headliner in the proper order, and the clips are installed in the correct cants.  The new headliner is resting on a clean surface, and the car is waiting for your next move.

It's time to install the new headliner.

1) As mentioned in the removal narrative, you will have installed some sort of sound deadening material against the metal roof panel.  Whatever material you choose, install it longitudinally so that it crosses at least two cants, and preferably three or more.  These materials are held in place by glue, and the hot and cold cycles that the interior of a car goes through can, and will, cause glue to release over time.  If the cants are helping out by holding the material up, then the chances of the material pulling away are reduced.

2) Make sure the hard rubber strips above the door openings are continuous front to back.  You need these strips for fastening the headliner along the sides.

3) Make sure any rust issues at the window apertures are addressed.  Now's the time.

4) Clean the inside of the car again because you are about to move that brand new wool headliner inside there and heave around quite a bit until it gets more or less fixed into position.  It's all pretty floppy and awkward at first, and there's no need to get it unnecessarily dirty.

5) As I recall I started with the cants in the sagging down position so the clips could be easily hooked into the brackets.  Once you get all the clips into position you have a headliner that is sagging but at least it's in position, and you can more easily work with it.

6) Now rotate the cants up against the roof, one at a time.  Some of the books say to begin at either the front or the back and work to the other end.  I honestly can't remember how I did it, but it'll become obvious as you proceed.  This part is straightforward, but always be aware that the whole process is one of moving progressively to a more finished product.  Each step takes you closer, but also becomes more important.  As the cants go up note the appearance of the seams and begin massaging them so each seam line ends up as straight as possible.

7) OK, the cants are all up.  Things are beginning to look like a headliner is in there.  It's still hanging down on the sides and ends, but it’s looking more hopeful.  My next step was to get a whole bunch of those metal spring clamps that you see in the office for holding stacks of paper together.  Using those, I pulled and clipped the headliner to the front and rear window apertures.  The idea is to sort of “close in” on the final appearance while not committing yourself with glue or staples just yet.  As you play with the tension on the fabric at the front and rear window openings, you'll begin to get an idea of how the stretch of the fabric works.

8) You are now getting close to your first act of commitment...eventually you need to begin stapling!  In the "Mk 2 Jaguar Restoration" book they say the headliner is stretched out and stapled in place.  Then they go on to say, it can also be glued (I assume in addition to stapling).  I only stapled mine along the sides above the doors (no glue).  It's been there for 2 or 3 years now...and everything looks just like it did the day I finished.  So I reckon stapling alone is fine.  I used an electric stapler (upholstery shops sometimes use special narrow-head pneumatic staplers) and by the time I was done had put in quite a few staples.  They really stick in that rubber strip.  I began in the mid-point of the car, and worked very cautiously towards either end, working both sides of the headliner together.  Scary stuff.  I spent a lot of time working the material.  You need to stretch and pull quite a bit, but you also need to be aware of what you are doing to yourself two cants away by stretching the area you are currently working on.  You know what I mean?  Work with it and take your time.  Sometimes you'll have to extract a staple or two to adjust things, and continue to adjust the spring clips at the windows as you proceed if necessary.

9) Be aware of the lines on the seams where the cants are.  These should be worked to be as straight and uniform as possible.  These are a large part of what you see when you look at a headliner.

10) At the rear window there are the interior lights to be dealt with and at the front are the sun visors and interior mirror.  The comments in this paragraph are intended to alert you to these fitments, but you will not be actually fitting these components until after the front and rear windscreens are back in the car.  You will note on the old headliner that the factory guys basically cut an "X" across the light mounts to allow the headliner to be fit there.  The fit of the headliner around those lights was one of my bigger bugaboos in the whole process.  And it wasn't something that appeared until after the lights were in place.  Indeed, when I first fit-installed the lights the headliner there looked great.  But when I installed the rear window and its rubber gasket, there were a few small wrinkles appeared at the edges of the lights.  Anyway, you will note that the interior lights, sun visors and mirror are mounted after the headliner is glued to the window apertures (step 11).  It’s a pretty good stretch in those areas, so as you get there become familiar with the feel of where the items mount, and perhaps even lightly mark where the holes are.  The books make a big deal about this, although I found it relatively easy to locate the screw holes after the headliner was in position.

11) So now the sides are all fastened into position.  It looks really good.  No wrinkles, or at least none that will be visible after the wood trim goes on above the doors.  Or maybe there are a few at either end.  But now is your chance to make them go away.  You are going to pull and glue the headliner to the window apertures.  Gulp.  You will need to carefully cut little "v"s in the fabric to allow it to fold over the lip of the aperture where the window openings curve sharply at either end.  This is the first place I recall using glue in my installation process.  I used 3M super trim spray adhesive at times, and at times I used contact cement.  Anyway, spend some time pulling and stretching the material and observing how it works before you finally do the deed.  This is also a scary time.  It's so FINAL.  I used glue at the windscreen apertures, around the flat areas surrounding the rear window, including below the rear window where it goes down to the parcel shelf, and also the flat area immediately above the front windscreen.  Once you get going you'll see where glue is appropriate.  When you finally finish gluing the headliner at the front and rear you will hopefully have a wrinkle-free installation that is taut and smooth.  The headliner will probably not be touching the body at the locations where the rear interior lights, sun visors, and mirrors will be installed.  This is good because installing those components simply serves to tighten everything up as the headliner is stretched down to the underlying surface.  But don't install those items yet.

12) Install front windscreen.  This procedure is covered nicely in the factory shop manual (recommended reading).  The gasket goes into the body aperture first; then the glass goes into the rubber gasket, starting at the bottom and working around both sides together; then the locking strip goes in (see the images for special too I made…it makes the job do-able); then the chrome finishers go in.  Each step along the way gets progressively harder.  The special tool for the locking strip really helps.  I used water with detergent as a lubricant for both the locking strip and the chrome finishers.  Getting the chrome strips inside the rubber lips all around was just about impossible.  I ended up with about 92% success.  I finally secured the top center clip with Goop.  It’s been there for a couple years now and looks great.

13) Install the rear windscreen.  This procedure is also covered nicely in the factory shop manual (recommended reading).  In this case the glass goes into the gasket first, then a string is wrapped around the groove in the gasket (loose ends at top, facing the interior of the car); the gasket/glass combo is “offered up” (don’t you love offering things up to your Jaguar?) to the aperture, then with pressure applied to the outside, use the string to pull the lip of the gasket over the metal of the aperture.  Avoid pulling the string steeply against the rubber lest you cut it.  Installing the rubber gasket means you are acting on the headliner where you glued it over the metal of the aperture.  Be gentle.  Any action on the headliner at this point can cause subtle wrinkles in the material in the near vicinity.  Now install the chrome finishers.  As I recall I had an easier go of it on the rear windscreen.  Who knows, though, you may have a harder time there!

OK, there you go.  The headliner is in!  Now all you have left is the entire interior!  But first go “offer up” some brew to yourself…

Tom Carson
1962 Mark 2, 3.8 liter MOD, chrome wires
Juneau, Alaska